off on some pretext and simply keep on going. She knew the tronicar excursions were tied to a rigid schedule. The driver would not wait for her very long. Assuring him that she would return in five minutes, she got out in Newbridge and scurried away in the crowds. Once out of sight, she signaled for a cruisecab.

As the cab slid smoothly through city traffic toward the highway which skirted the dump, horrible doubts assailed her. Suppose Ralph had left? Suppose all of them had left? What would she do? Where could she go? The State owned the house. She did not possess any money. She would have to go back to the prefab, back to the trugrass lawn and the simulated maple tree, back to--_Death_. Once she had spoken it in her mind, she kept on repeating it. Death, death, death. She would have to go back to death. She would have to go back to death. It became a refrain, ringing in her head. 

The crisp voice of the driver came through the partition tube, startling her. "This is the refuse area, lady. Where did you want to go?"
Her heart began to pound. She looked out the window, searching for landmarks. "About a mile yet. There's an old empty warehouse and then some catalpa trees. Right after that." In a minute or two the cruisecab glided to a stop. She paid the driver and got out. Her heart was pounding so hard she could scarcely breathe. "You want me to wait, lady?" The driver regarded her quizzically. She shook her head. "No--no thanks. I--I'm meeting someone here." The driver glanced at the smoky pall of the dump and shrugged. Seconds later the cruisecab was disappearing down the highway. 

She walked past the clump of catalpa trees bordering the highway. There were bushes and then set back a bit would be the house. She stopped, staring, motionless. The house was gone. The State had torn it down and filled in the cellar hole. As she looked across the littered backyard toward the clump of cattails, she experienced a strange sense of unreality. Sea gulls cried overhead and the sun filtered down through a pall of smoke, but the familiar scene seemed eerily unfamiliar.

Scowling, she closed her eyes momentarily and forced down the panic crowding within her. The house was gone; that was what made everything seem so strange, so unreal. Now she would take the little path that led across the backyard into the cattails. She would find Ralph and the others. Surely they were here somewhere. They would have shelter, at least a substitute for a house. She was acting like a fool. She should have expected the house to be gone; even if it hadn't been, it was no longer hers. She would 

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