Circle of Flight

th and the other planets into nothingness. "I've broken through," he thought. "I've done it! I've been released." And looking out and away, he saw universe upon universe extending past infinity, it seemed, an ocean without a horizon.

Now, said his thought, I will destroy all evil and I shall begin with the evil of earth. As though he were looking through a microscope, he focused his sight on the grain of dust that was earth. His fingers made delicate adjustments on a dial, and earth, softly green and blue, swam clearly into his vision. He magnified his sight of earth until he could see all of it like a gigantic relief map. He saw the fortified places of the Authority--great, spreading, shining, metal domes; saw them dotting the earth; saw the lines of vehicles speeding back and forth between them. He saw too the hamlets of the people, in the spaces between the forts of the Authority, all places of squalor with row upon row of boxlike houses, each exactly like the other. There were not any green lawns o