the duration of the threat at least. No need to say so or to
reassure each other of the fact in any way, it was taken for granted.
Besides, there was no time. We had to use every second allowed us in
getting ready for whatever was coming.

First I grabbed up Mother. Then I relieved myself--fear made it easy.
Then I skinned into my pants and boots, slapped in my teeth, thrust the
blanket and knapsack into the shallow cave under the edge of the
freeway, looking around me all the time so as not to be surprised from
any quarter.

Meanwhile the girl had put on her boots, located her dart gun, unscrewed
the pliers from her stump, put the knife in, and was arranging her scarf
so it made a sling for the maimed arm--I wondered why but had no time to
waste guessing, even if I'd wanted to, for at that moment a small dull
silver plane, beetle-shaped more than anything else, loomed out of the
haze beyond the cracking plant and came silently drifting down toward
us.

The girl thrust her satchel into the cave and along with it her dart
gun. I caught her idea and tucked Mother into my pants behind my back.

I'd thought from the first glimpse of it that the plane was disabled--I
guess it was its silence that gave me the idea. This theory was
confirmed when one of its very stubby wings or vanes touched a corner
pillar of the cracking plant. The plane was moving in too slow a glide
to be wrecked, in fact it was moving in a slower glide than I would have
believed possible--but then it's many years since I have seen a plane in
flight.

It wasn't wrecked but the little collision spun it around twice in a
lazy circle and it landed on the freeway with a scuffing noise not fifty
feet from us. You couldn't exactly say it had crashed in, but it stayed
at an odd tilt. It looked crippled all right.

An oval door in the plane opened and a man dropped lightly out on the
concrete. And what a man! He was nearer seven feet tall than six,
close-cropped blond hair, face and hands richly tanned, the rest of him
covered by trim garments of a gleaming gray. He must have weighed as
much as the two of us together, but he was beautifully built, muscular
yet supple-seeming. His face looked brightly intelligent and
even-tempered and kind.

Yes, kind!--damn him! It wasn't enough that his body should fairly glow
with a health and vitality that was an insult to our seared skins and
stringy muscles and ulcers and half-rotted stomachs and half-arrested
cancer