Gordon knew that explanation wouldn’t hold under close scrutiny. He blessed those long, tedious hours on broken roads since leaving Oakridge, when he had worked out his story in detail.

“No, not quite. The pulse radiation, the blasts, and the fallout destroyed a lot. The bugs and riots and the Three-Year Winter killed many skilled people. But actually, it didn’t take long to get some machines going again. There were airplanes ready to fly within days. The Restored U.S. has scores of them, repaired and tested and waiting to fly.

“But they can’t take off. They’re all grounded, and will be for years to come.”

The old man looked puzzled. “Why’s that, Inspector?”

“For the same reason you wouldn’t pick up a broadcast even if you put together a working radio,” Gordon said. He paused for effect.

“Because of laser satellites.”

Peter Von Kleek slapped the table. “Son of a bitch!” All over the room heads turned their way.

Eric Stevens sighed, giving Gordon a look that had to be total acceptance … or admiration of a better liar than himself.

“What… what’s a lay … ?”

“Laser sat,” Johnny’s grandfather explained. “We won the war.” He snorted at the famous marginal victory that had been trumpeted in the weeks before the riots began. “But the enemy must have left some sleeper satellites in orbit. Program ‘em to wait a few months or years, then anything so much as lets out a peep over the radio, or tries to fly, and zap!” He sliced the air decisively. “No wonder I never picked up anything on my crystal set!”

Gordon nodded. The story fit so well, it could even be true. He actually hoped so. For it might explain the silence, and the lonely emptiness of the sky, without the world having to be totally vacant of civilization.

And how else to explain the slag heaps that remained of so many radio antennas he had passed in his travels?

“What’s the government doing about it?” Von Kleek asked earnestly.

Fairy tales, Gordon thought. His lies would grow more complex as he traveled until at last someone caught him up.

“There are some scientists left. We hope to find facilities in California for making and launching orbital rockets.” He left the implication hanging.

The others looked disappointed.

“If only there was a way to take out the damned satellites sooner,” the Mayor said. “Think of all those aircraft, just sitting there! Can you imagine how surprised the next Holnist raiding party out of the damned Rogue River would be, to find us farmers backed up by the U.S. Air Force and some bloody A-lOs!”

He gave a whooshing sound and made diving motions with his hands. Then the Mayor did a pretty good imitation of a machine gun. Gordon laughed with the others. Like boys they lived briefly in a fantasy of rescue, and power to the good guys.

Other men and women gathered around, now that the Mayor and the postal inspector had apparently finished their business. Someone pulled out a harmonica. A guitar was passed to Johnny Stevens, who proved to be quite gifted. Soon the crowd was singing bawdy folk songs and old commercial jingles.

The mood was high. Hope was thick as the warm, dark beer, and tasted at least as good.

It was later in the evening that he heard it for the first time. On his way out of the men’s room — grateful that Cottage Grove had somehow retained gravity-flow indoor plumbing — Gordon stopped suddenly near the back stairs.

There had been a sound.

The crowd by the fireplace was singing.… “Gather ‘round and listen to my tale — a tale of a fateful trip…”

Gordon cocked his head. Had he imagined the other murmur? It had been faint, and his head was ringing a bit on its own from the beer.

But a queer feeling at the back of his neck, an intuition, refused to let go. It made him turn around and begin climbing the stairs, a steep flight rising into the building above the basement pub.

The narrow passage was dimly lit by a candle at the halfway landing. The happy, drunken sounds cf the songfest faded away behind him as he ascended slowly, careful of the creaking steps.

At the top he emerged into a darkling hallway. Gordon listened fruitlessly for what felt like a long time. After some moments he turned around, writing it all off to an overworked imagination.

Then it came again.

… a series of faint, eerie sounds at the very edge of audibility. The half-memories they pulled forth sent a shiver up Gordon’s back. He had not heard their like since… since long, long ago.

At the end of the dusty hallway faint light outlined a cracked door jamb. He approached, quietly.

Bloop!

Gordon touched the cold metal knob. It was free of dust. Someone was already inside.

Wah-wah …

The absent weight of his revolver — left in his guest room in supposedly safe Cottage Grove — made him feel half-naked as he turned the knob and opened the door.

Dusty tarpaulins covered stacked crates filled with odds and ends, everything from salvaged tires to tools to furniture, a hoard put aside by the villagers against the uncertain future. Around one row of boxes came the source of that faint, flickering light. There were hushed voices just ahead, whispering in urgent excitement. And that sound -

Bloop. Bloop!

Gordon crept alongside the towers of musty crates — like unsteady cliffs of ancient sediment — growing more tense as he approached the end of the row. The glow spread. It was a cold light, without heat.

A floorboard creaked under his foot.

Five faces turned up suddenly, cast into deep relief by the strange light. In a breathless instant Gordon saw that they were children, staring up at him in terrified awe — the more so because they clearly recognized him. Their eyes were wide and they did not move.

But Gordon cared about none of that, only about a little boxlike object that lay on an oval rug in the center of the small coven. He could not believe what he was seeing.

Across its bottom was a row of tiny buttons, and in the center a flat, gray screen gave off a pearly sheen.

Pink spiders emerged from flying saucers and stepped imperiously down the screen, to a crunching, marching beat. Arriving at the bottom without opposition, they bleated in triumph, then their ranks reformed and the assault began all over again.

Gordon’s throat was dry.

“Where…” he breathed.

The children stood up. One of the boys swallowed. “Sir?”

Gordon pointed. “Where in the name of all that’s holy did you get that?” He shook his head. “More important… where did you get the batteries*”

One of the children began to cry. “Please, sir, we didn’t know it was wrong. Timmy Smith told us it’s just a game the oldtime children used to have! We find ‘em all over, only they don’t work no more…”

“Who,” Gordon insisted, “is Timmy Smith?”

“A boy. His pa has come down from Creswell with a wagon to trade the last couple years. Timmy swapped this one for twenty old ones we found that wouldn’t work no more.”

Gordon recalled the map he had been studying in his room earlier in the evening. Creswell was just a little north of here, not far off the route he had planned to take to Eugene.

Can it be? Hope was too hot and sudden to be a pleasure, or even recognized.

“Did Timmy Smith say where he got the toy?” He tried not to spook the children, but some of his urgency must have spilled over, frightening them.

A girl wailed. “He said he got it from Cyclops!”

Then, in a panicked flurry, the children were gone, disappeared down little alleys in the dusty storage room. Gordon was left suddenly alone, standing quite still, watching tiny invaders descend in the glow of the little gray screen.

“Crunch-crunch-crunch,” they marched.

The game blooped victoriously. Then began to play all over again.