Jem

“What about Charlie?”

“I don’t know. That’s harder. I guess a really good flare might wipe out damn near all the adults. But that’s when they spawn, and the spawn might survive — also, no doubt, with a lot of mutations. I’d say evolution moves pretty fast here.”

“Well, look,” Margie cut in, “if all these things can survive, why can’t we?”

Harcourt shrugged. “They’re adapted, we’re not. Besides, I’m talking about races surviving, not individuals. Maybe as few as one percent live through it. Maybe less.” He looked around the audience. “One percent of us leaves how many?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Margie said slowly. “Well, I think we get the picture. We need to get under something big enough to stop both heat and radiation, and we need to do it in a hurry. Got any ideas on what we can make a roof out of?”

Harcourt hesitated. “Not a clue,” he confessed. “Certainly the tents won’t do it. Oh, and I should mention the winds. They probably get pretty fierce, with all that insolation. So anything we did build would have to stand up to maybe two-hundred-kilometer-an-hour hurricanes. Maybe more. I, uh, I thought, for a minute of using the Creepies’ tu

There was a silence while everyone considered possibilities. Then Kappelyushnikov came forward. “Is one thing we can do,” he a

“It’s just as hot there,” Marge Me

Gappy shook his head. “Is only radiation. Steel hull reflects ninety-nine percent, maybe. Anyway, plenty. Only problem — who decides which twenty lucky people go up?”

Marge Me

Harcourt nodded but corrected her automatically. “Not the whole planet.”

“What?”

“Well, only half the planet. Our half. The part that faces Kung. The far side probably wouldn’t even notice there was a flare going on. That’s no good for us,” he went on quickly, “because we can’t live there; we don’t have time to build an airtight heated dome and move everything — What’s the matter?”

Margie had burst out laughing. “Son of a bitch,” she said. “Shows how wrong you can be when you start trying to trust people. Those bastard Greasies aren’t giving us a square count! They didn’t stop fighting because they wanted to make peace. They stopped because we were as good as dead anyway!”

“But — but so are they—”

“Wrong! Because they have a Farside base!” She shook her head ruefully. “Folks,” she said, “I was going to make a real magnolious a

TWENTY-TWO

THESE WERE THE mesas and canyons of the high desert. Da

Nevertheless, Dalehouse had not felt as well in weeks. In spite of bone-bruising fatigue. In spite of the star that might explode at any moment. In spite of the fact that Marge Men-ninger’s shopping list had overlooked a supply of spare hiking boots, and so he limped on a right foot that was a mass of blisters. He was not the unluckiest. Three of the effectives had been unable to go on at all. “We’ll come back for you,” Margie had promised; but Dalehouse thought she lied, and he could see in the eyes of the casualties that they were certain of it.

And still he would have sung as he marched, if he’d had breath enough for it.

It had been raining on and off for nearly forty hours — mean, wind-driven rain that kept them sodden in the steamy heat even when it let up, and chilled when it drenched them. That didn’t matter, either. It was regrettable, because it meant that Charlie and the two remaining members of his flock could not keep in touch with them visually. (He had had to take the radio away from the balloonist before they left — far too easy for the Greasies to intercept.) Whenever the clouds lightened, Dalehouse searched the sky for his friend. He never saw him, never heard his song, but he knew he was up there somewhere. It wasn’t serious. The weather that kept Charlie from scouting danger for them kept the Greasies from providing it.

There were twelve of them still toiling toward the Greasy camp. They had left the rest of the survivors — the highly impermanent survivors, if this expedition didn’t do what it was supposed to — back at the base with orders to look as though they were twice as numerous as they were. Margie herself had transmitted the last message to the Greasies: “We are begi

They had less than ten kilometers to go — a three hour stroll under good conditions, but it would take them all of a day. It was scramble down one side of a ravine and crawl up the other, peer over the top of a crest and scuttle down its other face. And it was not just the terrain. They were all heavily loaded. Food, water, weapons, equipment. Everything they would need they had to carry on their backs.

The red cylinders marked “Fuel Elements — Replacement” were the worst. Each cylinder contained hundreds of the tiny clad needles and weighed more than a kilogram. Twelve of them made a heavy load.

At first they took turns carrying the puzzle pieces that would unite to form a nuclear bomb. One of the tricks was to make sure they didn’t unite prematurely, and at every stop Lieutenant Kristianides supervised the stacking of knapsacks so that no two bomb loads were within a meter of each other. The chance was very small that they could in fact be dropped, kicked, or jostled into a configuration of critical mass. Making that happen on purpose when desired had been a serious challenge for some of the best munitions experts on Earth; for that purpose they carried another twenty kilos of highly sophisticated casing and trigger. Without that there was no real danger — or so Marge assured them all. But they were careful anyway, because in their guts none of them believed the assurance. Perhaps not even Marge.

At the end of the first march Margie had gone through the party, checking loads. When she came to Ana Dimitrova, sitting hugging her knees next to Da