The Staff of Life suddenly and disconcertingly sprouted wings and mankind had to eat crow!

As a blisteringly hot but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products ("Spike to Loaf in One Operation!") began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.

walking mills resembled fat metal serpents, rather larger than those
Chinese paper dragons animated by files of men in procession. Sensory
robot devices in their noses informed them that waiting wheat had
reached ripe perfection.

As they advanced, their heads swung lazily from side to side, very much
like snakes, gobbling yellow grain. In their throats, it was
threshed, the chaff bundled and burped aside for pickup by crawl
trucks of a chemical corporation, the kernels quick-dried and blown
along into the mighty chests of machines. There the tireless mills
ground the kernels to flour, which was instantly sifted, bran being
packaged and dropped like the chaff for pickup. A cluster of tanks which
gave the metal serpents a decidedly humpbacked appearance added water,
shortening, salt and other ingredients, some named and some not.
dough was at the same time infused with gas 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 forming midsections of the metal serpents. There the
bread was baked in a matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front browning the
crusts, and piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent plastic bearing
the proud Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs circling a floating loaf) and
ejected onto the delivery platform at each serpent's rear end, where a
cluster of pickup machines, like hungry piglets, snatched at loaves
with hygienic claws.

A few loaves would be hurried off for the day's consumption, the
majority stored for winter in strategically located mammoth deep
freezes.

But now, behold a wonder! As loaves began to appear on delivery
platform of the first walking mill to get into action, they did not
linger on conveyor belt, but rose gently into the air and slowly
traveled off down-wind across the hot rippling fields.

* * * * *

The robot claws of pickup machines clutched in vain, and, not
noticing the difference, proceeded carefully to stack emptiness, tier by
tier. One errant loaf, rising more sluggishly than its fellows, was
snagged by a thrusting claw. The machine paused, clumsily wiped off
injured loaf,