ought to be there to break it to him gently.

He gets off the train looking happy and successful and I figure he's made arrangements to put a Paradise booth in every city, town, and crossroads in the nation.

"Why, hello, Harry," he says when he sees me, and gives me the old professional smile and handshake that really ain't the old Joe at all. "Any cabs around?"

"No, there ain't no cabs around."

Something in the way I says it makes him give me a sharp look. "How come? There's always a couple to meet the flyer."

"There ain't none this time," I says. "No cab drivers."

"No cab drivers?"

"Ain't no need for 'em any more," I says. "Ain't no people in town to use cabs. Town's empty. Everybody's gone."

He looks kinda green and says: "What do you mean, everybody's gone?"

I shrugs and starts walking back to town. "Everybody took off," I says. "Your Paradise booths were real popular."

He still looks blank so I give it to him straight. I had first thought about it when Wally Claus disappeared. It occurs to me then that everybody has times when they wish they could crawl out from under and quietly disappear. You see, Joe had assumed that some people were adjusted to society and some weren't. Well, actually nobody is, it's just a difference of degree.

Once Wally took off, it sorta burst the dam. More and more people sneaked into the booths, dropped in a quarter, and whisht—they were a billion miles away.

It was lonely and dark in town. No street lamps, of course. There was nobody down at the power plant to work the switches. And there weren't any lights in the houses 'cause there wasn't anybody around.

"I can't imagine everybody going," Joe says, biting his lip. "What about all the kids?"

"I kinda think they were among the first," I says. I waves at the starry sky. "There's probably a planet up there some place where there's nothing but hot rods and football stadiums. And I suppose there's one section of the universe fenced off for all the Junior Spacemen that'll be roaming around it."

Anybody you could think of mighta had a reason for leaving, I told him. The boys at Schultz's probably took off for a world where Marilyn Monroe has a thousand twin sisters; and Johnny Douglas, the ace at Kelly's Bowling Alley, is probably located on a world where it's impossible to bowl anything but a three hundred game.

By then, we were in front of Joe's house. It was as dark and curtained as the others.

he house was empty. The blinds had been drawn, the dishes neatly stacked and put away, and a note left on the doorstoop telling the milkman not to bring any more milk.

The note to Joe was on the kitchen table. It was hard for Joe to read on accounta it was blurred in spots where Marge had been crying and the tears had fallen on the paper. It told Joe—among a whole mess of other things—that she thought she had married a man, not a radio set, and since everybody was using them she was going to visit a Paradise booth that night.

"What am I going to do?" Joe asks remorsefully.

"That's your problem," I says heartlessly, thinking of all the chili dinners that went with Marge. "You made the booths in the first place."

"Yeah, I know." He pulls out a wad of papers from his pocket and thumbs through them. "I got contracts here for a Paradise booth in every town over five thousand population. I could be a millionaire in a month."

"Joe," I says, suddenly frightened, "don't do it. Look what happened here in Fremont. Why man, if you put those things all over the country there wouldn't be a soul left in the United States after a month had gone by."

"You're right, Harry," he says. "Absolutely right." And he takes a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and sets fire to the papers and lets