"Killed the weather!" answered the Man in Asbestos. "Simple as
anything--turned its forces loose one against the other, altered
the composition of the sea so that the top became all more or less
gelatinous. I really can't explain it, as it is an operation that I
never took at school, but it made the sky grey, as you see it, and
the sea gum-coloured, the weather all the same. It cut out fuel
and houses and an infinity of work with them!"

He paused a moment. I began to realise something of the course of
evolution that had happened.

"So," I said, "the conquest of nature meant that presently there was
no more work to do?"

"Exactly," he said, "nothing left."

"Food enough for all?"

"Too much," he answered.

"Houses and clothes?"

"All you like," said the Man in Asbestos, waving his hand. "There
they are. Go out and take them. Of course, they're falling down--
slowly, very slowly. But they'll last for centuries yet, nobody
need bother."

Then I realised, I think for the first time, just what work had meant
in the old life, and how much of the texture of life itself had been
bound up in the keen effort of it.