THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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see it, first a blur and then distinctly. The Airlines Building, so
thick as to look squat for all its height. The yellow block of the
distilleries under their plume of steam. High Garden Terrace; the Mall.

Moment by moment, the stigmata of decay became more evident. Terraces
empty or littered with rubbish; gardens untended and choked with wild
growth; blank-staring windows, walls splotched with lichens. At first,
he was horrified at what had happened to Litchfield in six years. Then
he realized that the change had been in himself. He was seeing it with
new eyes, as it really was.

The ship came in five hundred feet above the Mall, and he could see
cracked pavements sprouting grass, statues askew on their pedestals,
waterless fountains. At first he thought one of them was playing, but
what he had taken for spray was dust blowing from the empty basin. There
was a thing about dusty fountains, some poem he'd read at the University.