deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....

He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"

"Yes," he shouted.

She disappeared.

He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.

No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.

He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!

No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.

He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.

He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.

He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.

Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything 

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