le the whole
country was breaking apart around them.

"Then, when the rockets stopped falling, they started to rebuild.
Fortunately, more than half the technicians at the Fort were
women, so there was no question of them dying out.

"But it's only been in the last twenty years that we've been able
to make nuclear-electric engines, and this is the first time any
of us have gotten east of the Mississippi."

"How did your group manage to survive?" Loudons asked. "You call
it the Toon. I suppose that's what the word platoon has become,
with time. You were, originally, a military platoon?"

"Pla-toon!" the white-bearded man said. "Of all the unpardonable
stupidities! Of course that's what it was. And the title, Tenant,
was originally lieu-tenant. I know that, though we have dropped
all use of the first part of the word. But that should have led
me, if I had used my wits, to deduce platoon from toon."

The Tenant shook his head in dismay at his stupidity and Loudons
found himself forced to say, "One syllable like that could have
come from many words."

IV

The Tenant smiled at Loudons and said, "Your courtesy does not
excuse our stupidity. We know our history and we should have
identified the word accurately.

"Yes, we were originally a ... a pla-toon of soldiers, two hundred
years ago, at the time when the Wars ended. The old Toon, and the
First Tenant, were guarding POWs, and there, sir,"--to Loudons--"is a
word we cannot trace. We have no idea what they were. In any event,
the pows were all killed by a big bomb, and the First Tenant,
Lieutenant Gilbert Dunbar, took his platoon and started to march to
DeeCee, where the government was.

"But there was no government any more.

"They fought with people along the way. When they needed food, or
ammunition, or animals to pull their wagons, they took them, and
killed those who tried to prevent them. Other people joined the
toon, and when they found women they wanted, they took them.

"They did all sorts of things that would have been crimes if
there had been any law, but since there was no law, it was
obvious that they could be no crime.

"The First Ten--Lieutenant--kept his men together, because he had
The Books. Each evening, at the end of each day's march, he read
to his men out of them."

Altamont knew without looking at his associate that Loudons would
be inconspicuously jotting down notes. The last was an item the
sociologist would be sure to recor