Jonnie was going home.

In a canyon above the village meadow, they unloaded four horses and a pack from the freight plane. The breath of the horses hung about them in small, thin puffs. The horses, very recently wild, had not liked the ride and stamped about and snorted when their blindfolds were removed. The air was clear and frosty at this altitude.

Snow from the recent storm covered the world and silenced it.

Angus MacTavish and Parson MacGilvy were with Jonnie. A pilot had come along so that the plane could be moved in case the visit lasted longer than a day. The recon drone had already gone by when they took off from the base and the plane should not be there when it passed again.

A week ago Jonnie had awakened in the night with the sudden realization that he might know where some uranium was. His own village! He had no great hope for it, but the signs were there in the illness of his people. Possibly there was no great amount, but also possibly there was more than that single rock from Uravan. He felt a trifle guilty for having to have an ulterior motive to go home, for there were other reasons. His people should be moved, both because of their continuous exposure to radiation and also because they should not be exposed in any future bombing.

Jonnie and his men had scoured the mountains for another possible home, and only yesterday had they found one. It was an old mining town on the western slope, lower in altitude, open through a narrow pass to a western plain. A brook ran down the street in the town center. Many of the buildings and houses still retained glass. Wild cattle and game were plentiful. But even better there was a large, half-mile-long tunnel behind the town that could serve as refuge. A coal deposit was on the hill nearby. The place was beautiful. It had no trace of uranium in it.

Jonnie did not think the people of the village would move. He had tried before as a youth and even his father had thought he was just being restless. But he had to try again.

Angus and the parson had insisted on coming with him. He had explained the dangers of exposure to radiation to them and had not wanted to put them at risk. But Angus simply waved a breathe-gas bottle and promised to check it out ahead of them and not be foolish about it, and the parson, being a wise and experienced member of the clergy, knew Jonnie might need help.

They knew better than to simply fly a plane into the meadow. The people had seen recon drones all their lives, but a plane close up might terrify them.

“Wake up, Jonnie! Wake up! It flashed!”

Jonnie pried himself awake. It was still dark, though dawn was late at this season of the year. It was disorienting to find himself in his own room with Angus shaking him and a miner's light burning on the table.

Suddenly he grasped the import of what Angus was saying and got up and began to get into his buckskins.

Angus had awakened very early and had been thirsty, and Aunt Ellen had heard him clattering around the buckets. There had been no water and Angus didn't like eating snow, so Aunt Ellen had said she would go get some water. But Angus said no, he'd get the water if she showed him where it was, and she pointed out the spring where everybody got their water on the edge of the village, and he took a hide bucket and went. Because he'd promised Jonnie not to go anywhere without testing, he'd taken a vial of breathe-gas and the remote, and he had been tossing the breathe-gas bottle thirty feet ahead of him and turning it on and off and WHAM, it flashed!

Hopping about with excitement, Angus was handing Jonnie bits of clothing to rush him on. He pushed Jonnie out the door and they walked toward the spring at the village edge.

Angus stopped him. He triggered the remote.

WHAM!

There was a flash and thud of breathe-gas exploding.

The parson, awakened by the commotion, joined them. Angus did it again for his benefit.

A sudden chill came over Jonnie, and not from the morning cold. That flash was right alongside the path where the villagers went two and three times a day for water. And more. As a little boy he had been a mutineer on a subject of what work he would do. He was a man, he had said-illogically since he had begun this soon after he could walk– and he would hunt, but he would not sweep floors or bring water. And he never had fetched water from that spring. He had even watered his horses at another spring way up the slope. The chill came from his certainty that he himself was not immune to radiation. He had simply never gone to that spring. By a fluke he had escaped contamination. All because hide buckets slopped on him.

But the villagers, particularly the children and women and older people who did draw water, were daily being hit with radiation. He felt a deeper chill for his people.

Angus wanted to dash up and dig under the snow. Jonnie, aided by the parson, held him back.

“We've no protective shields,” said Jonnie. “We need lead, lead glass, something. But let's mark this out so it becomes a prohibited zone, and then let's look further.”

They found by cautious sallies that the radiation from that spot extended, with enough force to explode breathe-gas, about thirty feet in all directions. Angus apparently had hit it dead center. They marked the ring with ashes taken from an abandoned cabin hearth, and with an axe Jonnie collected some stakes and drove them in to form a circle. Jonnie took some plaited rope and wound it around the stakes.

Jimson, along with some others attracted by the explosions, wanted to know what they were doing. Jonnie left it to the parson. As he worked he heard fragments of the parson's explanation. Something about spirits. But whatever it was Jimson shortly began to route people around the spot in a businesslike way. Jonnie was sure it would become taboo to walk within that circle. It was only a few steps further to avoid it altogether.

Dawn was there. They had to work fast to be out of there before midday, and there might be other spots. The recon drone passed near here and lately was overflying around noon. He wanted no pictures of this operation on Terl's screens. A circle of rope was nothing; it would look like a stock corral. Tracks were nothing. People and horses and dogs wandered around. But the plane up the canyon and three differently garbed people were something else.

While they chewed some breakfast Aunt Ellen brought them, Jonnie looked out across the expansive meadow. What a lot of ground to cover!

He made up his mind. It was a risk, but very brief exposures, according to toxicology texts, could be tolerated.

He got an air mask and bottles out of the gear Angus had brought. He filled his pockets with breathe-gas flasks. He got a bucket of ashes. He got on one of their horses.

“I am going to crisscross this meadow at a dead run,” he told Angus and the parson. “Back and forth and back and forth on paths thirty feet apart. I’ll be holding a breathe-gas vial in my hand, turned slightly on. Every time it flashes, I’ll throw down a handful of ashes and then hold up my arm. Now, parson, I want you to stand on that knoll and make a sketch of this valley, and you, Angus, tell him each time I hold up my hand. Got it?”

They got it. The parson went up to the knoll with a pad and pen and Angus following him.

The three young men who had voted to move wanted to know whether they could help. Jonnie told them yes, they could have fresh horses ready.

Jonnie looked around. All was ready. The red-gold sun made the snow glisten. He made sure his air mask was tight, opened the breathe-gas vial, and put a heel to the horse.

Only a minute later the vial in his hand flashed. He threw down ashes, raised his arm, and sped on at a dead run. Angus's yell floated to him on the still air. The parson was marking it on his sketch.