“Doing very well, thank you. And Mr. Kramer—”
“Top of the world,” Jim replied.
“That is good news.” The boy hurried into the house.
“Oh, Bob, going to the Don’s this afternoon? Zargo is outside!”
“Guess not, Old Timer. I’ll linger around and keep Kramer from getting rusty, but you ooze along.” Ten minutes later, Jim was in the big car, which was a particularly powerful, smooth-running machine, and now it ate up the miles as it rushed over the road that wound along the edge of Cap Rock.
“Dad told me that when he was a boy this was the stage-coach road. The drivers used to go lickity-split—mostly split—and when the passengers got out most of them would be black and blue from the bumps,” Jim remarked.
“Those days are not so far distant,” Zargo replied. “Your father’s generation has seen many changes.”
“Yes, sir, from covered wagons to airplanes. Besides that there have been the cables, radio, submarines, automobiles and television. When you come to think of it they have had to do some mental jumping to grasp it all. The inventors and discoverers in these days are everlastingly lucky they were not born earlier, during the time when the mob pitch-forked everything that was different and called any kind of progress heresy. Great guns, I never can understand why those old ducks were so opposed to people using their own brains. What a lot of good men and women they cooked when half the world had to believe what a couple of fellows dictated. Zargo, do you believe there is a hell?”
“What is your definition of hell?” the man asked.
“That’s a hot one. A bad place where bad people go when they are dead. Where they have to atone for their sins,” Jim answered.