and the
industrial and the just generally foolhardy.

We, the people of the world, have a little time now that we didn't
have yesterday.

How much? He didn't know.

On this one, there'd been time to get together. On this one, there'd
been weeks, while the crisis built and the world faced a horrible
death. This crisis had been a lengthy one. There'd been time for a man
to make up his mind and try a solution.

The next one might be different. There might be a satellite up there
waiting, with a button to be pushed. There were an awful lot of
buttons waiting to be pushed, he told himself, buttons all over the
world, controlling missiles already zeroed in on--well, on the people
of the world.

The next one might occur in hours, or even minutes. The next one, the
bombs might be in the air before the people even knew the buttons were
for pushing.

Bill Howard got out his typewriter.

You've got a problem, you talk to a typewriter, if that's the only
thing that will listen.

What's the problem? he asked himself, and he wrote it down. He started
at the beginning and he told the story on the typewriter. He told it
the way it had been happening.

Now, he thought, you've got to end the story. If you leave it just "to
be continued," it'll be continued, all right. Somebody will push a
button one day, and that will write 30 at the end for you. Conclusion.

The problem was, in essence, quite simply stated in terms of miracles.

The way things were stewing, it'd be a miracle if the world held
together long enough for unity to set in. It'd take a miracle to bring
about the necessary self-restraint, which was the only possible
substitute for the imposed restraint of war.

The witch power was, quite clearly, a power of the people--of the
people who needed that protection, needed those miracles. And it was
the power that had worked miracles.

We'll never know who does the job, he told himself. It's better that
way. Like table-tipping. You can say "I didn't do it." You can even be
sure you didn't do it, if you want to. But the table tips if you get
enough people around the table. Ouiji writes, if at least two people
have their fingers on it, so that they each can say "I didn't do it."

Who are the witches? Why, they're the people, and they're not for burning.
The fanatics and their statesmen, the eggheads and their politicians, the
brains and the brain trusts and the world-weary--they're for burning, but
not the witches. W