Lansing cleared his throat, looked slowly from the somber-faced clergyman, to the fidgeting medico, to the burly captain, still staring impassively at the general, to, finally, the quiet, smiling warden. "Gentlemen," he said slowly, "it occurs to me that the situation hasn't actually registered on you. The earth is really doomed, you know. This dust simply won't tolerate organic life. In some way—we have not had time to discover how—it's self-multiplying, so, as I said, it spreads. Right now, not a tenth of this entire continent—from the pole down to the Panama Canal—is capable of supporting any kind of life as we know it. And that area is diminishing hourly."
"No way of checking it?" Slade asked. His tone was one of idle curiosity, nothing else.
"No. It's death, gentlemen. As deadly as your ... ah, gallows."
"We use the gas chamber," Halloran corrected him. His mouth twisted. "More humane, you know."
There was brief quiet, then the warden said, "Well ... now that we've finished philosophizing, let's get back to the matter at hand. We can have everyone that's going ready to leave by seven tonight. Will that be satisfactory?"
"It'll have to be," Knox grunted.
"Thank you." Halloran reached for his phone, then dropped his hands on his desk. "I'd like to ask you a question," he said. "Perhaps it's presumptuous, but I'm rather curious about the ... er, last workings of our government. Tell me, don't you really have room for our inmates? You haven't told us how many ships you've built. Or how big they are."
Lansing looked at Knox. The general flushed, then stared at the floor. Lansing shrugged tiredly.
"Oh, we've plenty of room," he sighed. "But ... our orders are to take only those completely fit to build a new world. We've ... well, we have practiced a lot of euthanasia lately."
"Judges," murmured Goldsmid.