"They're still around. In hiding, mostly. Once in a while, after a riot, and if you want to pay an outrageous price, you can get something like it under the counter."
"But you couldn't wear it!"
"Of course not. You'd be torn to pieces."
"And just anybody could fly to Europe or take cruises? And everyone had cars like this? Not just the Government?"
"Nearly," said Justin. "You could put all the people in all the autos and all the back seats would still be empty."
Doris sighed.
"It must have been a fabulous time to live."
Perhaps it was. Even history-minded Justin found it hard to believe the cold statistics of that storied era: a life expectancy at birth of sixty-eight years; a daily diet of three thousand calories; meat, eggs, milk whenever you wished (why, he himself could scarcely remember the taste of beef!); bountiful super-markets groaning with viands; choice liqueurs and wines; fresh fruit in winter; mountainous surpluses of wheat and corn; candy shops, jewelry shops, flower shops, book shops; opera, theatre, museums; a telephone for every three persons; half the population in steady jobs, another quarter in school ... and land, land, land for everyone!
Where had this great nation failed?
To the few who still troubled to study the past, there was no mystery. From the twelve billion a year spent during the infant age of Sputniks and Explorers, America had spilled her treasure like sand into the frantic race to conquer Space. Temporarily braked by the Wars, but with each Peace redoubling the effort, the nation in the decade after the Red collapse had poured half her national income into those innumerable stabs toward the stars.