“What about Charlie?”

“I don’t know. That’s harder. I guess a really good flare might wipe out damn near all the adults. But that’s when they spawn, and the spawn might survive — also, no doubt, with a lot of mutations. I’d say evolution moves pretty fast here.”

“Well, look,” Margie cut in, “if all these things can survive, why can’t we?”

Harcourt shrugged. “They’re adapted, we’re not. Besides, I’m talking about races surviving, not individuals. Maybe as few as one percent live through it. Maybe less.” He looked around the audience. “One percent of us leaves how many?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Margie said slowly. “Well, I think we get the picture. We need to get under something big enough to stop both heat and radiation, and we need to do it in a hurry. Got any ideas on what we can make a roof out of?”

Harcourt hesitated. “Not a clue,” he confessed. “Certainly the tents won’t do it. Oh, and I should mention the winds. They probably get pretty fierce, with all that insolation. So anything we did build would have to stand up to maybe two-hundred-kilometer-an-hour hurricanes. Maybe more. I, uh, I thought, for a minute of using the Creepies’ tunnels, and that might work — for some of us, anyway. But I doubt more than ten percent of us would live through maybe two or three weeks underground without very good ventilation and certainly without air conditioning — and that air down there is going to get hot. ”

There was a silence while everyone considered possibilities. Then Kappelyushnikov came forward. “Is one thing we can do,” he announced. “Not many of us. Maybe fifteen, twenty. Can get in return capsule and go into orbit.”

“It’s just as hot there,” Marge Menninger protested.

Gappy shook his head. “Is only radiation. Steel hull reflects ninety-nine percent, maybe. Anyway, plenty. Only problem — who decides which twenty lucky people go up?”

Marge Menninger thought for a moment, then said, “No, that’s a last ditch, Gappy. There’s another problem with it: what do those lucky fellows do when they come down again? There aren’t enough of us left now. I don’t think twenty would be enough to survive. If we went up — strike that; I’m not saying I would be one of the ‘we.’ If anyone went up, it’d be just as smart to keep on going. Try to get back to Earth. Maybe go to one of the other colonies. The chances would be as good as coming back here when the whole planet’s fried.”

Harcourt nodded but corrected her automatically. “Not the whole planet.”

“What?”

“Well, only half the planet. Our half. The part that faces Kung. The far side probably wouldn’t even notice there was a flare going on. That’s no good for us,” he went on quickly, “because we can’t live there; we don’t have time to build an airtight heated dome and move everything — What’s the matter?”

Margie had burst out laughing. “Son of a bitch,” she said. “Shows how wrong you can be when you start trying to trust people. Those bastard Greasies aren’t giving us a square count! They didn’t stop fighting because they wanted to make peace. They stopped because we were as good as dead anyway!”

“But — but so are they—”

“Wrong! Because they have a Farside base!” She shook her head ruefully. “Folks,” she said, “I was going to make a real magnolious announcement about turning the reins over to civilian government, only now I think that’s going to have to wait. We’ve got a military job to do first. When this side of the planet goes, they’ve got that snug little nest on the side that never gets radiation from Kung anyway, and they couldn’t care less if the son of a bitch blows up. That’s going to be a nice place to be. And we’re going to take it away from them.”

THESE WERE THE mesas and canyons of the high desert. Danny Dalehouse had flown over them in less than an hour and seen them only as quaint patterns in an unimportant carpet beneath. Marching over them was something else. Kappelyushnikov ferried them in as close as he dared, three at a time, once four, with the little biplane desperately slow to wallow off the ground. He made more than a dozen round trips and saved them a hundred kilometers of cutting through jungle. Even so, it was a three-day march, and every step hard work.

Nevertheless, Dalehouse had not felt as well in weeks. In spite of bone-bruising fatigue. In spite of the star that might explode at any moment. In spite of the fact that Marge Men-ninger’s shopping list had overlooked a supply of spare hiking boots, and so he limped on a right foot that was a mass of blisters. He was not the unluckiest. Three of the effectives had been unable to go on at all. “We’ll come back for you,” Margie had promised; but Dalehouse thought she lied, and he could see in the eyes of the casualties that they were certain of it.

And still he would have sung as he marched, if he’d had breath enough for it.

It had been raining on and off for nearly forty hours — mean, wind-driven rain that kept them sodden in the steamy heat even when it let up, and chilled when it drenched them. That didn’t matter, either. It was regrettable, because it meant that Charlie and the two remaining members of his flock could not keep in touch with them visually. (He had had to take the radio away from the balloonist before they left — far too easy for the Greasies to intercept.) Whenever the clouds lightened, Dalehouse searched the sky for his friend. He never saw him, never heard his song, but he knew he was up there somewhere. It wasn’t serious. The weather that kept Charlie from scouting danger for them kept the Greasies from providing it.

There were twelve of them still toiling toward the Greasy camp. They had left the rest of the survivors — the highly impermanent survivors, if this expedition didn’t do what it was supposed to — back at the base with orders to look as though they were twice as numerous as they were. Margie herself had transmitted the last message to the Greasies: “We are beginning construction of underground shelters. When the flare is over we can discuss a permanent peace. Meanwhile, if you approach we will shoot on sight.” Then she pulled the plug on the radio and crawled into Cappy’s plane for the last ferry trip.

They had less than ten kilometers to go — a three hour stroll under good conditions, but it would take them all of a day. It was scramble down one side of a ravine and crawl up the other, peer over the top of a crest and scuttle down its other face. And it was not just the terrain. They were all heavily loaded. Food, water, weapons, equipment. Everything they would need they had to carry on their backs.

The red cylinders marked “Fuel Elements — Replacement” were the worst. Each cylinder contained hundreds of the tiny clad needles and weighed more than a kilogram. Twelve of them made a heavy load.

At first they took turns carrying the puzzle pieces that would unite to form a nuclear bomb. One of the tricks was to make sure they didn’t unite prematurely, and at every stop Lieutenant Kristianides supervised the stacking of knapsacks so that no two bomb loads were within a meter of each other. The chance was very small that they could in fact be dropped, kicked, or jostled into a configuration of critical mass. Making that happen on purpose when desired had been a serious challenge for some of the best munitions experts on Earth; for that purpose they carried another twenty kilos of highly sophisticated casing and trigger. Without that there was no real danger — or so Marge assured them all. But they were careful anyway, because in their guts none of them believed the assurance. Perhaps not even Marge.

At the end of the first march Margie had gone through the party, checking loads. When she came to Ana Dimitrova, sitting hugging her knees next to Danny Dalehouse, she said softly, “Are you sterile?”