were breaking out for an
incendiary attack.

He seized his gun and fired the signal for their own advance. He ran
into the street shouting for the others to follow. The nomads were
concentrating their fire charge at the other end of the row of houses,
and there the defenders fell back without an attempt to advance.

Like watching a wave turned back by a rocky shore, Ken saw his
companions fleeing in disorderly retreat through the rear of the houses
to the block beyond. A bullet whizzed by his head. He dropped to the
ground and crawled on his stomach to the safety of cover behind a brick
house.

For a long time he lay in the snow, unmoving. He could not hold back the
sobbing despair that shook him. He had never before known what it was
like to be utterly alone. Mayfield was dying and taking away everything
that was his own personal world. He had listened to news of the
destruction of Chicago and of Berkeley without knowing what it really
meant. Now he knew.

For all he knew, the nomads might even now be in control of the major
part of the town. He could not know what had happened to his father, to
Maria, to anyone.

The crackling of flames in the next house aroused him. He crawled
inside the brick house, which was still safe, for a moment of rest. He
knew he should be fleeing with the others, but he had to rest.

He heard sporadic shooting. A few nomads were straggling after their
companions at the other end of the street. It was too far to shoot.
However, one nomad stopped and swung cautiously under the very windows
of the burning house next door. Ken leveled his rifle and fired. The
bullet caught the man in the shoulder and flung him violently against
the wall. Ken saw that he would be buried by the imminent, flaming
collapse of that wall.

The man saw it, too. He struggled frantically to move out of the way,
but he seemed injured beyond the power to get away.

Ken regarded him in a kind of stupor for a moment. The man out there was
responsible for all this, he thought, for the burning and for the
killing....

He swung his rifle over his shoulder and went out. Brands were falling
upon the wounded enemy. Ken hoisted the man under the arms and dragged
him to the opposite side of the adjacent house. The nomad looked at Ken
with a strange fury in his eyes.

"You're crazy!" he said painfully. "You're the one who shot me?"

Ken nodded.

"You'll be cut off. Well, it won't matter much anyway. By tomorrow your