Back and forth, back and forth across the meadow. A flash, a handful of ashes, a raised hand, the echo of Angus's yell and the thud of the flying hoofs.

He took a new horse, opened a new bottle, and was off again.

Villagers gazed dully on the scene. Jonnie Goodboy had often done strange things. Yes, he was quite a horseman. Everybody knew that. It was a bit of a mystery why he kept lighting a torch every now and then. But old Jimson had some explanation from the clergyman who had come with Jonnie-a real clergyman from some village named Scotland. They hadn't known there was any nearby village. Oh, yes, there had been. It was a long time ago. It was a couple of ridges over. Well, in all this snow one didn't get a chance to get about much. But Jonnie Goodboy sure could ride couldn't he? Look at the snow fly!

Two hours, four lathered horses, sixteen vials of breathe-gas, and a tired Jonnie later, they got ready to take their leave. They were a bit pressed for time, too pressed to evaluate the map.

They had decided to leave the horses as a gift and would have to walk to the plane.

The parson was explaining to Jimson that people must stay well away from those ash marks, and Jimson respectfully said he would see to it even if Brown Limper was skeptical.

Aunt Ellen was looking frightened. “You're leaving again, Jonnie." She was trying to work out how to tell him that he was the only family she had.

“Would you like to come with me?” said Jonnie.

Well no. This was their home, Jonnie. He should come back. Going to wild places was in his blood, she guessed.

He promised to try to come back and then gave her some gifts he had saved until last: a great big stainless steel kettle and three knives and a fur robe with sleeves in it!

She pretended to like that very much, but she was crying when he turned back at the edge of the upper path and waved. She had a horrible feeling she would never see him again.

It was an intense hum of intent men in the room of the old mining town near the lode. Several groups were hard at work.

It had amused the Scots very much to take over the offices of the “Empire Dauntless Mining Corporation.” The building had been almost intact and when cleaned up made an acceptable operations room.

Jonnie half-suspected that somebody had rebuilt the town after the lead lode mine had played out. It was too unlike other towns. He tried to figure out why anyone would reconstruct a town after its ore was gone, but evidence certainly showed someone had. Next door was a place called the “Bucket of Blood Saloon” that the parson had gravely put “off limits.” It still had its glasses and mirrors intact, and paintings of nearly nude dancing girls and cupids could dimly be made out. Across the street was an office labeled “Wells Fargo” and another one labeled “Jail.”

They all lived in the “London Palace Elite Hotel,” which had labeled suites named after men who must have been famous in mining. Three of the old widows queened it over a coal-burning galley Angus had explained to them. It had running water– luxury!

The “Empire Dauntless” offices contained what must have been working models of the mine, and they had found “history pamphlets” in it that talked about the good old wild days of a boom camp and “bad men.” Also curious little leaflets that said “Tour Schedules” and had a daily time and place scheduled for a “bank hold-up.” Paintings of prospectors and mine discoverers and “bad men” had been cleaned off and put back on the walls.

Robert the Fox and two pilots were studiously going over possible plans to hijack an ore freighter. They had no craft that could possibly fly to Scotland or Europe, for their mine equipment could only go a few hundred miles. They had been going around and around this problem ever since the night the demon had told them about “bomber drones.” They felt they had a responsibility to alert not only the Scots but other peoples they might find traces of. They dared not alert the Psychlos they were up to anything. To intercept in the air, leaving the Psychlos to believe the freighter had gone down over the sea, was the only thing they kept coming up with. But to silence the Psychlo pilot radio, to board a freighter plane to plane in midair, were some of the things they couldn't work out.

Another group– two of the leaders who were off shift, with Thor and Dunneldeen and some of the miners-were going over mining progress.

They had gotten down to the lode and were drifting along it inch by inch toward the cliff. The quartz they were taking out was pure and beautiful, but it had no gold in it. Jonnie had explained to them, from references, that it was a lode with pockets. Wire gold veins only had pockets of gold every few hundred feet. It was not continuous valuable ore. They were getting tired of mining pure white quartz with no gold to show for it. They were trying to figure out how close they were to the fissure in the cliff. It had widened a tiny amount, which worried them.

The historian, Doctor MacDermott, was off by himself, chair tilted against a wall, reading industriously from things his scout had lately brought in from a collapsed school library in a little mining town.

Jonnie, Angus, the parson, and the schoolmaster were clustered over the parson's sketch of the valley.

The positions of the live radiation points were in a line. At first Jonnie had thought it might be a vein of uranite popping to the surface at intervals. But the points were too regular.

“They are roughly one hundred feet apart,” said Jonnie. "In a straight line.”

They were staring at the map, thinking, when Doctor MacDermott came over.

“It’s something funny I’ve got here, MacTyler," said the historian, shaking his book. “The Chinko guidebook was mistaken about the Air Force Academy.”

Jonnie shrugged. “They often said things just to please the Psychlos."

“But they called the Academy a primary defense base.”

“I know,” said Jonnie. “They wanted it to sound big because it was the last battle fought on the planet.”

“But there was a 'primary defense base,' " said the historian, shaking the book he held.

Jonnie looked at it. It was “Regulations Regarding and Governing the Evacuation of School Children in Event of Atomic War, Department of Civil Defense.”

“Apparently,” said the historian, “the children were to be kept in school until the town mayor was flown out of the city...no...ah, here it is: 'and that all orders thereafter shall be issued from the primary defense base.' "

“But we don't know where that was,” said Jonnie.

The old man scuttled back to his pile of books. “Yes, we do!” He came back with a volume concerning congressional hearings into cost overruns of military budgets. MacDermott opened the volume to where he had marked it. He read, " 'Question by Senator Aldrich: The Secretary of Defense then freely admits that the overrun of one point six billion dollars in the construction of the primary defense base in the Rocky Mountains was incurred without congressional authority. Is that correct, Mr. Secretary?' " MacDermott showed Jonnie and slapped the book shut. “So the Chinkos were wrong while they were being right. There was a 'primary defense base' and it was in the Rocky Mountains.” He smiled primly and started back to his chair.

Jonnie went very still. The tomb!

The iron doors, the dead troops on the stairs.

The tomb!

“Doctor Mac,” Jonnie called. “Come back here.”

He showed him the sketch. “You told us a story once about a line of nuclear mines laid by the Queen's Own Highlanders from Dumbarton to Falkirk."

The historian nodded. He was looking at the sketch. “Did you find some wrecked remains of Psychlo tanks?” he said.