As we approached the front door, Keller came out. He didn’t speak, but came quickly to relieve me of Frederick ’s weight. Frederick was drooping; he didn’t seem to realize that he had changed hands. I rubbed my aching shoulders and followed Keller into the house. It felt cool and clean after the outdoors, and I noticed that the windows were tightly shuttered.

“We keep out the ash, if possible,” Keller said. “You are unhurt? What has happened in the village?”

His hands were moving over Frederick as he spoke. When he touched the arm, Frederick ’s eyes opened and he let out a profane remark.

“It is not broken, I think,” Keller said calmly, before I could answer his first question. “The servants have gone. You will have to fetch bandages and water. Luckily our reserve tank was not damaged.”

“Where is Kore?” I asked.

Keller’s eyelids flickered. “She is safe. She rests now. We had a fire in the kitchen. It is extinguished, there is no need to fear. You will find supplies…”

He gave me directions. It took me a while to find the things he wanted. Then I held a flashlight while Keller bandaged Frederick ’s arm. The room was quite dark, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Either the wires were down, or he was afraid of risking another fire from shorted electrical circuits.

Except for swearing, Frederick didn’t say anything. I wondered about leaving these two old enemies alone together; and then decided cynically that I didn’t really care what they did to each other.

“I’m going down to the village,” I said.

“You would be better to stay,” Keller said. “This house is as safe as any structure could be; I saw to that when it was built.”

“You think there will be more quakes?”

“I cannot say. But I am not so concerned about that as about the volcano. The ash is falling thickly.”

His voice was quite matter-of-fact; his hands, arranging a sling around Frederick ’s neck, were steady. Apparently his nerves got out of hand only when his imagination tormented him. In an ordinary physical crisis he was first-rate, and I found his presence a lot more consoling than I did Frederick ’s.

“I’ll risk it,” I said. “I may not be able to help, but-”

“Why don’t you be honest?” Frederick asked. “It’s that boy you’re worried about. The whole village could go up in smoke so long as he survives.”

“What do you care?” I said. “You didn’t even ask me if I was hurt.”

“I could see you were not,” Frederick said. “Why should I ask?”

I couldn’t think of any answer that was rude enough, so I simply walked out. But when I opened the front door, it was all I could do not to slam it shut and retreat. Day had turned to night, or rather to a dismal twilight. The air stung my eyes and smelled funny. I started to cough.

Then I thought of Jim and the children and old people in the village, and I stepped out into the courtyard. I hadn’t gone far, however, before a shape loomed up out of the shadows. I knew it was Jim; I would have known him in the dark of a lightless cave. I greeted him with an exclamation of relief and joy. He didn’t reply, just caught my hand and turned me around.

“What-” I began.

“They’ve gone crazy down there. Come back to the villa.”

It was a strange feeling to be walking in and out of the house as if it were a public building. Keller glanced indifferently at us as we ran in, and went on pouring brandy into a glass that he handed to Frederick.

“Ah,” said the latter unpleasantly. “The humanitarian has given up.”

“There’s nothing I can do down there,” Jim said. He was still holding my hand, so tightly that it hurt. “I came to warn you. Better not leave the house.”

“Why?” Keller asked. “Was there much destruction?”

“Not as bad as it might have been. Some of the older houses collapsed and the hotel is pretty well demolished. It’s not that. It’s…” Jim ran his fingers through his hair; a gray cloud of dust surrounded his head, halolike, for a moment before settling. “They wouldn’t let me help. They were saying some rather ugly things. Some of the kids threw rocks.”

“Typical,” Frederick said. “When a catastrophe occurs, the primitive mind seeks a scapegoat.”

“But they’re friends of mine,” Jim said. “I don’t understand this.”

“Sit down,” Keller said, motioning toward a chair. “Leave them alone. They will quiet. This has happened before.”

Jim shook his head. “I’m going back. I just came here to warn you to stick to the house. You especially, Sandy.”

“What makes you think you’re any more impervious to rocks than I am?” I demanded. “If you’re going, so am I.”

“I’m not going to the village. I-I can’t find Chris.”

“Oh, Jim! The hotel-”

“No, he wasn’t there. They told me that much before they… I’m going to the dig. I can circlearound, above the village.”

I didn’t try to argue with him. I knew how he felt about his boss, and indeed the idea that the man might be lying injured in the increasingly foul air disturbed me too. I’d even have gone to look for Frederick under those circumstances.

I followed Jim out into the hall. He turned at the door and took me by the shoulders.

“No, Sandy, you can’t come.” His voice was very low, almost a whisper. “I want you to keep an eye on things here. There may be trouble. That crowd in the village could turn into a mob. Your father is right. They want a scapegoat.”

“No,” I said. “It couldn’t happen.”

“It could. I’ll bring Chris here, if I can find him. In any case I won’t be gone longer than I can help. Lock the place up tight. And you might ask Keller if he’s got any firearms.”

With that shocking suggestion he was gone.

I turned slowly back into the house. Earlier that day I had wondered whether anything more could happen to complicate my life. In one sense the cataclysm had simplified the situation. An order of priority had been established. Survive. That was the first problem. Survive an erupting volcano, complete with earthquakes, and a potential mob. After that we could worry about lesser difficulties.

The sight of the two men exasperated me almost beyond endurance. They were sitting and drinking their brandy like two old gents in a club.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” I demanded of the shadowy figures.

“What is there to do?” Keller asked remotely. “We can only wait. What will come, will come.”

“How about Kore?”

“Leave her alone. She is sleeping. I gave her a sedative, she was disturbed.”

“Jim said I should ask you if you had a gun in the house,” I said, hoping to shake him out of his fatalistic mood.

“As you saw,” Keller said indifferently. “They are in that cabinet.”

I found the arsenal, with the help of the flashlight. The.22 Kore had used was there. It had several shells in the chamber. There was another rifle, a heavier one, and a couple of handguns, all loaded and ready to go.

Nobody seemed to care what I did, so I went exploring. The house was deserted; no doubt the servants had gone to the village to see if their families were all right. There was a fine drift of ash over every flat surface. Moved by some obscure impulse, I wrote my name: Sandy, on the top of the dining-room table, and then stepped over a pile of broken crystal on my way to the stairs. The house itself had stood, but there were a lot of broken dishes lying around. Pictures had fallen from the walls, too. I started to pick one up and then dropped it again. This was no time to clean house.

The upstairs looked like a hotel in the off season-dark, silent, dusty. I looked into the room I had occupied and saw the book I had been reading lying open on the bedside table. It gave me an eerie feeling to think how much had happened since I left the room only a few hours ago.

I had no idea which room Kore occupied, so I tried one door after another, meeting only darkness and emptiness, until I found a door that wouldn’t open. I banged on it.