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As a blisteringly hot but guaranteed weather-controlled future su mills of Puffy Products ("Spike to Loaf in One Operation!") began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas
The walking er than those Chinese paper dragons animated by files of men in procession Sensory robot devices in their noses infor wheat had reached ripe perfection
As they advanced, their heads swung lazily frorain In their throats, it was threshed, the chaff bundled and burped aside for pickup by the crawl trucks of a che into the round the kernels to flour, which was instantly sifted, the bran being packaged and dropped like the chaff for pickup A cluster of tanks which gave the metal serpents a decidedly hu, salt and other ingredients, soh was at the saas from a tank conspicuously labeled "Carbon Dioxide" ("No Yeast Creatures in Your Bread!")
Thus instantly risen, the dough was clipped into loaves and shot into radionic ovens for the midsections of the metal serpents There the bread was baked in athe crusts, and the piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent plastic bearing the proud Puffyloaf e loaf) and ejected onto the delivery platform at each serpent&039;s rear end, where a cluster of pickup ienic claws
A few loaves would be hurried off for the day&039;s consuically located maan to appear on the delivery platforet into action, they did not linger on the conveyor belt, but rose gently into the air and slowly traveled off doind across the hot rippling fields
The robot claws of the pickupthe difference, proceeded carefully to stack eishly than its felloas snagged by a thrusting claw The machine paused, clumsily wiped off the injured loaf, set it aside-where it bobbed on one corner, unable to take off again-and went back to the work of storing nothingness
A flock of crows rose froht of loaves approached The croooped to investigate and then suddenly scattered, screeching in panic
The helicopter of a hangoverish Sunday traveler bound for Wichita shied very similarly from the brown fliers and did not return for a second look
A black-haired housewife spied therabbed her walkie-talkie fro correspondent of a regional newspaper was jotting down the lead of a hu-saucer scares, stated that now apparently bread was to be included in the ation of an open-walled country church, standing up to recite the most familiar of Christian prayers, had just reached the petition for daily sustenance, when a sub-flight of the loaves, either forced down by a vagrant wind or lacking the natural buoyancy of the rest, caraceful pillars at the altar end of the building
Meanwhile, the mented by other bread flocks fro mills that had started work a little later, mounted slowly and majestically into the cirrus-flecked upper air, where a steady as blowing strongly toward the east
About one thousand miles farther on in that direction, where a cluster of stratosphere-tickling towers marked the location of theenacted in the pressurized penthouse era Winterly, Secretary in Chief to the Managerial Board and referred to by her underlings as the Blonde Icicle, was dealing with the advances of Roger ("Racehorse") Snedden, Assistant Secretary to the Board and often indistinguishable fro office boy
"Why don&039;t you ju to shut the airlock after you?" the Golden Glacier said in tones not unkind "When are your high-strung, thoroughbred nerves going to accept the fact that I would never consider e with a business inferior? You have about asUkrainian kulak now that Moscow&039;s clapped on the interdict"
Roger&039;s voice was calht, as he replied, "A lot of things are going to be different around here, Meg, as soon as the Board is forced to ad the name of Puffyloaf in front of the whole world"
"Puffyloaf could do with a little of that," the business girl observed judiciously "The way sales have been plu before the Governers of Fairy Bread and asks us to take the Big Ju co to the helium-that was Rose Thinker&039;s brainwave"
She studied him suspiciously "You&039;ve birthed another proer I can see it in your eyes I only hope it&039;s not as big a one as when you put the Martian aross of Puffyloaves, assuring you that he&039;d never slept on a softerToday-yes, today! - you&039;re going to see the Board eating out of ers left You&039;re bold enough now, but when Mr Gryce and those two big -"