From Fantastic Universe December 1957"Beyond the false windows she could see the reddish wasteland where dust clouds spun and shifted so slowly.She had been asleep. Now she stretched luxuriously beneath the crispwhite sheet that the vapid August heat decreed. From memory to memoryher dream-fogged mind drifted, and to the yet-to-be. It was good toremember, and to imagine, and to see and feel and hear....She smiled. She was Ruth Halsey, fourteen, brunette, and pretty. Earl,and Harry, and Buhl had told her she was pretty. Especially Buhl. Buhlwas her favorite date now.The room closed around her with its familiar colors and furnishings.Sometimes she would dream that she was elsewhere, unfamiliar, uglyplaces, but then she would awaken to the four long windows with theircoarse beige drapes of monk's cloth and the fantasies were foreverdispelled.Her eyes loved the two paintings, the dark curls of the pink-and-whitedoll sitting prissily atop the dresser, and the full-length mirror onthe open closet door..."