ity, I suppose five million people were
listening to the voice of the President at that moment. He had just said
that we must remain friendly with Venus; that in our enlightened age
controversies were inevitable, but that they should be settled with
sober thought--around the council table. This talk of war was
ridiculous. He was denouncing the public news-broadcasters; moulders of
public opinion, who every day--every hour--must offer a new sensation to
their millions of subscribers.

[Footnote 1: New York City, about where Yonkers now stands.]

He had reached this point when without warning his body pitched forward.
The balcony rail caught it; and it hung there inert. The slanting rays
of the sun fell full upon the ruffled white shirt; white, but turning
pink, then red, with the crimson stain welling out from beneath.

For an instant the crowd was stunned into silence. Then a murmur arose,
and swelled into shouts of horror. A surge of people swept me forward. I
could not see clearly what was happening on the balcony. The form of the
murdered President was hanging there against the rail; a score of
government officials were rushing toward it; but the body, toppling over
the low support, came hurtling downward into the crowd, quite near me;
but I could not reach it--the throng was too dense.

The shouts everywhere were deafening. I was shoved along the Tenth Level
by the press of people coming up the stairway. Shouts, excited
questions; the wail of children almost trampled under foot; the screams
of women. And over it all, the electrically magnified voice of the
traffic director-general in the peak of the main tower roaring his
orders to the crowd.

It was a panic until the traffic-directors descended upon us. We were
pushed up on the moving sidewalks. North or south, whichever direction
came handiest, we were herded upon the sidewalks and whirled away. With
a hundred other spectators near me I was shoved to a sidewalk moving
south along the Tenth Level. It was going some four miles an hour. But
they would not let me stay there. From behind, the crowd was shoving;
and from one parallel strip of moving pavement to the other I was pushed
along--until at last I reached the seats of the forty mile an hour
inside section.

The scene at Park Sixty was far out of direct sight and hearing. The
park there had already been cleared of spectators, I knew; and they were
doubtless bearing the President's body away.

"Murdered!"