confidants and kindred spirits here, no doubt, who will help me to consolidate my power."

"They will rise and destroy you before that time. You must eventually sleep."

"I sleep as lightly as a cat. Besides, so long as they are inflamed, as they are tonight, with one another, they are not apt to become inflamed against me. For every male there is a female. Not all of them will pair tonight—nor even in a week. And by the time this obsession fails to claim their attention I shall be firmly seated upon my throne. There will be no women left for you or me, of course, but you will have your work, as you noted—and it will consist of keeping my boots shined and my clothing pressed."

"And you?" Stephen said bitterly.

"Ah, yes. What of the dictator? I have a confession to make to you, my familiar. I prefer it this way. If I should simply choose a woman, there would be no zest to it. Therefore I shall wait until they are all taken, and then I shall steal one—each week. Now go out and enjoy yourself."

Stephen, steeped in gloom, left the tent. No one paid any attention to him. There was a good deal of screaming and laughing. Too much screaming.

He walked along the avenue of tents. Beyond the temporary floodlights of the atomic generators it was quite dark. Yet around the horizon played the flickering lights of the aurora, higher now that the sun was beyond the sea. A thousand years from now it would be there, visible each night, as common to that distant generation as starlight.

From the shadow of the valley's rim he emerged upon a low promontory above the village. Directly below where he stood, a woman, shrieking, ran into the blackness of a grove of small trees. She was pursued by a man. And then she was pursued no more.

He turned away, toward the seashore. It lay half a mile beyond the settlement of Flight One.

Presently he came upon a sandy beach. The sea was dark and calm; there was never any wind here. Aloft the barrier arose more plainly than before, touching the ocean perhaps half a mile from shore, but invisible at sea-level. And beyond it—he stared.

There were the lights of a great city, shining across the water. The lights twinkled like jewels, beckoning nostalgically to him. But then he remembered that a Molein Field, jealously allowing only the passage of photonic energy, was said to have a prismatic effect—and 

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