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"Are you crazy?" asked Eddie Willers.

"No, I mean it, brother. We got plenty of room. We'll give you folks a

lift—for a price—if you want to get out of here." He was a lanky, nervous

man, with loose gestures and an insolent voice, who looked like a side-show

barker.

"This is the Taggart Comet," said Eddie Willers, choking.

"The Comet, eh? Looks more like a dead caterpillar to me. What's the

matter, brother? You're not going anywhere—and you can't get there any more,

even if you tried."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't think you're going to New York, do you?"

"We are going to New York."

"Then . . . then you haven't heard?"

"What?"

"Say, when was the last time you spoke to any of your stations?"

"I don't know! . . . Heard what?"

"That your Taggart Bridge is gone. Gone. Blasted to bits. Sound-ray

explosion or something. Nobody knows exactly. Only there ain't any bridge any

more to cross the Mississippi. There ain't any New York any more—leastways,

not for folks like you and me to reach."

Eddie Willers did not know what happened next; he had fallen back against

the side of the engineer's chair, staring at the open door of the motor unit;

he did not know how long he stayed there, but when, at last, he turned his

head, he saw that he was alone. The engineer and the fireman had left the

cab. There was a scramble of voices outside, screams, sobs, shouted questions

and the sound of the side-show barker's laughter.

Eddie pulled himself to the window of the cab: the Comet's passengers and

crew were crowding around the leader of the caravan and his semi-ragged

companions; he was waving his loose arms in gestures of command. Some of the

better-dressed ladies from the Comet—whose husbands had apparently been first

to make a deal—were climbing aboard the covered wagons, sobbing and clutching

their delicate makeup cases.

"Step right up, folks, step right up!" the barker was yelling cheerfully.

"We'll make room for everybody! A bit crowded, but moving—better than

being left here for coyote fodder! The day of the iron horse is past! All we

got is plain, old-fashioned horse! Slow, but sure!"

Eddie Willers climbed halfway down the ladder on the side of the engine,

to see the crowd and to be heard. He waved one arm, hanging onto the rungs

with the other. "You're not going, are you?" he cried to his passengers.

"You're not abandoning the Comet?"

They drew a little away from him, as if they did not want to look at him

or answer. They did not want to hear questions their minds were incapable of

weighing. He saw the blind faces of panic.

"What's the matter with the grease-monkey?" asked the barker, pointing at

Eddie.

"Mr. Willers," said the conductor softly, "it's no use . . ."

"Don't abandon the Comet!" cried Eddie Willers. "Don't let it go! Oh God,

don't let it go!"

"Are you crazy?" cried the barker. "You've no idea what's going on at your

railroad stations and headquarters! They're running around like a pack of

chickens with their heads cut off! I don't think there's going to be a

railroad left in business this side of the Mississippi, by tomorrow morning!"

"Better come along, Mr. Willers," said the conductor.

"No!" cried Eddie, clutching the metal rung as if he wanted his hand to

grow fast to it.

The barker shrugged. "Well, it's your funeral!"

"Which way are you going?" asked the engineer, not looking at Eddie.

"Just going, brother! Just looking for some place to stop . . . somewhere.

We're from Imperial Valley, California. The 'People's Party'

crowd grabbed the crops and any food we had in the cellars. Hoarding, they

called it. So we just picked up and went. Got to travel by night, on account

of the Washington crowd. . . . We're just looking for some place to live. . .

. You're welcome to come along, buddy, if you've got no home—or else we can

drop you off closer to some town or another."

The men of that caravan—thought Eddie indifferently—looked too mean-minded

to become the founders of a secret, free settlement, and not mean-minded

enough to become a gang of raiders; they had no more destination to find than

the motionless beam of the headlight; and, like that beam, they would

dissolve somewhere in the empty stretches of the country.

He stayed on the ladder, looking up at the beam. He did not watch while

the last men ever to ride the Taggart Comet were transferred to the covered

wagons.

The conductor went last. "Mr. Willers!" he called desperately.

"Come along!"

"No," said Eddie.

The side-show barker waved his arm in an upward sweep at Eddie's figure on

the side of the engine above their heads. "I hope you know what you're

doing!" he cried, his voice half-threat, half-plea. "Maybe somebody will come

this way to pick you up—next week or next month! Maybe! Who's going to, these

days?"

"Get away from here," said Eddie Willers.

He climbed back into the cab—when the wagons jerked forward and went

swaying and creaking off into the night. He sat in the engineer's chair of a

motionless engine, his forehead pressed to the useless throttle.

He felt like the captain of an ocean liner in distress, who preferred to

go down with his ship rather than be saved by the canoe of savages taunting

him with the superiority of their craft.

Then, suddenly, he felt the blinding surge of a desperate, righteous

anger. He leaped to his feet, seizing the throttle. He had to start this

train; in the name of some victory that he could not name, he had to start

the engine, moving, Past the stage of thinking, calculation or fear, moved by

some righteous defiance, he was pulling levers at random, he was jerking the

throttle back and forth, he was stepping on the dead man's pedal, which was

dead, he was groping to distinguish the form of some vision that seemed both

distant and close, knowing only that his desperate battle was fed by that

vision and was fought for its sake.

Don't let it go! his mind was crying—while he was seeing the streets of

New York—Don't let it go!—while he was seeing the lights of railroad signals—