Basil Wells, who lives in Pennsylvania, writes that he has been doing research concerning the keelboat age prior to and following the War of 1812 on the "locally famous section of portage-keelboat-rafting stream from Waterford down to Pittsburgh," turning from this to this grimmer future.
second
sight
by BASIL WELLS
Then his hand caught an arm and he exerted his full strength. The entire arm tore away from its shoulder....
His fingers moved over the modest packet of bills the invisible rockhound had handed to him. He smiled through the eternal night that was his own personal hell. Duggan's Hades.
"Thanks, Pete," he said gratefully. "Here, have a box of Conmos."
His sensitized fingers found the cigars, handed over a box, and he heard the nervous scuff of the other's shoes.
"This eight thousand means I can see again—for a while at least. Take 'em! It's little enough."
"Look, Duggan. I get eight hundred for selling you the ticket on the breakthrough time. Keep the cigars. You need the dough."
Feet pounded, thumping into swift inaudibility along the 10th Level's yielding walkway. His fingers caressed the crisp notes that his lucky guess on the 80th Level's tunnel juncture had won for him, plus the ten dollars, that this meager business could ill afford, it had cost to join the rockhounds' pool....