"Love? This isn't love. It's—it's like anger. It's—I've never known anything like this!"

"Let yourself know. Please."

He closed his eyes. His lips trembled. "I—I felt like I was going to die," he whispered.

Suddenly he turned and stared at the Tevee.

He knows, she thought dully. He knows I'm what I am underneath. But he doesn't know that he knows. He can't admit what seems impossible.

He gasped. His body jerked. She looked at the Tevee frame. There was nothing on it suddenly but a frightening, wavering, milky emptiness.

And a voice; a voice without a face.

"Due to the possibility of an immediate air-raid, Tevee is dead. All transportation is stopped. Those of you who were thoughtful and cooperative enough with your sponsor to order our emergency entertainment projectors will now turn them on. It will greatly decrease anxiety. Red-out regulations will be in effect for two hours."

Kelsey's face was gray. "Air-raid," he whispered. "It's here. It's really here!"

"It's all right, darling." She touched his arm. "It's all right—"

The light went out.

Somewhere Alice heard screaming. It seemed to fill the walls, the floor, the ceiling and the night itself, everywhere, as though the very air was screaming in some vast agony. The sirens.

She heard a whimpering sound and realized that it was Kelsey. She held him tightly in her arms. He was shivering.

The Tevee screen seemed like a page on which vital print had died, something strangely alive but without sound or meaning, like an exposed brain without thought, like the deadness of an open eye in a corpse.

"All lights will be extinguished for two hours," the voice said. "Everyone will go immediately to their air-raid shelters!"

"Two hours," Kelsey whispered.

"I'm here," she said. "We're together, darling. There's nothing—"

He didn't seem to hear her. He leaped out of her arms, and she heard furniture 

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