The worker smiled, looking at Eddie Willers across the table.  "I feel like a fugitive," said Eddie Willers. 'I guess you know why I haven't been here for months?" He pointed at the underground cafeteria.  "I'm supposed to be a vice-president now. The Vice-President in Charge of Operation. For God's sake, don't take it seriously. I stood it as long as I could, and then I had to escape, if only for one evening. . . . The first time I came down here for dinner, after my alleged promotion, they all stared at me so much, I didn't dare come back. Well, let them stare.  “You don't. I'm glad that it doesn't make any difference to you. . . .  “No, I haven't seen her for two weeks. But I speak to her on the phone every day, sometimes twice a day. . . . Yes, I know how she feels: she loves it. What is it we hear over the telephone-sound vibrations, isn't it? Well, her voice sounds as if it were turning into light vibrations-if you know what I mean. She enjoys running that horrible battle single handed and winning. . . . Oh yes, she's winning! Do you know why you haven't read anything about the John Galt Line in the newspapers for some time? Because it's going so well . . . Only . . . that Rearden Metal rail will be the greatest track ever built, but what will be the use, if we don't have any engines powerful enough to take advantage of it?  “Look at the kind of patched coal-burners we've got left-they can barely manage to drag themselves fast enough for old trolley-car rails. . . .  “Still, there's hope. The United Locomotive Works went bankrupt. That's the best break we've had in the last few weeks, because their plant has been bought by Dwight Sanders. He's a brilliant young engineer who's got the only good aircraft plant in the country. He had to sell the aircraft plant to his brother, in order to take over United Locomotive.  “That's on account of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. Sure, it's just a setup between them, but can you blame him? Anyway, we'll see Diesels coming out of the United Locomotive Works now. Dwight Sanders will start things going. . . . Yes, she's counting on him. Why do you ask that? . . . Yes, he's crucially important to us right now. We've just signed a contract with him, for the first ten Diesel engines he'll build. When I phoned her that the contract was signed, she laughed and said, "You see? Is there ever any reason to be afraid?' . . . She said that, because she knows-I've never told her, but she knows-that I'm afraid. . . . Yes, I am. . . . I don't know . . . I wouldn't be afraid if I knew of what, I could do something about it. But this . . . Tell me, don't you really despise me for being Operating Vice-President? . . .  “But don't you see that it's vicious? . . . What honor? I don't know what it is that I really am: a clown, a ghost, an understudy or just a rotten stooge. When I sit in her office, in her chair, at her desk, I feel worse than that: I feel like a murderer. . . . Sure, I know that I'm supposed to be a stooge for her-and that would be an honor-but . . . but I feel as if in some horrible way which I can't quite grasp, I'm a stooge for Jim Taggart. Why should it be necessary for her to have a stooge? Why does she have to hide? Why did they throw her out of the building? Do you know that she had to move out into a dinky hole in the back alley, across from our Express and Baggage Entrance? You ought to take a look at it some time, that's the office of John Galt, Inc.  “Yet everybody knows that it's she who's still running Taggart Transcontinental. Why does she have to hide the magnificent job she's doing?  “Why are they giving her no credit? Why are they robbing her of her achievement-with me as the receiver of stolen goods? Why are they doing everything in their power to make it impossible for her to succeed, when she's all they've got standing between them and destruction? Why are they torturing her in return for saving their lives? . . . What's the matter with you? Why do you look at me like that? . . . Yes, I guess you understand. . . . There's something about it all that I can't define, and it's something evil. That's why I'm afraid. . . . I don't think one can get away with it. . . . You know, it's strange, but I think they know it, too, Jim and his crowd and all of them in the building. There's something guilty and sneaky about the whole place. Guilty and sneaky and dead. Taggart Transcontinental is now like a man who's lost his soul . . . who's betrayed his soul. . . . No, she doesn't care. Last time she was in New York, she came in unexpectedly-I was in my office, in her office-and suddenly the door opened and there she was. She came in, saying, 'Mr. Willers, I'm looking for a job as a station operator, would you give me a chance?' I wanted to damn them all, but I had to laugh, I was so glad to see her and she was laughing so happily. She had come straight from the airport-she wore slacks and a flying jacket-she looked wonderful-she'd got windburned, it looked like a suntan, just as if she'd returned from a vacation. She made me remain where I was, in her chair, and she sat on the desk and talked about the new bridge of the John Galt Line. . . . No. No, I never asked her why she chose that name. . . . I don't know what it means to her. A sort of challenge, I guess . . . I don't know to whom . . . Oh, it doesn't matter, it doesn't mean a thing, there isn't any John Galt, but I wish she hadn't used it. I don't like it, do you? . . . You do? You don't sound very happy saying it."  The windows of the offices of the John Galt Line faced a dark alley.  Looking up from her desk, Dagny could not see the sky, only the wall of a building rising past her range of vision. It was the side wall of the great skyscraper of Taggart Transcontinental.  Her new headquarters were two rooms on the ground floor of a half collapsed structure. The structure still stood, but its upper stories were boarded off as unsafe for occupancy. Such tenants as it sheltered were half-bankrupt, existing, as it did, on the inertia of the momentum of the past.  She liked her new place: it saved money. The rooms contained no superfluous furniture or people. The furniture had come from junk shops. The people were the choice best she could find. On her rare visits to New York, she had no time to notice the room where she worked; she noticed only that it served its purpose.  She did not know what made her stop tonight and look at the thin streaks of rain on the glass of the window, at the wall of the building across the alley.  It was past midnight. Her small staff had gone. She was due at the airport at three A.M., to fly her plane back to Colorado. She had little left to do, only a few of Eddie's reports to read. With the sudden break of the tension of hurrying, she stopped, unable to go on. The reports seemed to require an effort beyond her power. It was too late to go home and sleep, too early to go to the airport. She thought: You're tired-and watched her own mood with severe, contemptuous detachment, knowing that it would pass.  She had flown to New York unexpectedly, at a moment's notice, leaping to the controls of her plane within twenty minutes after hearing a brief item in a news broadcast. The radio voice had said that Dwight Sanders had retired from business, suddenly, without reason or explanation. She had hurried to New York, hoping to find him and stop him.  But she had felt, while flying across the continent, that there would be no trace of him to find.  The spring rain hung motionless in the air beyond the window, like a thin mist. She sat, looking across at the open cavern of the Express and Baggage Entrance of the Taggart Terminal. There were naked lights inside, among the steel girders of the ceiling, and a few piles of luggage on the worn concrete of the floor. The place looked abandoned and dead.  She glanced at a jagged crack on the wall of her office. She heard no sound. She knew she was alone in the ruins of a building. It seemed as if she were alone in the city. She felt an emotion held back for years: a loneliness much beyond this moment, beyond the silence of the room and the wet, glistening emptiness of the street; the loneliness of a gray wasteland where nothing was worth reaching; the loneliness of her childhood.  She rose and walked to the window. By pressing her face to the pane, she could see the whole of the Taggart Building, its lines converging abruptly to its distant pinnacle in the sky. She looked up at the dark window of the room that had been her office. She felt as if she were in exile, never to return, as if she were separated from the building by much more than a sheet of glass, a curtain of rain and the span of a few months.  She stood, in a room of crumbling plaster, pressed to the windowpane, looking up at the unattainable form of everything she loved. She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.  Once, when she was sixteen, looking at a long stretch of Taggart track, at the rails that converged-like the lines of a skyscraper-to a single point in the distance, she had told Eddie Willers that she had always felt as if the rails were held in the hand of a man beyond the horizon-no, not her father or any of the men in the office-and some day she would meet him.  She shook her head and turned away from the window.  She went back to her desk. She tried to reach for the reports. But suddenly she was slumped across the desk, her head on her arm. Don't, she thought; but she did not move to rise, it made no difference, there was no one to see her.  This was a longing she had never permitted herself to acknowledge.  She faced it now. She thought: If emotion is one's response to the things the world has to offer, if she loved the rails, the building, and more: if she loved her love for them-there was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth . . . To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his . . . No, not Francisco d'Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired . . . A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience . . . She twisted herself in a slow, faint movement, her breasts pressed to the desk; she felt the longing in her muscles, in the nerves of her body.  Is that what you want? Is it as simple as that?-she thought, but knew that it was not simple. There was some unbreakable link between her love for her work and the desire of her body; as if one gave her the right to the other, the right and the meaning; as if one were the completion of the other-and the desire would never be satisfied, except by a being of equal greatness.  Her face pressed to her arm, she moved her head, shaking it slowly in negation. She would never find it. Her own thought of what life could be like, was all she would ever have of the world she had wanted. Only the thought of it-and a few rare moments, like a few lights reflected from it on her way-to know, to hold, to follow to the end . . .  She raised her head.  On the pavement of the alley, outside her window, she saw the shadow of a man who stood at the door of her office.  The door was some steps away; she could not see him, or the street light beyond, only his shadow on the stones of the pavement. He stood perfectly still.  He was so close to the door, like a man about to enter, that she waited to hear him knock. Instead, she saw the shadow jerk abruptly, as if he were jolted backward, then he turned and walked away. There was only the outline of his hat brim and shoulders left on the ground, when he stopped. The shadow lay still for a moment, wavered, and grew longer again as he came back.  She felt no fear. She sat at her desk, motionless, watching in blank wonder. He stopped at the door, then backed away from it; he stood somewhere in the middle of the alley, then paced restlessly and stopped again. His shadow swung like an irregular pendulum across the pavement, describing the course of a soundless battle: it was a man fighting himself to enter that door or to escape.  She looked on, with peculiar detachment. She had no power to react, only to observe. She wondered numbly, distantly: Who was he? Had he been watching her from somewhere in the darkness? Had he seen her slumped across her desk, in the lighted, naked window? Had he watched her desolate loneliness as she was now watching his? She felt nothing.  They were alone in the silence of a dead city-it seemed to her that he was miles away, a reflection of suffering without identity, a fellow survivor whose problem was as distant to her as hers would be to him.  He paced, moving out of her sight, coming back again. She sat, watching-on the glistening pavement of a dark alley-the shadow of an unknown torment.  The shadow moved away once more. She waited. It did not return.  Then she leaped to her feet. She had wanted to see the outcome of the battle; now that he had won it-or lost-she was struck by the sudden, urgent need to know his identity and motive. She ran through the dark anteroom, she threw the door open and looked out.  The alley was empty. The pavement went tapering off into the distance, like a band of wet mirror under a few spaced lights. There was no one in sight. She saw the dark hole of a broken window in an abandoned shop. Beyond it, there were the doors of a few rooming houses. Across the alley, streaks of rain glittered under a light that hung over the black gap of an open door leading down to the underground tunnels of Taggart Transcontinental.  * * *  Rearden signed the papers, pushed them across the desk and looked away, thinking that he would never have to think of them again, wishing he were carried to the time when this moment would be far behind him.  Paul Larkin reached for the papers hesitantly; he looked ingratiatingly helpless, "It's only a legal technicality, Hank," he said. "You know that I'll always consider these ore mines as yours."  Rearden shook his head slowly; it was just a movement of his neck muscles; his face looked immovable, as if he were speaking to a stranger.  "No!" he said. "Either I own a property or I don't."  "But . . . but you know that you can trust me. You don't have to worry about your supply of ore. We've made an agreement. You know that you can count on me."  "I don't know it. I hope I can."  "But I've given you my word."  "I have never been at the mercy of anyone's word before."  "Why . . . why do you say that? We're friends. I'll do anything you wish. You'll get my entire output. The mines are still yours-just as good as yours. You have nothing to fear. I'll . . . Hank, what's the matter?"  "Don't talk."  "But . . . but what's the matter?"  "I don't like assurances. I don't want any pretense about how safe I am. I'm not. We have made an agreement which I can't enforce. I want you to know that I understand my position fully. If you intend to keep your word, don't talk about it, just do it."  "Why do you look at me as if it were my fault? You know how badly I feel about it. I bought the mines only because I thought it would help you out-I mean, I thought you'd rather sell them to a friend than to some total stranger. It's not my fault. I don't like that miserable Equalization Bill, I don't know who's behind it, I never dreamed they'd pass it, it was such a shock to me when they-"  "Never mind."  "But I only-"  "Why do you insist on talking about it?"  "I . . ." Larkin's voice was pleading. "I gave you the best price, Hank. The law said 'reasonable compensation.' My bid was higher than anyone else's."  Rearden looked at the papers still lying across the desk. He thought of the payment these papers gave him for his ore mines. Two-thirds of the sum was money which Larkin had obtained as a loan from the government; the new law made provisions for such loans "in order to give a fair opportunity to the new owners who have never had a chance."  Two-thirds of the rest was a loan he himself had granted to Larkin, a mortgage he had accepted on his own mines. . . . And the government money, he thought suddenly, the money now given to him as payment for his property, where had that come from? Whose work had provided it?  "'You don't have to worry, Hank," said Larkin, with that incomprehensible, insistent note of pleading in his voice. "It's just a paper formality."  Rearden wondered dimly what it was that Larkin wanted from him.  He felt that the man was waiting for something beyond the physical fact of the sale, some words which he, Rearden, was supposed to pronounce, some action pertaining to mercy which he was expected to grant. Larkin's eyes, in this moment of his best fortune, had the sickening look of a beggar.  "Why should you be angry, Hank? It's only a new form of legal red tape. Just a new historical condition. Nobody can help it, if it's, a historical condition. Nobody can be blamed for it. But there's always a way to get along. Look at all the others. They don't mind. They're-"  "They're setting up stooges whom they control, to run the properties extorted from them. I-"  "Now why do you want to use such words?"  "I might as well tell you-and I think you know it-that I am not good at games of that kind. I have neither the time nor the stomach to devise some form of blackmail in order to tie you up and own my mines through you. Ownership is a thing I don't share. And I don't wish to hold it by the grace of your cowardice-by means of a constant struggle to outwit you and keep some threat over your head. I don't do business that way and I don't deal with cowards. The mines are yours. If you wish to give me first call on all the ore produced, you will do so. If you wish to double-cross me, it's in your power."  Larkin looked hurt. "That's very unfair of you," he said; there was a dry little note of righteous reproach in his voice. "I have never given you cause to distrust me." He picked up the papers with a hasty movement.  Rearden saw the papers disappear into Larkin's inside coat pocket.  He saw the flare of the open coat, the wrinkles of a vest pulled tight over flabby bulges, and a stain of perspiration in the armpit of the shirt.  Unsummoned, the picture of a face seen twenty-seven years ago rose suddenly in his mind. It was the face of a preacher on a street corner he had passed, in a town he could not remember any longer. Only the dark walls of the slums remained in his memory, the rain of an autumn evening, and the righteous malice of the man's mouth, a small mouth stretched to yell into the darkness: ". . . the noblest ideal-that man live for the sake of his brothers, that the strong work for the weak, that he who has ability serve him who hasn't . . ."  Then he saw the boy who had been Hank Rearden at eighteen. He saw the tension of the face, the speed of the walk, the drunken exhilaration of the body, drunk on the energy of sleepless nights, the proud lift of the head, the clear, steady, ruthless eyes, the eyes of a man who drove himself without pity toward that which he wanted. And he saw what Paul Larkin must have been at that time-a youth with an aged baby's face, smiling ingratiatingly, joylessly, begging to be spared, pleading with the universe to give him a chance. If someone had shown that youth to the Hank Rearden of that time and told him that this was to be the goal of his steps, the collector of the energy of his aching tendons, what would he have-  It was not a thought, it was like the punch of a fist inside his skull.  Then, when he could think again, Rearden knew what the boy he had been would have felt: a desire to step on the obscene thing which was Larkin and grind every wet bit of it out of existence.  He had never experienced an emotion of this kind. It took him a few moments to realize that this was what men called hatred.  He noticed that rising to leave and muttering some sort of good-byes, Larkin had a wounded, reproachful, mouth-pinched look, as if he, Larkin, were the injured party.  When he sold his coal mines to Ken Danagger, who owned the largest coal company in Pennsylvania, Rearden wondered why he felt as if it were almost painless. He felt no hatred. Ken Danagger was a man in his fifties, with a hard, closed face; he had started in life as a miner.  When Rearden handed to him the deed to his new property, Danagger said impassively, "I don't believe I've mentioned that any coal you buy from me, you'll get it at cost."  Rearden glanced at him, astonished. "It's against the law," he said.  "Who's going to find out what sort of cash I hand to you in your own living room?"  "You're talking about a rebate."  "I am."  "That's against two dozen laws. They'll sock you worse than me, if they catch you at it."  "Sure. That's your protection-so you won't be left at the mercy of my good will."  Rearden smiled; it was a happy smile, but he closed his eyes as under a blow. Then he shook his head. "Thanks," he said. "But I'm not one of them. I don't expect anybody to work for me at cost."  "I'm not one of them, either," said Danagger angrily. "Look here, Rearden, don't you suppose I know what I'm getting, unearned? The money doesn't pay you for it. Not nowadays."  "You didn't volunteer to bid to buy my property. I asked you to buy it. I wish there had been somebody like you in the ore business, to take over my mines. There wasn't. If you want to do me a favor, don't offer me rebates. Give me a chance to pay you higher prices, higher than anyone else will offer, sock me anything you wish, just so I'll be first to get the coal. I'll manage my end of it. Only let me have the coal."  "You'll have it."  Rearden wondered, for a while, why he heard no word from Wesley Mouch. His calls to Washington remained unanswered. Then he received a letter consisting of a single sentence which informed him that Mr. Mouch was resigning from his employ. Two weeks later, he read in the newspapers that Wesley Mouch had been appointed Assistant Coordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources.  Don't dwell on any of it-thought Rearden, through the silence of many evenings, fighting the sudden access of that new emotion which he did not want to feel-there is an unspeakable evil in the world, you know it, and it's no use dwelling on the details of it. You must work a little harder. Just a little harder. Don't let it win.  The beams and girders of the Rearden Metal bridge were coming daily out of the rolling mills, and were being shipped to the site of the John Galt Line, where the first shapes of green-blue metal, swung into space to span the canyon, glittered in the first rays of the spring sun.  He had no time for pain, no energy for anger. Within a few weeks, it was over; the blinding stabs of hatred ceased and did not return.  He was back in confident self-control on the evening when he telephoned Eddie Willers, "Eddie, I'm in New York, at the Wayne-Falkland. Come to have breakfast with me tomorrow morning. There's something I'd like to discuss with you."  Eddie Willers went to the appointment with a heavy feeling of guilt.  He had not recovered from the shock of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill; it had left a dull ache within him, like the black-and-blue mark of a blow. He disliked the sight of the city: it now looked as if it hid the threat of some malicious unknown. He dreaded facing one of the Bill's victims: he felt almost as if he, Eddie Willers, shared the responsibility for it in some terrible way which he could not define.  When he saw Rearden, the feeling vanished. There was no hint suggesting a victim, in Rearden's bearing. Beyond the windows of the hotel room, the spring sunlight of early morning sparkled on the windows of the city, the sky was a very pale blue that seemed young, the offices were still closed, and the city did not look as if it held malice, but as if it were joyously, hopefully ready to swing into action-in the same manner as Rearden. He looked refreshed by an untroubled sleep, he wore a dressing gown, he seemed impatient of the necessity to dress, unwilling to delay the exciting game of his business duties.  "Good morning, Eddie. Sorry if I got you out so early. It's the only time I had. Have to go back to Philadelphia right after breakfast. We can talk while we're eating."  The dressing gown he wore was of dark blue flannel, with the white initials "H R" on the breast pocket. He looked young, relaxed, at home in this room and in the world.  Eddie watched a waiter wheel the breakfast table into the room with a swift efficiency that made him feel braced. He found himself enjoying the stiff freshness of the white tablecloth and the sunlight sparkling on the silver, on the two bowls of crushed ice holding glasses of orange juice; he had not known that such things could give him an invigorating pleasure.  "I didn't want to phone Dagny long distance about this particular matter," said Rearden. "She has enough to do. We can settle it in a few minutes, you and I."  "If I have the authority to do it,"  Rearden smiled. "You have." He leaned forward across the table.  "Eddie, what's the financial state of Taggart Transcontinental at the moment? Desperate?"  "Worse than that, Mr. Rearden."  "Are you able to meet pay rolls?"  "Not quite. We've kept it out of the newspapers, but I think everybody knows it. We're in arrears all over the system and Jim is running out of excuses."  "Do you know that your first payment for the Rearden Metal rail is due next week?"  "Yes, I know it."  "Well, let's agree on a moratorium. I'm going to give you an extension-you won't have to pay me anything until six months after the opening of the John Galt Line."  Eddie Willers put down his cup of coffee with a sharp thud. He could not say a word.  Rearden chuckled. "What's the matter? You do have the authority to accept, don't you?"  "Mr. Rearden . . . I don't know . . . what to say to you."  "Why, just 'okay' is all that's necessary,"  "Okay, Mr. Rearden." Eddie's voice was barely audible.  "I'll draw up the papers and send them to you. You can tell Jim about it and have him sign them."  "Yes, Mr. Rearden."  "I don't like to deal with Jim. He'd waste two hours trying to make himself believe that he's made me believe that he's doing me a favor by accepting."  Eddie sat without moving, looking down at his plate.  "What's the matter?"  "Mr. Rearden, I'd like . . . to say thank you . . . but there isn't any form of it big enough to-"  "Look, Eddie. You've got the makings of a good businessman, so you'd better get a few things straight. There aren't any thank-you's in situations of this kind. I'm not doing it for Taggart Transcontinental. It's a simple, practical, selfish matter on my part. Why should I collect my money from you now, when it might prove to be the death blow to your company? If your company were no good, I'd collect, and fast. I don't engage in charity and I don't gamble on incompetents. But you're still the best railroad in the country. When the John Galt Line is completed, you'll be the soundest one financially. So I have good reason to wait. Besides, you're in trouble on account of my rail. I intend to see you win."  "I still owe you thanks, Mr. Rearden . . . for something much greater than charity."  "No. Don't you see? I have just received a great deal of money . . . which I didn't want. I can't invest it. It's of no use to me whatever. . . . So, in a way, it pleases me that I can turn that money against the same people in the same battle. They made it possible for me to give you an extension to help you fight them."  He saw Eddie wincing, as if he had hit a wound. "That's what's horrible about it!"  "What?"  "What they've done to you-and what you're doing in return. I mean-" He stopped. "Forgive me, Mr. Rearden. I know this is no way to talk business."  Rearden smiled. "Thanks, Eddie. I know what you mean. But forget it. To hell with them."  "Yes. Only . . . Mr. Rearden, may I say something to you? I know it's completely improper and I'm not speaking as a vice-president."  "Go ahead."  "I don't have to tell you what your offer means to Dagny, to me, to every decent person on Taggart Transcontinental. You know it. And you know you can count on us. But . . . but I think it's horrible that Jim Taggart should benefit, too-that you should be the one to save him and people like him, after they-"  Rearden laughed. "Eddie, what do we care about people like him?  We're driving an express, and they're riding on the roof, making a lot of noise about being leaders. Why should we care? We have enough power to carry them along-haven't we?"  "It won't stand."  The summer sun made blotches of fire on the windows of the city, and glittering sparks in the dust of the streets. Columns of heat shimmered through the air, rising from the roofs to the white page of the calendar. The calendar's motor ran on, marking off the last days of June.  "It won't stand," people said. "When they run the first train on the John Galt Line, the rail will split. They'll never get to the bridge. If they do, the bridge will collapse under the engine."  From the slopes of Colorado, freight trains rolled down the track of the Phoenix-Durango, north to Wyoming and the main line of Taggart Transcontinental, south to New Mexico and the main line of the Atlantic Southern. Strings of tank cars went radiating in all directions from the Wyatt oil fields to industries in distant states. No one spoke about them. To the knowledge of the public, the tank trains moved as silently as rays and, as rays, they were noticed only when they became the light of electric lamps, the heat of furnaces, the movement of motors; but as such, they were not noticed, they were taken for granted.  The Phoenix-Durango Railroad was to end operations on July 25.  "Hank Rearden is a greedy monster," people said. "Look at the fortune he's made. Has he ever given anything in return? Has he ever shown any sign of social conscience? Money, that's all he's after. He'll do anything for money. What does he care if people lose their lives when his bridge collapses?"  "The Taggarts have been a band of vultures for generations," people said. "It's in their blood. Just remember that the founder of that family was Nat Taggart, the most notoriously anti-social scoundrel that ever lived, who bled the country white to squeeze a fortune for himself. You can be sure that a Taggart won't hesitate to risk people's lives in order to make a profit. They bought inferior rail, because it's cheaper than steel-what do they care about catastrophes and mangled human bodies, after they've collected the fares?"  People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. "Reason," Dr. Pritchett had told them, "is the most naive of all superstitions."  "The source of public opinion?" said Claude Slagenhop in a radio speech. 'There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind."  Orren Boyle gave an interview to Globe, the news magazine with the largest circulation. The interview was devoted to the subject of the grave social responsibility of metallurgists, stressing the fact that metal performed so many crucial tasks where human lives depended on its quality. "One should not, it seems to me, use human beings as guinea pigs in the launching of a new product," he said. He mentioned no names.  "Why, no, I don't say that that bridge will collapse," said the chief metallurgist of Associated Steel, on a television program. "I don't say it at all. I just say that if I had any children, I wouldn't let them ride on the first train that's going to cross that bridge. But it's only a personal preference, nothing more, just because I'm overly fond of children."  "I don't claim that the Rearden-Taggart contraption will collapse," wrote Bertram Scudder in The Future. "Maybe it will and maybe it won't. That's not the important issue. The important issue is: what protection does society have against the arrogance, selfishness and greed of two unbridled individualists, whose records are conspicuously devoid of any public-spirited actions? These two, apparently, are willing to stake the lives of their fellow men on their own conceited notions about their powers of judgment, against the overwhelming majority opinion of recognized experts. Should society permit it? If that thing does collapse, won't it be too late to take precautionary measures? Won't it be like locking the barn after the horse has escaped? It has always been the belief of this column that certain kinds of horses should be kept bridled and locked, on general social principles."  A group that called itself "Committee of Disinterested Citizens" collected signatures on a petition demanding a year's study of the John Galt Line by government experts before the first train were allowed to run. The petition stated that its signers had no motive other than "a sense of civic duty." The first signatures were those of Balph Eubank and Mort Liddy. The petition was given a great deal of space and comment in all the newspapers. The consideration it received was respectful, because it came from people who were disinterested.  No space was given by the newspapers to the progress of the construction of the John Galt Line. No reporter was sent to look at the scene. The general policy of the press had been stated by a famous editor five years ago. "There are no objective facts," he had said. "Every report on facts is only somebody's opinion. It is, therefore, useless to write about facts."  A few businessmen thought that one should think about the possibility that there might be commercial value in Rearden Metal. They undertook a survey of the question. They did not hire metallurgists to examine samples, nor engineers to visit the site of construction. They took a public poll. Ten thousand people, guaranteed to represent every existing kind of brain, were asked the question: "Would you ride on the John Galt Line?" The answer, overwhelmingly, was: "No, sir-ree!"  No voices were heard in public in defense of Rearden Metal. And nobody attached significance to the fact that the stock of Taggart Transcontinental was rising on the market, very slowly, almost furtively.  There were men who watched and played safe. Mr. Mowen bought Taggart stock in the name of his sister. Ben Nealy bought it in the name of a cousin. Paul Larkin bought it under an alias. "I don't believe in raising controversial issues," said one of these men.  "Oh yes, of course, the construction is moving on schedule," said James Taggart, shrugging, to his Board of Directors. "Oh yes, you may feel full confidence. My dear sister does not happen to be a human being, but just an internal combustion engine, so one must not wonder at her success."  When James Taggart heard a rumor that some bridge girders had split and crashed, killing three workmen, he leaped to his feet and ran to his secretary's office, ordering him to call Colorado. He waited, pressed against the secretary's desk, as if seeking protection; his eyes had the unfocused look of panic. Yet his mouth moved suddenly into almost a smile and he said, "I'd give anything to see Henry Rearden's face right now." When he heard that the rumor was false, he said, "Thank God!"  But his voice had a note of disappointment.  "Oh well!" said Philip Rearden to his friends, hearing the same rumor. "Maybe he can fail, too, once in a while. Maybe my great brother isn't as great as he thinks."  "Darling," said Lillian Rearden to her husband, "I fought for you yesterday, at a tea where the women were saying that Dagny Taggart is your mistress. . . . Oh, for heaven's sake, don't look at me like that! I know it's preposterous and I gave them hell for it. It's just that those silly bitches can't imagine any other reason why a woman would take such a stand against everybody for the sake of your Metal. Of course, I know better than that. I know that the Taggart woman is perfectly sexless and doesn't give a damn about you-and, darling, I know that if you ever had the courage for anything of the sort, which you haven't, you wouldn't go for an adding machine in tailored suits, you'd go for some blond, feminine chorus girl who-oh, but Henry, I'm only joking! -don't look at me like that!"  "Dagny," James Taggart said miserably, "what's going to happen to us? Taggart Transcontinental has become so unpopular!"  Dagny laughed, in enjoyment of the moment, any moment, as if the undercurrent of enjoyment was constant within her and little was needed to tap it. She laughed easily, her mouth relaxed and open. Her teeth were very white against her sun-scorched face. Her eyes had the look, acquired in open country, of being set for great distances. On her last few visits to New York, he had noticed that she looked at him as if she did not see him.  "What are we going to do? The public is so overwhelmingly against us!"  "Jim, do you remember the story they tell about Nat Taggart? He said that he envied only one of his competitors, the one who said The public be damned!' He wished he had said it."  In the summer days and in the heavy stillness of the evenings of the city, there were moments when a lonely man or woman-on a park bench, on a street corner, at an open window-would see in a newspaper a brief mention of the progress of the John Galt Line, and would look at the city with a sudden stab of hope. They were the very young, who felt that it was the kind of event they longed to see happening in the world-or the very old, who had seen a world in which such events did happen. They did not care about railroads, they knew nothing about business, they knew only that someone was fighting against great odds and winning. They did not admire the fighters' purpose, they believed the voices of public opinion-and yet, when they read that the Line was growing, they felt a moment's sparkle and wondered why it made their own problems seem easier.  Silently, unknown to everyone except to the freight yard of Taggart Transcontinental in Cheyenne and the office of the John Galt Line in the dark alley, freight was rolling in and orders for cars were piling up- for the first train to run on the John Galt Line. Dagny Taggart had announced that the first train would be, not a passenger express loaded with celebrities and politicians, as was the custom, but a freight special.  The freight came from farms, from lumber yards, from mines all over the country, from distant places whose last means of survival were the new factories of Colorado. No one wrote about these shippers, because they were men who were not disinterested.  The Phoenix-Durango Railroad was to close on July 25. The first train of the John Galt Line was to run on July 22.  "Well, it's like this, Miss Taggart," said the delegate of the union of Locomotive Engineers. "I don't think we're going to allow you to run that train."  Dagny sat at her battered desk, against the blotched wall of her office.  She said, without moving, "Get out of here."  It was a sentence the man had never heard in the polished offices of railroad executives. He looked bewildered. "I came to tell you-"  "If you have anything to say to me, start over again."  "What?"  "Don't tell me what you're going to allow me to do."  "Well, I meant we're not going to allow our men to run your train."  "That's different."  "Well, that's what we've decided."  "Who's decided it?"  "The committee. What you're doing is a violation of human rights. You can't force men to go out to get killed-when that bridge collapses -just to make money for you."  She reached for a sheet of blank paper and handed it to him. "Put it down in writing," she said, "and we'll sign a contract to that effect."  "What contract?"  "That no member of your union will ever be employed to run an engine on the John Galt Line."  "Why . . . wait a minute . . . I haven't said-"  "You don't want to sign such a contract?"  -No, I-"  "Why not, since you know that the bridge is going to collapse?"  "I only want-"  "I know what you want. You want a stranglehold on your men by means of the jobs which I give them-and on me, by means of your men. You want me to provide the jobs, and you want to make it impossible for me to have any jobs to provide. Now I'll give you a choice. That train is going to be run. You have no choice about that. But you can choose whether it's going to be run by one of your men or not. If you choose not to let them, the train will still run, if I have to drive the engine myself. Then, if the bridge collapses, there won't be any railroad left in existence, anyway. But if it doesn't collapse, no member of your union will ever get a job on the John Galt Line. If you think that I need your men more than they need me, choose accordingly. If you know that I can run an engine, but they can't build a railroad, choose according to that. Now are you going to forbid your men to run that train?"  "I didn't say we'd forbid it. I haven't said anything about forbidding. But . . . but you can't force men to risk their lives on something nobody's ever tried before."  "I'm not going to force anyone to take that run."  "What are you going to do?"  "I'm going to ask for a volunteer."  "And if none of them volunteers?"  "Then it will be my problem, not yours."  "Well, let me tell you that I'm going to advise them to refuse."  "Go ahead. Advise them anything you wish. Tell them whatever, you like. But leave the choice to them. Don't try to forbid it."  The notice that appeared in every roundhouse of the Taggart system was signed "Edwin Willers, Vice-President in Charge of Operation." It asked engineers, who were willing to drive the first train on the John Galt Line, so to inform the office of Mr. Willers., not later than eleven A.M. of July 15.  It was a quarter of eleven, on the morning of the fifteenth, when the telephone rang in her office. It was Eddie, calling from high up in the Taggart Building outside her window. "Dagny, I think you'd better come over." His voice sounded queer.  She hurried across the street, then down the marble-floored halls, to the door that still carried the name "Dagny Taggart" on its glass panel.  She pulled the door open.  The anteroom of the office was full. Men stood jammed among the desks, against the walls. As she entered, they took their hats off in sudden silence. She saw the graying heads, the muscular shoulders, she saw the smiling faces of her staff at their desks and the face of Eddie Willers at the end of the room. Everybody knew that nothing had to be said.  Eddie stood by the open door of her office. The crowd parted to let her approach him. He moved his hand, pointing at the room, then at a pile of letters and telegrams.  "Dagny, every one of them," he said. "Every engineer on Taggart Transcontinental. Those who could, came here, some from as far as the Chicago Division." He pointed at the mail. "There's the rest of them.  To be exact, there's only three I haven't heard from: one's on a vacation in the north woods, one's in a hospital, and one's in jail for reckless driving-of his automobile."  She looked at the men. She saw the suppressed grins on the solemn faces. She inclined her head, in acknowledgment. She stood for a moment, head bowed, as if she were accepting a verdict, knowing that the verdict applied to her, to every man in the room and to the world beyond the walls of the building.  "Thank you," she said.  Most of the men had seen her many times. Looking at her, as she raised her head, many of them thought-in astonishment and for the first time-that the face of their Operating Vice-President was the face of a woman and that it was beautiful.  Someone in the back of the crowd cried suddenly, cheerfully, 'To hell with Jim Taggart!"  An explosion answered him. The men laughed, they cheered, they broke into applause. The response was out of all proportion to the sentence. But the sentence had given them the excuse they needed. They seemed to be applauding the speaker, in insolent defiance of authority.  But everyone in the room knew who it was that they were cheering.  She raised her hand. "We're too early," she said, laughing. "Wait till a week from today. That's when we ought to celebrate. And believe me, we will!"  They drew lots for the run. She picked a folded slip of paper from among a pile containing all their names. The winner was not in the room, but he was one of the best men on the system, Pat Logan, engineer of the Taggart Comet on the Nebraska Division.  "Wire Pat and tell him he's been demoted to a freight," she said to Eddie. She added casually, as if it were a last-moment decision, but it fooled no one, "Oh yes, tell him that I'm going to ride with him in the cab of the engine on that run."  An old engineer beside her grinned and said, "I thought you would, Miss Taggart."  Rearden was in New York on the day when Dagny telephoned him from her office. "Hank, I'm going to have a press conference tomorrow."  He laughed aloud. "No!"  "Yes." Her voice sounded earnest, but, dangerously, a bit too earnest.  "The newspapers have suddenly discovered me and are asking questions. I'm going to answer them."  "Have a good time."  "I will. Are you going to be in town tomorrow? I'd like to have you in on it."  "Okay. I wouldn't want to miss it."  The reporters who came to the press conference in the office of the John Galt Line were young men who had been trained to think that their job consisted of concealing from the world the nature of its events. It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some public- figure who made utterances about the public good, in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning. It was their daily job to sling words together in any combination they pleased, so long as the words did not fall into a sequence saying something specific. They could not understand the interview now being given to them.  Dagny Taggart sat behind her desk in an office that looked like a slum basement. She wore a dark blue suit with a white blouse, beautifully tailored, suggesting an air of formal, almost military elegance. She sat straight, and her manner was severely dignified, just a shade too dignified.  Rearden sat in a corner of the room, sprawled across a broken armchair, his long legs thrown over one of its arms, his body leaning against the other. His manner was pleasantly informal, just a bit too informal.  In the clear, monotonous voice of a military report, consulting no papers, looking straight at the men, Dagny recited the technological facts about the John Galt Line, giving exact figures on the nature of the rail, the capacity of the bridge, the method of construction, the costs. Then, in the dry tone of a banker, she explained the financial prospects of the Line and named the large profits she expected to make. 'That is all," she said.  "All?" said one of the reporters. "Aren't you going to give us a message for the public?"  "That was my message."  "But hell-I mean, aren't you going to defend yourself?"  "Against what?"  "Don't you want to tell us something to justify your Line?"  "I have."  A man with a mouth shaped as a permanent sneer asked, "Well, what I want to know, as Bertram Scudder stated, is what protection do we have against your Line being no good?"  "Don't ride on it."  Another asked, "Aren't you going to tell us your motive for building that Line?"  "I have told you: the profit which I expect to make."  "Oh, Miss Taggart, don't say that!" cried a young boy. He was new, he was still honest about his job, and he felt that he liked Dagny Taggart, without knowing why. "That's the wrong thing to say. That's what they're all saying about you."  "Are they?"  "I'm sure you didn't mean it the way it sounds and . . . and I'm sure you'll want to clarify it."  "Why, yes, if you wish me to. The average profit of railroads has been two per cent of the capital invested. An industry that does so much and keeps so little, should consider itself immoral. As I have explained, the cost of the John Galt Line in relation to the traffic which it will carry makes me expect a profit of not less than fifteen per cent on our investment. Of course, any industrial profit above four per cent is considered usury nowadays. I shall, nevertheless, do my best to make the John Galt Line earn a profit of twenty per cent for me, if possible. That was my motive for building the Line. Have I made myself clear now?"  The boy was looking at her helplessly. "You don't mean, to earn a profit for you, Miss Taggart? You mean, for the small stockholders, of course?" he prompted hopefully.  "Why, no. I happen to be one of the largest stockholders of Taggart Transcontinental, so my share of the profits will be one of the largest, Now, Mr. Rearden is in a much more fortunate position, because he has no stockholders to share with-or would you rather make your own statement, Mr. Rearden?"  "Yes, gladly," said Rearden. "Inasmuch as the formula of Rearden Metal is my own personal secret, and in view of the fact that the Metal costs much less to produce than you boys can imagine, I expect to skin the public to the tune of a profit of twenty-five per cent in the next few years."  "What do you mean, skin the public, Mr. Rearden?" asked the boy.  "If it's true, as I've read in your ads, that your Metal will last three times longer than............