By 2030 the last foundations for any industrial nation collapsed as increasing man—cancer on his own planet, spendthrift and wastrel—exhausted his oil and coal and gas and minerals. By that year the subways had stopped in New York; trains braked to a halt from Coast to Coast; great liners rusted at their docks; planes grounded, and the lights went out in street and home.
Nor did power from atom or wind or sun or tide begin to fill the breach. Research, so long channeled into the single paramount objective of celestial pyrotechnics, had neglected to find replacement fuels.
This was the chaotic age in which Justin Weatherby reached manhood and Doris was born.
Charlie Hackett paid one of his rare calls next morning, flushed from climbing the seven backstairs flights. He was Doris' uncle, a former Mayor of New York and still the undisputed political boss with sixty million votes in his pocket if you counted the Upstate graveyards. He was past middle age, plumper than the austere times permitted, and it took him a moment to sit and recover his breath.
"Lord!" he exclaimed, blinking. "It's good to get out of that mob, and the smallpox out of hand again. Why d'you know, when I was Mayor twenty years ago, this town had only twenty-eight million people. It must be twice that now."
Justin, wondering what prompted the visit, said:
"And it was built for only eight."
"Really? Hmm. You ever been to India?"
"Oh, yes."