ltering
determination to find a cure for it but the cure, if there was one,
eluded them. The graves in the cemetery were forty long by forty wide
and more were added each day. To all the fact became grimly obvious:
they were swiftly dying out and they had yet to face Ragnarok at its
worst.

The old survival instincts asserted themselves and there were marriages
among the younger ones. One of the first to marry was Julia.

She stopped to talk to Prentiss one evening. She still wore the red
skirt, now faded and patched, but her face was tired and thoughtful and
no longer bold.

"Is it true, John," she asked, "that only a few of us might be able to
have children here and that most of us who tried to have children in
this gravity would die for it?"

"It's true," he said. "But you already knew that when you married."

"Yes ... I knew it." There was a little silence. "All my life I've had
fun and done as I pleased. The human race didn't need me and we both
knew it. But now--none of us can be apart from the others or be afraid
of anything. If we're selfish and afraid there will come a time when the
last of us will die and there will be nothing on Ragnarok to show we
were ever here.

"I don't want it to end like that. I want there to be children, to live
after we're gone. So I'm going to try to have a child. I'm not afraid
and I won't be."

When he did not reply at once she said, almost self-consciously, "Coming
from me that all sounds a little silly, I suppose."

"It sounds wise and splendid, Julia," he said, "and it's what I thought
you were going to say."

* * * * *

Full spring came and the vegetation burst into leaf and bud and bloom,
quickly, for its growth instincts knew in their mindless way how short
was the time to grow and reproduce before the brown death of summer
came. The prowlers were suddenly gone one day, to follow the spring
north, and for a week men could walk and work outside the stockade
without the protection of armed guards.

Then the new peril appeared, the one they had not expected: the
unicorns.

The stockade wall was a blue-black rectangle behind them and the blue
star burned with the brilliance of a dozen moons, lighting the woods in
blue shadow and azure light. Prentiss and the hunter walked a little in
front of the two riflemen, winding to keep in the starlit glades.

"It was on the other side of the next grove of trees," the hunter said
in a low voi