Again Lora increased the magnification. The central planet grew, showing a pale green ocean lapping faintly at a low shoreline. A city came into view, towers and broad streets, fine ribbons of gold and steel. Above, twin suns beamed down, warming the city. Myriads of inhabitants swarmed about their activities.

"Wonderful," Bart Longstreet said softly, coming over beside Hull. "But the old hag has been at it sixty years. No wonder she won. She's entered every Contest I can remember."

"It's nice," Julia admitted in a clipped voice.

"You don't care for it?" Longstreet asked.

"I don't care for any of this!"

"She wants to go," Hull explained, moving toward the descent tube. "We'll see you later, Bart."

Bart Longstreet nodded. "I know what you mean. In many ways I agree. You mind if I -"

"Watch!" Lora Becker shouted, her face flushed. She increased the magnification to maximum focus, showing details of the minute city. "See them? See?"

The inhabitants of the city came into sharp view. They hurried about their business, endless thousands of them. In cars and on foot. Across spidery spans between buildings, breathtakingly beautiful.

Lora held the Worldcraft bubble up high, breathing rapidly. She gazed around the room, her eyes bright and inflamed, glittering unhealthily. The murmurings rose, sweeping up in excitement. Numerous Worldcraft bubbles came up, chest-high, gripped in eager, impassioned hands.

Lora's mouth opened. Saliva dribbled down the creases of her sagging face. Her lips twitched. She raised her bubble up over her head, her doughy chest swelling convulsively. Suddenly her face jerked, features twisting wildly. Her thick body swayed grotesquely – and from her hands the Worldcraft bubble flew, crashing to the stand in front of her.

The bubble smashed, bursting into a thousand pieces. Metal and glass, plastic parts, gears, struts, tubes, the vital machinery of the bubble, splattered in all directions.

Pandemonium broke loose. All around the room other owners were smashing their worlds, breaking them and crushing them, stamping on them, grinding the delicate control mechanisms underfoot. Men and women in a frenzy of abandon, released by Lora Becker's signal, quivering in an orgy of Dionysian lust. Crushing and breaking their carefully constructed worlds, one after another.

"God," Julia gasped, struggling to get away, Longstreet and Hull beside her.

Faces gleamed with sweat, eyes feverish and bright. Mouths gaped foolishly, muttering meaningless sounds. Clothes were torn, ripped off. A girl went down, sliding underfoot, her shrieks lost in the general din. Another followed, dragged down into the milling mass. Men and women struggled in a blur of abandon, cries and gasps. And on all sides the hideous sounds of smashing metal and glass, the unending noise of worlds being destroyed one after another.

Julia dragged Hull from the lounge, her face white. She shuddered, closing her eyes. "I knew it was coming. Three days, building up to this. Smashed – they're smashing them all. All the worlds."

Bart Longstreet made his way out after Hull and Julia. "Lunatics." He lit a cigarette shakily. "What the hell gets into them? This has happened before. They start breaking, smashing their worlds up. It doesn't make sense."

Hull reached the descent tube. "Come along with us, Bart. We'll have breakfast – and I'll give you my theory, for what it's worth."

"Just a second." Bart Longstreet scooped up his Worldcraft bubble from the arms of a robant. "My Contest entry. Don't want to lose it."

He hurried after Julia and Hull.

"More coffee?" Hull asked, looking around.

"None for me," Julia murmured. She settled back in her chair, sighing. "I'm perfectly happy."

"I'll take some." Bart pushed his cup toward the coffee dispenser. It filled the cup and returned it. "You've got a nice little place here, Hull."

"Haven't you seen it before?"

"I don't get up this way. I haven't been in Canada in years."

"Let's hear your theory," Julia murmured.

"Go ahead," Bart said. "We're waiting."

Hull was silent for a moment. He gazed moodily across the table, past the dishes, at the thing sitting on the window ledge. Bart's Contest entry, his Worldcraft bubble.

" 'Own Your Own World'," Hull quoted ironically. "Quite a slogan."

"Packman thought it up himself," Bart said. "When he was young. Almost a century ago."

"That long?"

"Packman takes treatments. A man in his position can afford them."

"Of course." Hull got slowly to his feet. He crossed the room and returned with the bubble. "Mind?" he asked Bart.

"Go ahead."

Hull adjusted the controls mounted on the bubble's surface. The interior scene flickered into focus. A miniature planet, revolving slowly. A tiny blue-white sun. He increased the magnification, bringing the planet up in size.

"Not bad," Hull admitted presently.

"Primitive. Late Jurassic. I don't have the knack. I can't seem to get them into the mammal stage. This is my sixteenth try. I never can get any farther than this."

The scene was a dense jungle, steaming with fetid rot. Great shapes stirred fitfully among the decaying ferns and marshes. Coiled, gleaming, reptilian bodies, smoking shapes rising up from the thick mud -

"Turn it off," Julia murmured. "I've seen enough of them. We viewed hundreds for the Contest."

"I didn't have a chance." Bart retrieved his bubble, snapping it off. "You have to do better than the Jurassic, to win. Competition is keen. Half the people there had their bubbles into the Eocene – and at least ten into the Pliocene. Lora's entry wasn't much ahead. I counted several city-building civilizations. But hers was almost as advanced as we are."

"Sixty years," Julia said.

"She's been trying a long time. She's worked hard. One of those to whom it's not a game but a real passion. A way of life."

"And then she smashes it," Hull said thoughtfully. "Smashes the bubble to bits. A world she's been working on for years. Guiding it through period after period. Higher and higher. Smashes it into a million pieces."

"Why?" Julia asked. "Why, Nat? Why do they do it? They get so far, building it up – and then they tear it all down again."

Hull leaned back in his chair. "It began," he stated, "when we failed to find life on any of the other planets. When our exploring parties came back empty-handed. Eight dead orbs – lifeless. Good for nothing. Not even lichen. Rock and sand. Endless deserts. One after the other, all the way out to Pluto."

"It was a hard realization," Bart said. "Of course, that was before our time."

"Not much before. Packman remembers it. A century ago. We waited a long time for rocket travel, flight to other planets. And then to find nothing…"

"Like Columbus finding the world really was flat," Julia said. "With an edge and a void."

"Worse. Columbus was looking for a short route to China. They could have continued the long way. But when we explored the system and found nothing we were in for trouble. People had counted on new worlds, new lands in the sky. Colonization. Contact with a variety of races. Trade. Minerals and cultural products to exchange. But most of all the thrill of landing on planets with amazing life-forms."

"And instead of that…"

"Nothing but dead rock and waste. Nothing that could support life – our own or any other kind. A vast disappointment set in on all levels of society."

"And then Packman brought out the Worldcraft bubble," Bart murmured. " 'Own Your Own World.' There was no place to go, outside of Terra. No other worlds to visit. You couldn't leave here and go to another world. So instead, you -"

"Instead you stayed home and put together your own world." Hull smiled wryly. "You know, he has a child's version out, now. A sort of preparation kit. So the child can cover the basic problems of world-building before he even has a bubble."