Free Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick

them as they grabbed at the doors above, trying to shut them. More people came down now, falling and tumbling and yelling, as if downed from above.
    “How long, oh Lord?” a man was saying.
    Stuart said, “Now.” He knew it was now; he knew that the bombs were going off—he felt them. It seemed to occur inside him. Blam, blam, blam, blam, went the bombs, or perhaps it was things sent up by the Army to help, to stop the bombs; perhaps it was defense. Let me down, Stuart thought. Low as I can be. Let me into the ground. He pressed down, rolled his body to make a depression. People lay now on top of him, choking coats and sleeves, and he was glad; he did not mind—he did not want emptiness around him: he wanted solidness on every side. He did not need to breathe. His eyes were shut; they, and the other openings of his body, his mouth and ears and nose, all had shut; he had walled himself in, waiting.
    Blam, blam, blam.
    The ground jumped.
    We’ll get by, Stuart said. Down here, safe in the earth. Safe inside where it’s safe; it’ll pass by overhead. The wind.
    The wind, above on the surface, passed by at huge speed; he knew it moved up there, the air itself, driven along altogether, as a body.

    In the nose cone of Dutchman IV, Walt Dangerfield, while still experiencing the pressure of many gravities on his body, heard in his earphones the voices from below, from the control bunker.
    “Third stage successful, Walt. You’re in orbit. We’ll fire off the final stage at 15:45 instead of 15:44, they tell me.”
    Orbital velocity, Dangerfield said to himself, straining to see his wife. She had lost consciousness; he looked away from her at once, concentrating on his oxygen supply, knowing she was all right but not wanting to witness her suffering. Okay, he thought, we’re both okay. In orbit, waiting for the final thrust. It wasn’t so bad.
    The voice in his earphones said, “A perfect sequence so far, Walt. The President is standing by. You have eight minutes six seconds before the initial corrections for the fourth-stage firing. If in correcting minor—”
    Static erased the voice; he no longer heard it.
    If in correcting minor but vital errors in attitude, Walter Dangerfield said to himself, there is a lack of complete success, we will be brought back down, as they did before in the robot-runs. And later on we will try it again. There is no danger; reentry is an old story. He waited.
    The voice in his earphones came on again. “ Walter, we are under attack down here .”
    What? he said. What did you say?
    “God save us,” the voice said. It was a man already dead; the voice had no feeling, it was empty and then it was silent. Gone.
    “From whom?” Walt Dangerfield said into his microphone. He thought of pickets and rioters, he thought of bricks, angry mobs. Attacked by nuts or something, is that it?
    He struggled up, disconnected himself from the straps, saw through the port the world below. Clouds, and the ocean, the globe itself. Here and there on it matches were lit; he saw the puffs, the flares. Fright overcame him, as he sailed silently through space, looking down at the pinches of burning scattered about; he knew what they were.
    It’s death, he thought. Death lighting up spots, burning up the world’s life, second by second.
    He continued to watch.

    There was, Doctor Stockstill knew, a community shelter under one of the big banks, but he could not remember which one. Taking his secretary by the hand he ran from the building and across Center Street, searching for the black and white sign that he had noticed a thousand times, that had become part of the perpetual background of his daily, business existence on the public street. The sign had merged into the unchanging, and now he needed it; he wanted it to step forward so that he could notice it as he had at the beginning: as a real sign, meaning something vital, something by which to preserve his life.
    It was his secretary, tugging at his arm, who