"My God, man! To destroy in a single stroke everything we've looked forward to for Heaven knows how many years! It's our only hope!"
Justin shook his head.
"Not our only hope." Again he glanced at Doris, disliking to leave her alone now that it might happen at any hour. Still, there were the women next door. He said: "If you could spare a few hours, I want you to see what I've done up at my lab at Camp Jukes."
As the charcoal-burning Government car inched on through the miserable, sluggish throngs of mid-Manhattan, Justin closed his eyes. It was all there, every evil man had prophesied for multiplying man: the skin lesions of pellagra, the deformities left by infantile rickets, the starvation of face and body and mind. Silent expressionless sheep, they moved slowly out of the way; and only a few of the more alert turned to curse or spit.
At 42nd and Fifth, long lines queued patiently up worn stone steps to secure their meager daily rations in what had once been the great Public Library.
The driver was new, and new to New York.
"Jeez! Where do they live, sir?"
Justin nodded toward the soaring skyscrapers, weather-blackened monuments to a commercial past.
"As far up," he said wearily, "as they care to climb."