“Sorry, sir, but no one has fallen on a sidewalk for at least two hundred years. May I suggest you take a jumper?”

  “I don’t want to take a jumper. I want to walk. All you have to do is tell this damn sidewalk to relax and be quiet.”

  “Sorry, sir,” the machine replied, “but the sidewalk has its job to do. Besides, Mr. Storku is not at his office. He is taking some spiritual exercise at either Shriek Field or Panic Stadium.”

  “Oh, no!” Mr. Mead groaned. His worst fears had been realized. He didn’t want to go to those places again.

  “Sorry, sir, but he is. Just a moment while I check.” There were bright blue flashes among the coils. “Yes, Mr. Storku is doing a shriek today. He feels he has been over-aggressive recently. He invites you to join him.”

  MR. MEAD considered. He was not the slightest bit interested in going to one of those places where sane people became madmen for a couple of hours. On the other hand, time was short and Winthrop was still stubborn.

  “All right,” he said unhappily. “I’ll join him.”

  “Shall I call a jumper, sir?”

  The portly man stepped back. “No! I’ll-I’ll walk.”

  “Sorry, sir, but you would never get there before the shriek has begun.”

  Sweetbottom’s vice-president in charge of public relations worked hard to calm himself. He must remember that this was just a machine into whose circuits a given set of vocal reactions had been built. If he had an apoplectic fit in front of it, it would merely summon another machine, a medical one. All you could do was give it information or receive information from it.

  “I-don’t-like-jumpers,” he said between his teeth.

  “Sorry, sir, but you expressed a desire to see Mr. Storku. If you are willing to wait until the shriek is over, there is no problem, except that you would be well advised to start immediately for the Odor Festival on Venus, where he is going next. If you wish to see him now, however, you must take a jumper. There are no other possibilities, sir, unless you feel that my memory circuits are inadequate or you’d like to add a new factor to the discussion.”

  Mr. Mead sagged. “Okay, okay! Call a jumper.”

  “Yes, sir. Here you are, sir.” The empty cylinder that suddenly materialized over Mr. Mead’s head caused him to start, but while he was opening his mouth to say, “Hey! I changed my—” it slid down over him.

  There was darkness. He felt as if his stomach were being gently but insistently pulled out through his mouth. His liver, spleen and lungs seemed to follow suit. Then the bones of his body all fell inward to the center of his now-empty abdomen and dwindled in size until they disappeared. He collapsed upon himself.

  Abruptly he was whole and solid again and standing in a large green meadow, with dozens of people around him. His stomach returned to its proper place and squirmed irritatedly back into position.

  “—changed my mind. I’ll walk after all,” he said, and threw up.

  STORKU, a tall, genial, yellow-haired young man, was standing in front of him when the spasms had subsided. “It’s such a simple thing, really, Mr. Mead. Just a matter of being intently placid during the jump.”

  “Easy—easy to say,” Mr. Mead gasped. What was the reason Storku always exuded such patronizing contempt toward him? “Why don’t you people—why don’t you people find another way to travel? In my time, comfort in transportation is the keystone, the very keystone of the industry. Any railroad, busline or airline which doesn’t see to it that their passengers enjoy maximum comfort is out of business before you can bat an eye. Either that or they have a new board of directors.”

  “ISN’T he intriguing?” a girl near him said to her escort. “He talks just like one of those historical romances.”

  Mr. Mead glanced at her sourly, then gulped. She was nude. For that matter, so was everyone else around him, including Mr. Storku. Who, he wondered nervously, knew what went on at these Shriek Field affairs? After all, he had only seen them before from a distance in the grandstand. And now he was right in the middle of these deliberate lunatics.

  “Surely you’re being a bit unjust,” Mr. Storku suggested. “If an Elizabethan Englishman or a man from the Classic Greek period were to go for a ride in one of your horseless carriages or iron horses—to use your vernacular—he would exhibit much more discomfort than you have. It’s purely a matter of adjustment to the unfamiliar. Some adjust, like your contemporary Winthrop; some don’t, like yourself.”

  “Speaking of Winthrop—” Mr. Mead began hurriedly, glad of the opening.

  “Everybody here?” an athletic young man burst in as he bounded up. “I’m your leader for this shriek. On your feet, everybody, come on, let’s get those kinks out of our muscles. We’re going to have a real fine shriek—all it takes is teamwork!”

  “Take your clothes off,” the government man told Mr. Mead. “You can’t run a shriek dressed. Especially dressed like that.”

  Mr. Mead shrank back. “I just came here to talk to you. I’ll watch.”

  A rich, roaring laugh from Storku. “You can’t watch from the middle of Shriek Field! And besides, the moment you joined us, you were automatically registered for the shriek. If you withdraw now, you’ll throw everything off.”

  “I will?”

  “Of course. A different quantity of stimuli has to be applied to any different quantity of people, if you want to develop a specific shriek-intensity in each one of them. Take your clothes off, man, and get into the thing. It will tone up your psyche magnificently.”

  MR. MEAD thought it over, then began to undress. He was embarrassed, miserable and more than a little frightened at the prospect, but he had an urgent job of public relations to do on the yellow-haired young man.

  In his time, he had gurgled pleasurably over ropelike cigars given him by politicians, gotten drunk in ghastly little bars with important newspapermen, and suffered the slings and the arrows of outrageous television quiz shows—all in the interests of Sweetbottom Septic Tanks, Inc. The motto of the Public Relations Man was strictly When in Rome . . .

  And obviously the crowd he had made this trip with from 1958 was composed of bunglers. They’d never get themselves and him back to their own time, back to a world where there was a supply-and-demand system that made sense. A world where an important business executive was treated like somebody, where the walls didn’t ripple around you, the furniture didn’t adjust constantly under you, where the very clothes on a person’s back didn’t change from moment to moment as if being revolved in a kaleidoscope.

  No, it was up to him to get everybody back to that world and his only channel of effective operation lay through Storku. Therefore, Storku had to be placated and made to feel that Oliver T. Mead was one of the boys.

  Besides, it occurred to him as he began slipping out of his clothes, some of these girls looked real cute. They reminded him of the Septic Tank Convention at Des Moines back in July. If only they didn’t shave their heads!

  “All together, now,” the shriek leader sang out. “Let’s bunch up. All together in a tight little group, all bunched up and milling around.”

  Mr. Mead was pushed and jostled into the crowd. It surged forward, back, right, left, being maneuvered into a smaller and smaller group under the instructions and shoving of the shriek leader. Music sprang up around them—more noise than music, actually, since it had no discernible harmonic relationships and grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening.

  Someone striving for balance hit Mr. Mead in the stomach with an outflung arm. He said “Oof!” and then “Oof!” again as someone behind him piled into his back.

  “Watch out!” a girl near him moaned as he trod on her foot.

  “Sorry,” he told her, “I just couldn’t—” and then an elbow hit him in the eye and he went lurching away a few steps, until, the group changing its direction again, he was pushed forward.

  SOUND and round he went on the grass, being pushed and pushing, the horrible noise almost tearing his eardrums apart. From what seemed a greater and greater distance, he could hear the shriek leader chanting: “Come on, this way, hurry up! No, that way, around that tree. Back into the bunch, you. Stay together. Now, backward, that’s right, backward. Faster, faster.”

  They went backward, a great mass of people pushing on Mead, jamming him into the great mass of people immediately behind him. Then, abruptly, they went forward again, a dozen little crosscurrents of humanity at work against each other in the crowd, so that as well as moving forward, he was also being hurled a few feet to the right and then turned around and being yanked back diagonally to his left. Once or twice, he was shot to the outskirts of the group, but, much to his surprise, all he did was claw his way back into the jam-packed surging middle.

  It was as if he belonged nowhere else but in this mob of hurrying madmen. A shaved female head crashing into his chest, as the only hint that the group had changed its direction, was what he had come to expect. He threw himself back and disregarded the grunts and yelps he helped create. He was part of this—this—whatever it was. He was hysterical, bruised and slippery with sweat, but he no longer thought about anything but staying on his feet in the mob.

  He was part of it and that was all he knew.

  Suddenly, somewhere outside the maelstrom of running, jostling naked bodies, there was a yell. It was a long yell, in a powerful male voice, and it went on and on, almost drowning out the noise-music. A woman in front of Mr. Mead picked it up in a head-rattling scream. The man who had been yelling stopped, and, after a while, so did the woman.

  Then Mr. Mead heard the yell again, heard the woman join in, and was not even remotely astonished to hear his own voice add to the din. He threw all the frustration of the past two weeks into that yell, all the pounding, shoving and bruises of the past few minutes, all the frustrations and hatreds of his lifetime.

  All around him, others were joining it, too, until at last there was a steady, unanimous shriek from the tight mob that slipped and fell and chased itself all over the green meadow. Mr. Mead, in the back of his mind, experienced a childlike satisfaction in getting onto the rhythm they were working out—and in being part of working it out.

  It went pulse-beat, pulse-beat, shriek-k-k-k, pulse-beat, pulse-beat, shriek-k-k-k.

  All together. All around him, all together. It was good!

  He was unable to figure out how long they had been running and yelling, when he noticed that he was no longer in the middle of a tight group. They were spread out over the meadow in a long, wavering, yelling line.

  HE FELT a little confused.

  Without losing a beat in the shriek-rhythm, he made an effort to get closer to a man and woman on his right.

  The yells stopped abruptly. The noise-music stopped abruptly. He stared straight ahead where everybody else was staring. He saw it, a brown, furry animal about the size of a sheep. It had thrown one startled, frightened look at them. Then it had begun running madly away across the meadow.

  “Let’s get it!” the shriek leader’s voice sounded from what seemed all about them.

  The shriek started again, a continuous, unceasing shriek, and Mr. Mead joined in. He was running across the meadow after the furry brown animal, screaming his head off, dimly and proudly conscious of fellow human beings doing the same on both sides of him.

  Let’s get it, his mind howled. Let’s get it, Let’s get it!

  Almost caught up with, the animal dodged back through the line of people. Mr. Mead flung „ himself at it and made a grab. He got a handful of fur and fell painfully to his knees as the animal galloped away.

  He was on his feet without abating a single note of the shriek and after it in a moment. Everyone else had turned around and was running with him.

  Let’s get it! Let’s get it! Let’s get it!

  Back and forth across the meadow, the animal ran and they pursued. It dodged and twisted and jerked itself free from converging groups.

  Mr. Mead ran with them, ran in the very forefront. Shrieking.

  No matter how the furry brown animal turned, they turned, too. They kept getting closer and closer to it.

  Finally, the entire mob trapped it in a great, uneven circle and closed in. Mr. Mead was the first one to reach it. He knocked it down with a single blow. A girl leaped onto it and began tearing at it with her fingernails. Just before everyone piled on, Mr. Mead managed to grab a furry brown leg. He gave it a tremendous wrench and it came off in his hand. He was distantly surprised by the loose wires and gear mechanisms that trailed out of the torn-off leg.

  “We got it!” he mumbled, staring at the leg. We got it, his mind danced madly. We got it, we got it!

  He was suddenly very tired, almost faint. He dragged himself away from the crowd and sat down heavily on the grass. He continued to stare at the loose wires that came out of the leg.

  Someone came up to him, breathing hard. “Well,” puffed Mr. Storku. “Did you have a nice shriek?”

  Mr. Mead held up the furry brown leg. “We got it,” he said bewilderedly.

  THE yellow-haired young man laughed. “You need a good shower and a good sedative. Come on.” He helped Mr. Mead to his feet and, holding on to his arm, walked him across the meadow to a dilated yellow square under the grandstand. All around them, the other participants in the shriek chattered gaily to each other as they cleansed themselves and readjusted their metabolism.

  After his turn inside one of the many booths which filled the interior of the grandstand, Mr. Mead felt more like himself—which was not to say he felt better.

  Something had come out of him in those last few moments as he tore at the mechanical quarry, something he wished infinitely had stayed at the dank bottom of his soul. He’d rather never have known it existed.

  He felt vaguely, dismally, like a man who, flipping the pages of a textbook of aberrations, comes upon a particularly ugly case history which parallels his life history in every respect and understands—in a single, horrified flash—exactly what all those seemingly innocent quirks of his personality mean.

  He tried to remind himself that he was still Oliver T. Mead, a good husband and father, a respected business executive, a substantial pillar of the community and the local church—but it was no help. Now, and for the rest of his life, he was also . . . this other thing.

  He had to get into some clothes. Fast.

  Mr. Storku understood immediately. “You probably had a lot saved up. About time you began discharging it. I wouldn’t worry: you’re as sane as anyone in your period. But your clothes have been cleaned off the field along with all the rubbish of our shriek; the officials are already preparing for the next one.”

  “What do I do?” Mr. Mead wailed. “I can’t go home like this.”

  “No?” the government man inquired with a good deal of curiosity. “You really can’t? Fascinating! Well, just step under that outfitter there, I suppose you’d like twentieth-century costume?”

  Mr. Mead placed himself doubtfully under the indicated mechanism as a newly clad citizen of twenty-fifth-century America walked away from it. “Yes. But please make it something sane, something I can wear.”

  HE WATCHED as his host adjusted the dials. There was a slight hum from the machine overhead: a complete set of formal black-and-white evening wear sprang into being on the stout man’s body. In a moment, it had changed into another outfit: the shoes grew upward and became hip-length rubber boots, the dinner jacket lengthened itself into a sou’wester. Mr. Mead was perfectly dressed for the bridge of any whaling ship.

  “Stop it!” he begged distractedly as the sou’wester began showing distinctive sports shirt symptoms. “Keep it down to one thing!”

  “You could do it yourself,” Mr. Storku pointed out, “if your subconscious didn’t heave about so much.” Nonetheless, he good-naturedly poked at the machine again and Mr. Mead’s clothes subsided into the tweed jacket and golf knickers that had been so popular in the 1920s. They held fast at that.

  “Better?”

  “I—I guess so.” Mr. Mead frowned as he looked down at himself. It certainly was a queer outfit for a vice-president of Sweetbottom Septic Tanks, Inc., to return to his own time in, but at least it was one outfit. And as soon as he got home—

  He took a deep breath. “Now look here, Storku,” he said, putting aside the recent obscene memories of himself with as much determination as he could call up. “We’re having trouble with this Winthrop fellow. He won’t go back with us.”

  They walked outside and paused on the edge of the meadow. In the distance, a new shriek was being organized.

  “That so?” Mr. Storku asked with no very great interest. He pointed at the ragged mob of nude figures just beginning to jostle each other into a tight bunch. “You know, two or three more sessions out there and your psyche would be in fine shape. Although, from the looks of you, I’d say Panic Stadium would be even better. Why don’t you go right over there? One first-rate, screaming, headlong panic and you’d be absolutely—”

  “Thank you, but my psyche is my own affair!”

  The yellow-haired young man nodded seriously. “Obviously. The adult individual’s psyche is under no other jurisdiction than that of the adult individual concerned. The Covenant of 2314, adopted by unanimous consent of the entire population of the United States of America. Later, of course, broadened by the international plebiscite of 2337 to include the entire world. But I was just making a friendly suggestion.”

  Mr. Mead forced himself to smile. He was distressed to find that when he smiled, the lapels of his jacket stood up and caressed the sides of his chin affectionately. “No offense, no offense. It’s just that I’ve had all I want of this nonsense. But what are you going to do about Winthrop?”

  “Do? Why, nothing. What can we do?”

  “You can force him to go back! You represent the government, don’t you? The government invited us here, the government is responsible for our safety.”

  STORKU looked puzzled. “Aren’t you safe?”

  “You know what I mean, Storku. Our safe return. The government is responsible for it.”