ll do it in four months."

* * * * *

Actually, as it worked out, they did it in just a day or so under
three.

Five hundred and forty-two men moved by jetter to Colorado Springs;
thence, by helicopter, to the canyon hideaway. They moved in small
groups, a few each week. Harry himself had already established the
liaison system, and he was based at Grizek's ranch. Grizek was dead,
but Bassett and Tom Lowery remained and they cooperated. Food would be
ready for the 'copters that came out of the canyon.

The canyon installation itself was deserted, and the only problem it
presented was one of rehabilitation. The first contingent took over.

The jetters carried more than their human cargo; they were filled with
equipment of all sorts--microscans and laboratory instruments and
devices for communication. By the time the entire group was assembled,
they had the necessary implementation for study and research. It was a
well-conceived and well-executed operation.

To his surprise, Harry found himself acting as the leader of the
expedition, and he continued in this capacity after they were
established. The irony of the situation did not escape him; to all
intents and purposes he was now ruling the very domain in which he had
once languished as a prisoner.

But with Wade and Chang and the others, he set up a provisional system
which worked out very well. And proved very helpful, once the news
reached them that open revolt had begun in the world outside.

A battered 'copter landed one evening at dusk, and the wounded pilot
poured out his message, then his life's blood.

Angelisco was gone. Washington was gone. The Naturalists had struck,
using the old, outlawed weapons. And it was the same abroad, according
to the few garbled reports thereafter obtainable only _via_ ancient
shortwave devices.

From then on, nobody left the canyon except on weekly 'copter-lifts to
the ranch grazing lands for fresh supplies. Fortunately, that area was
undisturbed, and so were its laconic occupants. They neither knew nor
cared what went on in the world outside; what cities were reported
destroyed, what forces triumphed or went down into defeat, what
activity or radioactivity prevailed.

Life in the canyon flowed on, more peacefully than the river cleaving
its center. There was much to do and much to learn. It was, actually,
a monastic existence, compounded of frugality, abstinence, continence
and devotion t