The crest of the Santa Monica Mountains was a thoroughly inconvenient place to live. Shopping centers were far away. Roads were an adventure. Driveways tended to be nearly vertical in spots. Yet there were many houses up here, and it was only indirectly due to population pressure.

Population pressure produced the cities.

The view from the crest on Monday night was incredible; unique. Downslope on one side was Los Angeles; downslope on the other, the San Fernando Valley. At night the cities became carpets of multicolored light stretching away forever. Freeways were rivers of light moving through seas of light. It looked like the whole world had turned to city, and loved it!

Yet there were vacant patches on the crest. Mark and Frank and Joanna left Mulholland Drive at sunset, took their motorcycles up the side of a hill. They camped in a rocky area out of sight of wandering fuzzmobiles, a couple of blocks distant from the houses on both sides.

Frank Stoner walked around the crest of the hill, looked at the slopes on both sides, then nodded to himself. Undevelopable. Too much danger of mudslides. Not that it mattered a damn why no one had built a house here, but Frank Stoner didn’t like unanswered questions. He came back to where Joanna and Mark were setting up the Svea backpacker stove.

“We may have nervous neighbors,” Frank said. “Let’s get dinner over while there’s light. After dark, no flashlights and no fires.”

“I don’t see — ” Mark began.

Joanna broke in impatiently. “Look, these houses are a long way from the nearest police station. People wandering up here would tend to make them nervous. We do not need to spend the night before Hot Fudge Sundae at Malibu Sheriff Station.” She went back to reading the directions on the freeze-dried dinner they’d brought. She was not a good cook; but if she left it to Mark, he’d do it however he felt, which might turn onto well and might not. Following the directions was sure to produce something edible, and she was hungry.

She looked at the two men. Frank Stoner towered over Mark. A big man, strong, physically attractive. Joanna had felt that before. He’d be damned good in bed.

She’d felt that before, but she hadn’t found herself thinking she was teamed up with the wrong man before. The thought puzzled her. Living with Mark was a lot of fun. She didn’t know if she was in love with Mark, because she wasn’t sure what love was, but they were compatible in bed, and they didn’t often get on each other’s nerves. So why this sudden pash for Frank Stoner?

She emptied the beef Stroganoff into a cooking pot and grinned down at it so the others couldn’t see. They’d want to know why she was grinning, and it wasn’t something she wanted to explain. If she wondered why she was getting the hots for Frank Stoner…

But it bothered her. Joanna had a very good education, courtesy of her upper-middle-class parents. She didn’t make much use of it, but it had left her with considerable curiosity, particularly about people — which included herself.

“This is just about perfect,” Mark said.

Frank grunted disapproval.

“No? Why not? Where else?” Mark demanded. He’d picked this spot and was proud of it.

“Mojave is better,” Frank said absently. He laid out his sleeping bag and sat on it. “But that’s a long way to go for nothing. Still… we’re on the wrong plate.”

“Plate?” Joanna said.

“It’s plate tectonics,” Mark said. “You know, the continents float around on top of the melted rock inside the Earth.”

Frank listened absently. No point in correcting Mark. But the Mojave was certainly a better place. It was on the North American plate. Los Angeles and Baja California were on another. The plates joined at the San Andreas Fault, and if the Hammer fell the San Andreas would sure as hell let go. It would shake both plates, but the North American would get it less.

It was just an exercise anyway. Frank had checked with JPL; the odds of the Hammer hitting Earth were low. You were in more danger on the freeway. This business of camping out was for drill, but it was Stoner’s nature that if he did anything, he did it right. He’d made Joanna bring her own bike, although she preferred riding behind Mark on his. Take all three; we might lose one.

“All for drill,” Frank said. “But maybe the drill’s worth the effort.”

“Eh?” Joanna had the stove going now. It roared in the late afternoon.

“Nothing silly about being ready for the collapse of civilization,” Frank said. “Next time it won’t be the Hammer, it’ll be something else. But it’ll be something. Read your newspapers.”

That’s it, Joanna thought. He’s got me thinking that way. And that’s why… it sure made more sense to be teamed up with Frank Stoner than Mark Czescu if civilization was coming to an end.

And Frank had wanted to go to the Mojave. Only Mark talked him out of it. Mark couldn’t quite admit to Hammer Fever. It would look silly.

They ate earlier than they usually did. Frank insisted. When they finished, there was just enough light to boil out the cooking pots. Then they lay down on their sleeping bags in near darkness, watching the glow die out over the Pacific, until the night grew cool and they climbed in. Joanna had brought her own bag and hadn’t zipped it together with Mark’s, although they usually did on camp-outs.

The light died in the west. One by one the stars came out. At first there were only stars. Then the turning sky brought a luminous film up from the east. It blended with the glowing lights over Los Angeles, grew brighter, until by midnight it was brighter than L.A., as bright as a good northern aurora. Still it thickened and brightened until only a few stars showed through the Earth-enveloping tail of Hamner-Brown Comet.

To keep themselves awake, they talked. Crickets talked around them. They had slept that afternoon, though neither Frank nor Mark would tell that to the others. It would have been an admission that each was in his thirties and feeling it. Frank told stories about the ways the world might end. Mark kept interrupting to make points of his own, adding details, or anticipating what Frank would say and saying it first.

Joanna listened with increasing impatience. She fell silent, brooding. Mark always did that. It never bothered her before. Why was she getting pissed off at him now? Part of the same pattern. Wow, Joanna thought. Female instincts? Glom on to the strongest guy around? That didn’t make sense. It certainly wasn’t part of her philosophy. She was Joanna, fully liberated, her own person, in control of her life…

The conflict made her think of other things. She wasn’t yet thirty, but she was getting there, and what had she done? What was she doing? She couldn’t just go on, making a few bucks when Mark was out of work, bopping around the country on a motorcycle. That was a lot of fun, but dammit, she ought to do something serious, one permanent thing…

“I bet I can get the packs set so nobody can see the stove,” Mark was saying. “Jo, want to make coffee? Jo?”

Full dawn found Frank and Joanna asleep. Mark smiled as if he’d won a contest. He enjoyed watching dawn break. It didn’t happen often enough these days. Today’s dawn still carried an elfin light, sunlight faintly thinned and transmuted by gases and dust brought inward from interstellar space.

It occurred to Mark that if he started breakfast now, he could reach a telephone while Harv Randall could be expected to be still at home. Randall had invited him to join the news team on Hot Fudge Tuesdae, but Mark had dithered. He dithered now. He set up the stove and pans for breakfast, debated waking the others; then crawled back into his own bag.