hours thinking about the dump--the sea gulls squealing, the trash fires flaring, soot flying past the windows and finally Ralph tramping in with his crazy stories about the rats or the mulligan stew or the fortune someone had found in a discarded fruit jar.

She had hated it all before but now she wasn't sure she hated it very much. Maybe she no longer hated it at all. What was it Ralph had said? How did it go? Oh yes: "We ain't got much here, _but at least we're alive_."

The words echoed in her mind. She thought of them a hundred times a day.

It was a small thing that decided her. One morning she was standing at the window, looking out across the trugrass lawn, when a State dispensary ambucar drove up. Two hospital men entered the prefab across the road. In a few minutes they came out carrying old Miss Quinsonby in a plastic bag.Lucy Leeson felt sick. Although she was perfectly aware that Miss Quinsonby had been ailing for months, the memory of her nightmare came back to torment her. Was it possible that the State actually did "dispose" of the very old and infirm in order to make room for new applicants? The thought was fantastic, and yet the State people were so deadly, impersonally efficient in so many ways. 

That very afternoon she signed up for the next monthly tronicar excursion. She had nearly two weeks to wait and she counted the days. One afternoon when she was sleeping in the foamease chair she had a new nightmare. She dreamed that she became ill and pressed the Dispensary button. In the prescribed three minutes two State hospital men appeared. One of them winked at the other and they both smiled slyly at her. Then she noticed that the one who had winked held something behind his back. It was a big folded plastic bag. She awoke with a scream.

On the morning set for the tronicar excursion, she stuffed some personal items in a small kit and went outside to wait. The tronicar driver was supposed to stop and touch her signal chime, but she was taking no chances. She waited nearly an hour, afraid the car might come early. When it finally swung into view down the street, she hurried to the ramp.

After the tronicar had picked up its cargo of State wards and left the immediate prefab area, the driver began an oral travelogue, describing new buildings, sites, and developments as the car sped past. She scarcely heard his monotonous speel droning over the speaker system. 

Her plans were made. When the car stopped in Newbridge, she would get 

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