Conrad checked his line of thought and reprimanded himself.

“Did you see the foreigners?” Idris asked, turning to put the carving on a shelf behind her.

“Yes,” Conrad told her bitterly, and recounted his story. Listening, Idris stamped her foot at the injustice of it.

“I sometimes wonder,” Conrad said at length, “whether I wouldn’t be better off if I just left here. Walked to another town-there’s bound to be work somewhere for a good soapmaker. Or just went to the barrenland where father wished me.”

“You mustn’t talk like that!” the girl said in alarm.

“Wouldn’t I be better off in another town, though? I’m not quite serious about the barrenland.”

“Maybe … Only I’d miss you, I think. I really would, if you went away.”

There was a noise outside, of the front door of the house being opened. Idris drew her breath in quickly and hissed at him. “You’ll have to go! Here, take this-it isn’t much, but it’s all I can spare.” She snatched handfuls of bread, cheese, onions and salad-greens from the table, and thrust an apple at him as well. “Quick now! Thanks for the carving-and we’ll have lots of ash for you tomorrow because we’ve been baking, so I’ll see you then.”

She rushed to open the back door for him, and as quickly as he could he limped out of the kitchen. Only just in time, for a moment after the bolt was slid home again he heard the sharp voice of Idris’s mother calling her.

He ate almost all the food, leaving a little to stop his father complaining when he came back later, and then lay down on the blanket which was the only bed he had. He stared into the darkness for a long time before he fell asleep; when he did doze off, he dreamed that he was riding a horse and waving a long black and red banner on a pole because he had finished carving a life-size statue of Idris without any clothes on and wanted everyone to admire it.

VI

“Nestamay! Nestamay!”

The girl rolled under her blanket and fought against the intrusion of the world.

“Nestamay, time for your watch!” Grandfather rasped, and prodded her in the side. She jerked and came awake with a sigh to the squalid narrowness of the hovel which was her home, to the smell of fresh food and the howling of baby Dan, alarmed by Grandfather’s harsh shouting. She had slept since noon, but would willingly have slept on till the next one.

However, there was no chance of that. Wrapping her blanket about her, she made her way to the lean-to shed over the stream and attended to necessities. When she came back, her face was shiny-wet and her cheeks were a little flushed with the coldness of the water. There was a bowl of porridge waiting, some sun-dried fruits and a hunk of bread. In silence she gulped them down.

“Hurry up, Nestamay!” Grandfather rapped. “You’re going to be late!”

She stifled the impulse to make a sullen answer in some such terms as, “What does it matter?” It did matter that every night someone should keep watch even though the automatic alarm had never failed; precisely why it mattered, Nestamay didn’t know, but it had been dinned into her since she was old enough to talk, and she no longer had the emotional equipment to contest the statement.

Sometimes she thought Grandfather must know why it was important to keep the watch, and sometimes she wondered if even he did. But not very hard.

Finishing her food, she reached towards the rack on which the handlights were kept. There was only one in its place, not the one she generally used. Her heart sank. Of course. It had grown dim, and she had set it out in the sun this morning to recharge itself.

Hoping Grandfather might not notice, she made to take the one which was in place.

“Nestamay!” the old man barked, and she snatched her hand away guiltily. “To each his own-remember? If you were too lazy to bring your own light back before you lay down to sleep, you can just go and fetch it now. And hurry!”

Nestamay thought of objecting. But she decided after a moment she would rather face the silent threat of the darkness outside than Grandfather in a towering rage. She nodded, put on her sweater and pants-but not her sandals; it was better to go barefoot in the dark, and cling with her toes if she had to-and slipped through the door.

The darkness wasn’t so bad once she had dived into it. It was clear overhead, and the stars twinkled reassuringly. From adjacent huts-there were some twenty-five all told-came familiar noises-children-noises, mostly, and more crying than laughter. For a long painful second she found herself wishing she was still a child, not forced into this demanding status of adulthood. Then she suppressed the foolish idea and headed, cat-silent, towards the bare ground.

She reached the place where she had left the handlight in a few minutes. It was still there; when she flicked the switch the beam came on bright and comforting. But she only flicked it on and off. The storage cells were weakening, and there was no telling how much of the accumulated sunlight she might need before morning.

For a few seconds she stood to let the clean dry desert-scented air sweep the last traces of drowsiness from her system, and then headed back, past the grouped hovels, towards the main body of the Station. It loomed up in the night like the back of a sleeping thing, pregnant with a menace of its own which a lifetime of familiarity had never dispelled. It could, and much too often did, hatch out horrors.

Something moved on her right, emerging from shadow. With a gasp she threw herself backwards, snapping on the handlight with one hand and grabbing her hatchet with the other. It wasn’t much of a weapon to use against a lurking thing, but then-what was? Some would even stand and face a heatbeam.

Then a flood of relief and anger filled her. “Jasper!” she cried. “Jasper, that’s a stupid trick to play on someone!”

In the beam of the handlight a tall, rather fleshy youth parted his broad lips in a grin. “You wouldn’t take your hatchet to me, Nestamay, would you now?” he purred.

“No. No. I suppose not,” Nestamay said with a sigh.

“Come on, give me a kiss,” Jasper suggested, moving closer. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Nestamay complied. It had been made clear to her that sooner or later she was going to have to set up a home with Jasper-there was no one else of her age-group who didn’t trespass on her genetic line too badly-and, she reasoned, she’d better get used to his attentions. But she didn’t like the prospect very much.

When his hands crept under her sweater, she protested and pushed him away.

“I’ve got to get up to my watch!” she said sharply.

Jasper laughed. “Why?” he murmured. “Nobody’s going to know if you come away with me for a while instead. I’ve found a place around the other side of the Station where-”

“Stop it!” Nestamay exclaimed, deeply shocked. “Jasper, that’s a dreadful thing to say! Skip my watch-why, that’d be unforgivable!”

“I’d forgive you,” Jasper grinned. “And nobody else would have to know.”

“I’ll tell my grandfather!”

“Him!”Jasper curled his lip. “He’s a pig-headed fool, and you ought to know by this time. Driving everyone to waste time ‘on watch’, as he calls it-slaving over foolishnesses in the Station all day instead of something constructive like making more food or pulling bits out of the Station and improving the huts.”

“But it has to be done!” Nestamay objected.

“Does it? Who says so? Your grandfather and a few other addlepated old folk! I don’t think he believes these stories he feeds us-I think he just uses them to maintain his position over the rest of the people. If he really believes what he says about walking to other and better worlds, why doesn’t he try it himself-on solid ground instead of through some hole in the Station full of horrible things?”