''Maybe you do.” Dan sounded troubled. “But just because you have it doesn't mean you should use it. We gave the Russians what they deserved. After all, they hit us first.”

Not if you listen to them. But he wouldn't want to hear that. And nobody knew who'd launched the first missiles. After 130 years, it mattered only to historians. This alternate was too busy trying to take care of itself to have the time to train historians and give them a chance to work. If not for people like her family, people from the home timeline, nobody would try to find out till all the best evidence had crumbled to dust.

A lot of evidence had already crumbled. Liz wasn't sure she and her folks would ever be sure what had happened here. At least they were trying to find out, though. The survivors of the nuclear exchange-here and in Russia-were too busy blaming each other to care about the truth, whatever it turned out to be.

She frowned at Dan. “You're saying I shouldn't try to know what's so if that doesn't go along with what people believe.”

“Right on!” He didn't try to deny it. “If all the people believe it, it's so. That's democracy, too, isn't it?”

No! She wanted to scream it. But that was democracy, at least the way they used the word here. “I'm sorry, but I want to know what's what no matter what,” she said. She knew she could have put it better, but too bad. “Everybody here on the Westside thought we'd beat your army, but we didn't turn out to be right enough, did we?”

“I should say not. We creamed you.” Dan frowned again, this time at himself. “Okay, though. I guess I see what you're trying to say.”

Liz breathed a silent sigh of relief. She'd wondered if he would. A lot of the time, il somebody knocked a hole in your argument, you just pretended it wasn't there. She was glad Dan would admit there was a difference between what everybody thought and what was true.

“A long time ago, people thought the earth was flat. They thought it was the middle of things, too, and the sun went around it,” she said.

“It sure looks flat,” Dan said. “They teach us in school that the earth goes around the sun, but I'm dogged ii I understand why. I don't know ii I believe it, either. Il looks like it ought to be the other way around, doesn't it? I mean, you can see the sun move and everything. Just, like, watch our shadows.”

Tears stung Liz 's eyes. In another 130 years, people in this alternate probably would think the earth was flat again. They would think the sun went around it. If your own eyes told you so… If everybody's eyes said the same thing… That was democracy, wasn't it?

Sure it was. And it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

“If you try to figure out the phases of the moon, or how the planets move, you get better answers if you put the sun in the middle than you do if you put the earth there,” Liz said.

“But I don't much care about the phases of the moon. I don't care about the planets at all,” Dan said. “How do you figure that stuff out, anyway?”

“It takes more math than I know how to do,” Liz admitted.

“There you go,” Dan said. “Even if it’s true, it's complicated. But I can see the sun. There it is, right up there.” He pointed at it, squinting and blinking. “If you watch for a while, you'll see it move, too.”

“No, you'll see the earth turning.” Liz wasn't about to quit.

“You sound like my teacher.” Dan laughed. “She taught what was in the book, but who says the book was right? Maybe it was one of those waddayacallits-fiction books, that's what I want to say. I mean, it just stands to reason. You can see how little the sun is. and how big the earth is. How could we go around that and not the other way around?”

Instead of walking over to a column and banging her head on it, Liz said, “A mountain looks little cause it’s a long ways off. The sun's a lot farther away than any mountain. Of course it looks small.”

“Ninety-three million miles,” Dan said. “That's what the book said in school, anyhow. But how could there be that many miles? And even if there were, how would anybody know how many there were? You couldn't go all that way yourself. You'd be traveling forever.” And you would run out of air. And you would roast as you got closer to the sun. And a lot of other things. Liz didn't mention any of them. She didn't remember how you went about learning how far it was from the earth to the sun. Since she didn't, she couldn't very well explain it to Dan.

What she did say was, “Well, if they knew that stuff back in the Old Time, chances are they were right about it.”

Dan grunted. “Yeah, I guess that's true,” he said.

Liz had won the argument. Then she wondered if she'd cheated. He was trying to be logical about things, to argue from what he could see. She'd hit him over the head with authority. Wasn't that like the Church coming down on Galileo because he said the earth moved?

The difference, she told herself, was that the Church was wrong and she was right. But the churchmen had thought they were right. And they'd had authority on their side, too.

So she felt pretty rotten when Dan left. But he didn't give her any more trouble about Russians, anyhow. Whether the sun went around the earth or vice versa wouldn't get him so excited.

She hoped.

After practicing like a maniac, Dan could load his matchlock almost fast enough to keep Sergeant Chuck happy. He was no slower than the rest of the new musketeers. Chuck screamed at all of them impartially.

“You have to keep up with the men who've been doing this for years!” the sergeant shouted. “A volley's not a volley if everybody doesn't shoot together. So move, you stupid, clumsy lugs! Move!”

Dan rammed his bullet home and brought the musket up to his shoulder. So did the rest of the new men, all at about the same time-except for one luckless fellow who dropped his ramrod. What Chuck called him would have curdled milk.

'Tm sorry. Sergeant,” the soldier said miserably.

“You do that in the middle of a real battle and you'll be sorry you're dead, you-” Chuck found a few more compliments to pay the luckless musketeer. Then he growled, “Are we ready at last? We'd better be, don't you think? Let's find out. Ready… Aim… Fire!”

Dan pulled the trigger. The match came down on the priming powder in and around the touch-hole. Hiss-Boom!- Kick. He coughed as the smoke went up his nose.

The musketeer just to his left puffed on a cigar. A lot of the men who carried matchlocks smoked either cigars or a pipe. That meant you usually had a hot coal handy if you needed to get your match going again. Dan didn't usually smoke all that often, but he knew a good idea when he saw one.

Chuck walked out to the target and brought it back. He showed the soldiers the punctures their musket halls had made. “Well, you're starting to scare the enemy, even if you don't always hit him.” But he wasn't about to let them think that was good enough. He went out to the far end of the range and set up a new target. “Now let's see how last you can give me another volley. I want everybody ready when I give the command. Go!”

It would have been easier if Chuck hadn't gone on yelling at them while they reloaded. Dan wanted to hate him for that, but found he couldn't. He'd been in battle by now. He knew how much noise and chaos there was. You had to block it all out if you were going to do your job. If you let it rattle you, you endangered yourself and your buddies.

Nobody dropped his ramrod this time. If anyone had, Chuck would have eaten him raw-probably without salt. And the volley went off in a close-packed set of thunderclaps that left Dan 's ears ringing. People who'd used guns a lot also tended to use hearing trumpets. But what could you do?

“Well, you weren't too slow.” Sergeant Chuck said. That was about as much praise as the underofficer ever doled out. He retrieved the target. When he came back, he looked like somebody trying hard not to smile. “Seems like some of those… people would have stopped lead, that's for sure. Now let's see you do it again, so I know it's no fluke.“