The characters and the incidents in this book are entirely the product of the 
author's imagination and have no relation to any person or event in real life.
Copyright, 1950 by Judith Merril Pohl 
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States at the Country Life Press, Garden City, N.Y.
 
First Edition
 
FOR SHMUEL, THE TEACHER, WHO KEPT ASKING, "WHY?"
 
Contents
 
VEDA
THE CITY
THE RESCUE
THE ESCAPE
PURSUIT
 
Veda
 
Veda was sick that day. She woke up at seven, as always, but her joints ached, 
and even a cup of hot tea did not ease the queasy feeling. She waited till 
almost eight, so as not to wake anyone, then wrapped herself from collarbone to 
bony ankles in an ancient blanket bathrobe and made a labored descent to the 
telephone in the hall. She felt her way along the windowless stair well, 
feverishly angry at the landlady's refusal to light the landing during the day.
Ordinarily Veda was inclined to be, as she put it herself, "tolerant to a 
fault," so the poisonous black hatred for Mrs. Kovan shocked her and confirmed 
her judgment in staying home that day. She called the Mitchell home, and the 
Missus answered right away.
Mrs. Mitchell was sincere in her sympathy. Her voice sounded sleepy and warm, 
and Veda could hear one of the kids yelling from another room. It made her f eel 
bad about staying out.
"Now don't you touch the washin', Missus," she said plaintively. "I kin manage 
that fine tomorrer."
"Don't be silly, Veda. You take care of yourself, and don't worry about 
anything. And don't suffocate yourself in that room of yours, hear me?"
Veda hung up and climbed back to her room, smiling in spite of the dark landings 
and the ache in her joints. Missus Mitchell was a fine woman, but she had a lot 
of foolish notions. Veda inspected the windows and weather stripping in her 
room, and stuffed an old stocking in the only crack she could find.
She brewed more tea in the curtained kitchenette and pulled the extra comforter 
over her bed. Then she checked the bolt on the door. She never could get to 
sleep in a public rooming house without making sure her door was locked shut.
Sealed off from the world, she took two pills from an old green bottle and 
pulled another stocking—a woolen one—over her head, to cover her ears. Finally 
she climbed in under the double comforter to sweat out the poisons. She had no 
way of knowing she had just saved a life.
 
ONE
 
Gladys Mitchell left the phone, and could not repress a small sigh. In the 
dining room Ginny was clamoring for breakfast. Upstairs Jon was loudly demanding 
some clean socks. Veda, she reflected, was a good worker and a fine person; but 
she did have her ailments, and there was no way out of it.
"Barbie," Gladys called over the noise, "see what Ginny wants, will you?" She 
passed the hall mirror and frowned into it; there ought to be some way to turn 
the thing off in the morning. She called up to Jon and told him where to find 
the socks, then listened to his footsteps as he followed her instructions. Ginny 
had stopped yelling, but that was not necessarily good. Gladys walked swiftly 
into the dining room and found the five-year-old contentedly stuffing herself 
with hot oatmeal.
Barbara came through the swinging door from the kitchen. She set down her own 
oatmeal and gave Gladys a cup of steaming coffee. "Everything was ready on the 
stove, so I just dished it out." She was defiant about it. At fifteen, she knew 
she ought to hate housework.
Touched, Gladys squeezed her daughter's arm and sipped gratefully from the hot 
cup. She thought of Veda, alone in the dark little boardinghouse room, and she 
looked from her two daughters to Tom's picture on the lowboy—a freckle-faced boy 
grinning out of an open-necked khaki shirt, his R.O.T.C. cap pushed back on his 
head, the world in his hands. He had sent it home from school two months before, 
proud testimonial to his homemade photo enlarger. Her eyes wandered on to the 
window and the big maple tree outside. Then Jon came in and dropped a kiss on 
the top of her head before he crossed to the other end of the table.
He surveyed the uneven edges of his grapefruit and asked with the first 
mouthful, "Veda out again?" He picked up his paper. "Maybe you ought to get 
someone else, Glad?"
He hid his smile behind the raised newspaper as three feminine voices answered 
immediately and firmly. He knew how they felt about Veda.
"I ought to do the wash," Gladys was thinking out loud, "but there's that 
luncheon today . . ."
"Oh, Mother! Isn't the laundry done yet? I've got to have those things for 
tonight."
Gladys surveyed her older daughter absently. "What's tonight?"
"The class! I don't see how you can forget it every time. And I gave you the 
jackets a week ago . . ."
"You gave them to me Monday night," Gladys pointed out. "We only do laundry once 
a week around here, you know."
"I can iron 'em myself when I get back from school," Barbie pleaded, "but 
they've got to be starched and everything—they have to be washed this morning, 
Mom."
She still calls me "Mom" when she wants something, Gladys noted with amused 
satisfaction. "Mother" had come into use some months back as part of Barbara's 
campaign to convince the whole family, and primarily herself, that she was now 
fully mature.
"Are we taking in wash now?" Jon looked up from his paper.
"Oh, Daddy, I told you all about it. It's the white jackets for the baby 
sitters, and I got them at a sale, and they were all dirty. I'd never have got 
the kids to use them if they weren't so cheap."
"I don't know which is worse," Jon grumbled contentedly. "First it was Tom 
trying to blow the house up with a basement lab, and now you've got us running 
rings around a batch of baby sitters. Who started that club anyhow? And why in 
the name of all that's holy do baby sitters need white jackets?"
"I did," Barbie said defiantly. "And I already collected the money for the 
jackets, so I don't see what good it does to argue about that. I've just got to 
have them, that's all."
"Well, I ought to do the laundry anyhow. I think I can manage if you drive them 
to school. . . ." Gladys looked inquiringly at her husband. "You could take the 
car right into town. Barbie'll have to come straight home from school anyhow, so 
she could bring Ginny home on the bus."
"Okay." Jon nodded and went back to his paper. The headlines jumped at him, 
bearing threats of war and disaster; in the shaded room the warnings were 
ludicrous. He half heard Ginny babbling something about a loose tooth, and 
Barbara assuring her that she would have to wait at least another year. The news 
the paper spoke of existed in another world, not in his home. Gladys never even 
read the front page; maybe she had the right idea. He gulped his coffee and 
called to the girls to hurry up if they were going with him.
"Mommy . . . Mommy, I can't find Pallo." Ginny stood in the center of the living 
room, fighting back tears, and waiting, apparently, for the favorite horse to 
detach itself from the surroundings and walk up to her.
Gladys rescued the battered blue plush pony from behind the armchair. "If you'd 
ever remember where you put things—any of you!"
She pressed the toy into her daughter's arms, wiped away a lonely tear track, 
kissed the dry cheek, and propelled the child gently toward the door.
Jon's hat and brief case waited, as always, on the hall table, but she 
forestalled the inevitable question and held them ready for him as he strode 
through the dining room, shrugging into his jacket and straightening his tie.
"Busybody!" He grinned at her, planting a quick kiss to stop her retort. By the 
time she caught her breath and opened her mouth he was out the front door, 
racing Ginny to the gate. Barbara, sedate with a new ladylike pace she had read 
about in a magazine the week before, trailed after them. Gladys watched from the 
open window, torn by her older daughter's desperate reaching for maturity, and 
warmed again with tenderness as Jon slowed to let Ginny reach the car first.
"I won, Daddy—I'm the leader, I won, I won!" Then the car door slammed to shut 
out their voices.
She ought to get the laundry started, first thing, if she was going to make that 
luncheon. The bedrooms could wait, but, surveying the damage wreaked by the 
family tornado on its way out, she decided she'd have to tidy up downstairs 
first.
In the living room she made do with a swift straightening up: a pile of things 
to be taken upstairs later and put away—Ginny's toys . . . Jon's necktie, pulled 
off last night . . . Barbie's "Sit-Kit," designed to take a baby sitter through 
any emergency, small or large, just finished last night and brought down for 
display, and of course never put away again. The dust rag and broom took care of 
the more conspicuous spots; she could vacuum later, or if she missed it 
altogether today it wouldn't matter so much. The room looked clean, whether it 
really was or not. The dining room was littered with the breakfast dishes, last 
night's newspapers, some of Barbie's schoolbooks. The girl was getting more 
careless every day. She was so busy telling other people how to take care of 
other people's babies and get along in other people's houses that she didn't 
even have time to pick up after herself any more. That would have to stop. It 
had seemed like a good thing when Barbara first organized the baby sitters' 
club, but even a good thing could be carried too far.
Gladys piled things up and put them away—dirty dishes in the kitchen, pencils 
and papers in the desk drawer; the knitting she was trying—for the fourth 
time—to learn, she stuffed regretfully into the sideboard. There wouldn't be any 
time for that today.
Washing up the breakfast dishes, she opened the casement window over the sink. 
She could never look out this way, across the clean green sweep of the broad 
back yards, hers and her neighbor's, without a sharp contrasting memory of 
crowded dim-lit flats and furnished rooms in the city. There had been a time 
when Tom and Barbie were young, and before they were born, when Jon was not 
"Mitchell Associates, Consultants in Civil Engineering," but a junior partner in 
a small struggling firm; when every penny that wasn't spent for necessities went 
into clean shirts and ties for Jon, or into the bank, to build the dreams that 
had since come true . . . this house among them. Now, looking up over the 
breakfast dishes, she could see out across the lawns, where the bread wagon was 
working its way along between the double row of houses. The un­named road was 
too pretty, with its white gravel set against green lawns, to be called an 
alley. She could see the Grahams' three-year-old boy playing across the way, 
digging a hole smack in the middle of the early garden his father had been 
planting. How was Annie Graham going to explain that one tonight? And if she 
kept on ex­plaining things away to Tod, Sr., what was going to become of the 
child anyway?
Impatiently she cut off the train of thought and moved her eyes past the play 
pen in the next yard, letting them linger on the baby buggy out back of the 
Turners'. Peggy had finally had the baby she wanted; after three years of 
trying, and four solid months flat on her back, she'd done it. Now with little 
Meg already six weeks old, Peggy wasn't out of bed yet, and so far there was no 
sign that she would be. But with Jim back from the most recent of his "business 
trips," things should be easier for Peggy. . . .
Annoyed at herself again, Gladys bent sternly over the dishes; other people's 
troubles were easy to think about, she told herself, when you had none of your 
own. Everything's almost too good. That was superstitious and silly, she knew, 
but she couldn't help it. How long could things go on, getting better all the 
time?
Scouring the last pot, she thought she heard her name called. Across the yard 
her next-door neighbor, Edie Crowell, was clipping the hedge against the budding 
of the first spring leaves, a tall graceful figure in tailored slacks, floppy 
hat, and worn gardening gloves, perfectly in place in the well-planned flower 
garden back of the big white colonial house.
"Good morning," Edie called across. Her polished voice carried clearly across 
the grass and arrived pleasant and well modulated, as if she were carrying on a 
tea-table conversation. By comparison, Gladys' own hearty hail always sounded to 
her like a fishwife's cry. But she couldn't go out; she wasn't dressed yet. She 
waved a reply to the greeting and Edie promptly left her hedge and started over.
Groaning inwardly and apologizing out loud for the wrapper she still wore, 
Gladys opened the kitchen door and stood talking to her neighbor on the back 
porch.
"I was just wondering," Edie explained, "if you'd mind terribly going to the 
luncheon alone. I'll be there of course, but Phil didn't get back last night, 
and I have to go to the bank this morning. I could come back, of course, but . . 
. well, the bank is so close to the Cortlands' . . . of course if you can get 
away early enough you could come along with me . . ."
Gladys explained rapidly about Veda and the laundry. It was going to be hard to 
get ready on time, let alone early.
Edie listened sympathetically, but of course she couldn't really understand. 
"You won't be late, will you? I've reserved a place for you."
Gladys was stung by the implied rebuke. She had an errant impulse to leave the 
laundry after all. The luncheon was something she'd been looking forward to for 
days—actually for months, but the invitation had not been forthcoming until two 
weeks ago. The luncheon was a monthly affair held at a different woman's home 
every time, and the circle was limited. It was the first chance she had had to 
meet any of the Crowells' friends, and if she were late today it might be the 
last.
But she couldn't let Barbie down. And Ginny really needed some clean socks. And 
Jon's field trip—was it tomorrow or Wednesday? He didn't have any clean khakis. 
If it was tomorrow, then they had to be done today. If she had to do that much 
she might just as well do all of it. Defiantly she thought that she had done 
more than that in a day's work before—with two small babies on her hands and no 
washing machine.
Just a shade too sweetly she promised Edie that she'd be on time, and dashed off 
to answer the ringing of the telephone. Somebody wanted to speak to Miss Barbara 
Mitchell. Gladys took the woman's name and telephone number, jotted them down, 
and explained that the sitting service's hours were before eight-thirty and 
after three-thirty. Miss Mitchell, she said, would call back.
She finished up in the kitchen without any more dawdling and started downstairs. 
Of course this had to be the morning that she would get a splinter groping along 
the rough board for the cellar light. The switch was just too far out of reach, 
and the stairs too precarious to manage in the dark. Jon had promised a hundred 
times to fix the switch—but now she had to take time out to remove the splinter 
and patch up her finger.
By the time she got down to the laundry she was saving seconds. She sorted 
things out swiftly, stuffed the first washing of white things into the machine, 
and let it run while she went back upstairs to tear through the bedrooms, 
whirling sheets, blankets, duster, and broom in a tornado of determined energy. 
Still, when she passed through the kitchen again on her way back downstairs, the 
toy clock on the wall told her it was after ten-thirty. She pulled towels and 
underwear out of the machine, and filled it again with light-colored wash 
clothes, compromising with conscience by deciding to leave the flatwork for Veda 
to do when she got a chance. But by the time the first load was in the drier she 
realized there just weren't enough corners to cut. She couldn't bathe, dress, 
and get to the other side of town by twelve-thirty. She shouldn't have tried to 
do it all; she could have done Barbie's things, and Jon's, and let the rest go. 
But now she had started it, she couldn't very well leave it. And after the 
exchange with Edie this morning she would rather not go than risk being late.
It would be the better part of courtesy to let Edie know right away. She went 
upstairs to call but the Crowells' phone didn't answer. Of course—Edie was at 
the bank. Mrs. Cortland, luncheon hostess for the day, was formal and distant on 
the telephone. Apparently household emergencies did not come under the heading 
of acceptable excuses for these affairs.
With the polite phrases still lingering in her head, Gladys went back to the 
laundry and made a furious attack on the pieces that had to be done by hand. 
About to put the last load into the machine, she was suddenly ravenously hungry 
and went up to the kitchen for a sandwich. The phone rang again, but she ignored 
it. She didn't want to talk to Edie Crowell or to any of Barbie's babies' 
mothers. Dutifully swallowing a hated glass of milk, she tried to convince 
herself that she didn't really care about joining the Crowells' social circle. 
She finished eating, but stayed in her chair an extra moment to watch the 
painted porcelain figures parade out of the Swiss chalet on the toy clock, 
announcing that noon had come.
Even in the bitterness of the solitary lunch the clock made her feel good. She 
had had one like it in her room when she was a little girl, and had always 
wanted another. But Jon wouldn't have it; he said they were always breaking down 
and that there weren't any watchmakers any more who could repair the delicate 
old mechanisms. He held out firmly, until the day Mitchell Associates got its 
first big commission—and then he never even told her the news till almost a week 
later, when he came home bearing a mysterious package which had to be unwrapped 
before he would tell his big secret. It was the clock, the one she had watched 
in a store window for months, afraid it would be sold before she could persuade 
Jon—and just as the outside had been carefully worked over, all the bright 
colors restored and the chipped spots repaired, so the insides had been taken 
out bodily and replaced with a new electric mechanism.
Gladys went back to work with renewed energy, only a part of it from the food 
she had eaten. But, piling the last load of heavy-duty clothing into the 
machine, she worked more slowly than she had in the morning, overcome by a 
nostalgia that brought its own solace to banish the memory of cultivated, 
condescending tones. Jon's last remaining set of G.I. khakis, reserved for 
basement and garden work, were a humble contrast to the new field outfit that 
went in right afterward. And they brought back grim pictures of the washbasin in 
a rooming house near Fort Bragg; Ginny's utilitarian overalls brought on a surge 
of memories even more remote, from the time before the war, when the depression 
had lifted to become merely a "recession"—a series of Manhattan walkups, each 
with its identical small dark kitchen, each with the same stained double-duty 
sink, where Tom's and Barbie's well-worn corduroys had got their weekly 
scrubbings.
A factory whistle screamed in the distance and broke into her thoughts, setting 
her hands to flying faster and her head to clearing. One o'clock already? She 
stopped a moment, altogether, to listen more closely. It couldn't be a factory 
whistle; the sound had fitted perfectly into her memories, but it had no place 
in lower Westchester. Even as she listened the sound died away, too short-lived 
for a factory call. And the timbre of it was different. In spite of its 
shrillness it could almost have been mistaken for thunder, if the brilliant 
sunshine streaming through the high window hadn't just then redoubled in its 
intensity, bathing the whitewashed cellar walls with a deluge of red-gold light. 
She shook her head and tried to dismiss the whole thing, but for some reason the 
sound, dead now in reality, lived on inside her head, eerie and almost 
frightening. Then, as if to fit her change of mood, the small window darkened 
and the reassuring brightness of the sun disappeared. Maybe it had been thunder 
after all, a freak electric storm, too early in the year.
Gladys snapped the light switch, and the glaring overhead bulb cleared away all 
kinds of shadows. She pulled fresh, sweet-smelling clothes out of the machine 
and sorted them rapidly for the drier, for the mangle, for starching.
Upstairs the phone was ringing, but she ignored it. One more inquiry about a 
baby sitter would be one too many. She stayed at the ironing board, trying to 
work out the strange mood that had descended on her. She had made up her mind to 
be through with this before the children came home. Veda would have been done 
long ago. The pile of flatwork, neglected in the corner, reproached her.
When she finished, finally, she was damp and disheveled, but triumphant; she 
still had more than half an hour to rest and change her clothes before the 
children got home. While she washed, upstairs, the phone started in again. She 
dropped her towel to run and catch it, but got there just in time to hear the 
receiver on the other end click down in disappointment. And going back up, her 
tired feet and pounding heart protested and she had to take the stairs at a 
careful pace. Whatever she had been able to do ten years ago, she was out of 
practice now.
A little after three, she stood on the porch in a clean dress, washed and 
combed, and convinced that powder and lipstick hid the tired lines in her face. 
Her eyes were fixed on the corner where the streetcar stopped, watching to see 
the big girl and the little one get off together. Intent on the distance, she 
was startled when a car horn honked at the front gate. Ginny and Barbara tumbled 
out of opposite doors—the baby landing on the sidewalk, and Barbie forgetting to 
be sedate as she ran around from the street side.
Gladys recognized the car; it was that nice new teacher who some-times passed 
the house on her way home. She started down the walk, thinking, I ought to ask 
Miss Pollock in for a cup of tea—she's been so nice.
But before she could reach the gate Ginny piled on her, arms and legs flailing 
and small red lips puckered for a welcome kiss. By the time they were 
disentangled the motor was starting up again and Gladys caught only a few words 
over the noise of the starter, something Miss Pollock was saying about "awfully 
good of you."
Barbie was pouring out eager conversation. "Miss Pollock thought it was so 
sensible of you not to call. All the other mothers did and she said to thank you 
specially." Dazed, Gladys realized that she never had spoken the invitation 
aloud and that the teach­er's polite thanks referred to something else entirely.
"Well, why would I call . . . ?"
"I don't know! Everybody did, though. All the mothers."
"I know, I know!" Ginny was dancing up and down. Gladys put her hand on the 
baby's bright hair, trying to quiet her a minute. But she was too tired to think 
about it, and Ginny would not be quieted. "I do know, Mommy. Listen to me." She 
stopped jumping and tugged at Gladys' skirt. "Please listen, Mommy."
"All right, baby." Gladys gave up trying to straighten out the conversational 
mix-up. "You tell me all about everything that happened, Ginny."
"It was raining!"
Barbie gave a snort of disgust and stalked away, her shoulders set in studied 
contempt of Ginny's baby stories and of people who listened to them. "Maybe I 
can find out something on the radio," she flung over her shoulder, "if nobody 
else around here even cares when something important is happening."
"I don't know how important it is," Gladys called after her, "but there's a 
message for you on the phone pad. And I wish you'd tell those people what hours 
you're home. I'm getting tired of playing secretary for you."
Ginny was tugging at her impatiently. "Mommy, it was raining on one side of the 
street," she reported ecstatically. "First there was a funny noise like thunder, 
only different, and then the sun was shining bright like a sunset, sort of, and 
then it was dark all of a sudden, only the cloud was far away, and then after a 
while it began to really rain, only it was raining across the street and not in 
the yard." She frowned. "Only Pallo wanted to know if it was really raining, and 
Teacher wouldn't let me out to see. It was all foggy on our side, but it was 
raining across the street."
Gladys struggled with a long buried memory—herself as a little girl, discovering 
that it didn't always rain every place at the same time. Maybe there had been 
some sort of freak storm after all. It was early in the year for an electric 
storm, but that could explain why people were calling the school. Maybe some 
lightning had struck near by. She laughed again and scooped Ginny up in her 
arms. "Since when," she asked, "does the sun shine bright at sunset? Do you know 
what sunset is?"
Ginny managed to look very unconcerned. "Oh sure," she said, "yeah."
"Yes," Gladys corrected automatically. "I don't know where you pick these things 
up." Ginny squirmed in her arms and Gladys felt something cold and damp pushed 
against her. "What in the world . . . ? How did you get that horse so wet?" She 
let the child down and followed her through the open door.
"She won't even let go of him long enough to get washed." Standing at the phone, 
Barbie covered the mouthpiece with her hand to offer the comment.
"Well, give it to me now," Gladys told the little girl. "I'll put it up on the 
shelf in the kitchen till it's dry."
Looking excessively guilty, Ginny thumped up the stairs to her room. Listening, 
Gladys marveled again at the persistence of the phrase about the "pitter-patter" 
of little feet.
"That's funny." Barbie put the phone down with a puzzled air. "I dialed twice 
and I can't get her."
"Maybe the lines are down somewhere," Gladys suggested.
"I don't know—but something's certainly going on. I'll let you know what I find 
out," Barbie offered generously, and followed Ginny up the stairs.
Gladys started toward the kitchen, thinking of the roast that had to be put on, 
refusing to think about how tired she was after a half day's honest work.
She was shelling peas when Barbie called from upstairs.
There are all sorts of noises children make—some to be ignored, some to be 
thought about, some to be tended to, and one in particular that must have 
immediate unhesitating attention. Gladys dropped the peas and took the stairs on 
the run.
Barbara's door was open and the girl sat huddled near her midget radio set, 
listening, not only with her ears, but with dilated eyes and outstretched hands; 
her whole body was curiously intent. She didn't turn as Gladys came in but one 
hand motioned rapidly, "Come here," while her lips pursed in a half-aspirated 
"sh-h."
Gladys knew, of course. She had lived through the one war already; no one who 
had would ever forget that pose of horrified fascination in front of a radio. 
She crossed the rag rug, every color in it distinctly visible, every pattern of 
light and shadow in the room sharp and clear, every step a century long, before 
she was within hearing range of the radio. She stood immobile next to the girl 
on the bed as the impossible words hurled themselves at her.
". . . one-fifteen P.m., Eastern Standard Time, this afternoon. It is almost 
certain that equal damage was sustained throughout the country. The cities 
outside the radius of two hundred miles, roughly, have not yet been heard from. 
Transcontinental wires are down and radiations appear to be interfering with 
radio communications in all directions." Static crackled out of the set with 
every word. Listening was torture to the ears as to the mind.
"Flash! We have just received our first report, since the bombing, from 
Washington, D.C. The Capitol was hit by at least one bomb at about one-thirty 
today. The larger part of the governmental area has—" The voice cut off 
abruptly, replaced by a chattering flow of noisy interference. "For security 
reasons," the same voice, sounding less assured, returned, "it is necessary to 
condense the report from Washington, D.C. It is estimated that only one bomb 
exploded there.
"We repeat—we repeat, please don't leave your homes. If you are in a dangerous 
area you will receive orders for evacuation. Do not leave your homes. If you are 
near a bombed-out area you are safe only indoors. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES.
"So far as we can determine, no damage has been done except in areas in and 
around the major cities. We do not yet know who the aggressor was. We do not . . 
."
The bland professional voice edged upward, strident and shrill, through the last 
half-dozen words, and broke at last into a raucous scream of laughter. The radio 
went dead.
Another voice cut in. "You have just heard a report from Washington, D.C., 
received by teletype from a relay station in the outskirts of Philadelphia. For 
those who have just tuned in, we repeat: several atomic bombs of unknown origin 
landed in and near the harbor of New York City this afternoon. The first 
explosion occurred at about 1:15 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, and was followed 
by others over a period estimated to be approximately one half hour. It is known 
that no bombs were dropped after two o'clock. Eyewitnesses state that the first 
bomb exploded underwater at the mouth of the East River, affecting harbor 
shipping in New York and Brooklyn, and substantially damaging a large part of 
the lower tip of Manhattan Island. There is no official statement as yet..."
The words were clipped, staccato, rigidly controlled, shooting out of the little 
radio with penetrating, meaningless malevolence. "Although the attack was 
focused on Manhattan, bombs are known to have been dropped in outlying boroughs, 
and one at least in New Jersey. First reports from reconnaissance planes 
indicate that Man­hattan itself is almost completely destroyed from the Battery 
up as far as Ninety-sixth Street, with only a narrow strip of land west of Ninth 
Avenue, along the Hudson, apparently intact. This damage appears to be the 
result of two air-exploded bombs, both of which were aimed at targets on the 
east side. But everywhere, except at the target centers of the explosions, some 
buildings are still standing, and it is believed that survivors will be found 
all over the bombed area."
". . . except at target centers. Gladys remembered a description, read and 
shuddered over, and set aside, she had thought, even from memory . . . the 
description of an atomic bomb landing at Twentieth Street and Third Avenue. . . 
. The El, Gramercy Park, the courthouse, the high school, City College, 
flattened, melted into a compound featureless surface, the buildings that had 
not gone up into thin air at the instant of explosion, reduced by inconceivable 
heat to a glassy expanse of poisoned wasteland.
The words kept coming, swarming at her out of the radio, sting­ing, biting, 
bitter. The words kept coming, but Gladys no longer heard them. She knew she 
should be listening—there were things she had to know—for the children, for 
herself, for Jon.
Jon was in the city all day!
Somewhere inside her she heard the beginnings of a scream and then her ears 
heard it, and it was Barbara, not herself at all. There was no time to think 
about Jon now. The incredible words were attacking Barbie too. There was no time 
for thinking at all; Gladys' reflexes acted for her. Rocking back and forth, she 
cradled the girl's head on her breast, patting the wild curls—crooning a little, 
calm­ing, soothing. And when that didn't work she pulled the girl's face up and 
slapped her sharply.
Shock succeeded panic. Barbara fell back limply, long enough for Gladys to tell 
her in swift harsh tones, "We have Ginny to think of. You'll have to help me. 
Barbie, stop it!"
The sound that would have been a scream came out as a sob, quiet, dull, and 
hopeless. And now there was another noise, a familiar one among the symphony of 
stranger sensations. The thump of small sturdy shoes on the stairs and the 
rattle of dangling roller skates brought Barbara jumping to her feet.
"I'll get her. She can't go out!" Horror came to a climax and broke loose in the 
last word.
She was halfway to the door when her mother called after her curtly, "No!"
"Ginny!" she called, breathing deep, searching for inner calm and for ordinary 
unfrightening words. "Virginia! Did you dust your room yet?"
Downstairs reluctant footsteps lagged.
"Virginia!" Just a note of sharpness—and this time the feet turned back.
"I was just getting the dust rag, Mommy." Ginny appeared at the foot of the 
stairs, guilty innocence in every line of her face, skates nowhere in evidence, 
and a large gray cloth in her hand. The scene had played itself out this way a 
hundred times before, and it had always been funny. Now it wound to a close like 
an old worn-out film. The two who stood at the top of the stairs watched with 
tortured senses the inevitable ending of the staled sequence.
From behind, Gladys heard an outpouring of breath, a jerky sign of finished 
fear. She waited in silence till Ginny had passed them and gone shamefaced into 
her room, then turned to the older girl. "Barbie, you'll have to get her playing 
something inside. Don't scare her. Don't tell her she can't go out. Just keep 
her interested in something in here." She turned again, started for the stairs.
"I can't,' Barbara said hopelessly. "I can't. I don't know what . . . "
"Of course you can." Gladys didn't even look back. "You have to." Halfway down, 
she paused and called back. "I've got to do some phoning. Turn off your radio, 
Barbie, and I'll listen in downstairs. Remember what I said." Without waiting 
for a reply, she went on down, drawn by an instinctive need too strong to 
resist. She picked up the phone and had to wipe sudden futile tears from her 
eyes before she could dial.
"What number are you calling?"
"Atlas 9-4200. Mitchell Associates." Her voice was still clear, somehow 
untouched by the fear that clutched at her throat.
"I am sor-ry. That number has been discon-nected . . . due to emcr-gcncy."
"Thank you." The receiver dropped from her hand, and she marveled at the bored 
everyday efficiency of the operator. Perhaps she had been overfrightened. Maybe 
it was her own dread that had crept into the radio announcers' voices.
She switched on the radio, loud, and tuned it down again imme­diately, keeping 
the rush of words locked up in the room with her, not letting them get out to do 
their damage upstairs.
"Do not leave your homes. Stay indoors." It was the same man she had heard in 
Barbie's room, and even that small familiarity was welcome. "The governor has 
arrived at Emergency Headquarters in White Plains and will speak to you over 
this station at four-fifteen. The time is now three fifty-three. The governor's 
message will be heard in exactly twenty-two minutes. Stay at home and keep your 
radio tuned in. Citizens are requested not to use their tele­phones for personal 
conversations. All lines still up are needed for rescue work and emergency 
squads. All persons with medical or safety control training are asked to report 
to Emergency Headquarters immediately by telephone. Just call or dial the 
operator and ask for the nearest E.H.Q. All others will please refrain from use 
of the telephone. I repeat, keep your radio tuned in, and do not use your 
telephone. The governor will deliver his message in twenty minutes at 
four-fifteen, Eastern Standard Time. Stay tuned to this station."
Three fifty-five! This, all of this, in half an hour. It was already after three 
when she had stood on the front porch and watched for the children. And now—not 
yet four o'clock!
 
TWO
 
Somewhere a siren was shrieking, off in the distance. It had been going on for a 
long time, sustained shrill background to the crazy words that spewed from the 
ceaseless, coughing static of the radio. Now as she listened it began to die, 
fading away until its shattering impact ceased to fall on bruised nerves, until 
its caustic cry was heard in memory alone. Memory held another siren, that was 
not a siren, that was thunder. That was not thunder; it was the warning scream 
of slaughter in the skies. And now again the sound, the dying sound, like a 
factory steam whistle left to blow itself out.
The smell of scorched metal roused her from nightmare. She ran through the 
dining room, and the swinging door to the kitchen flapped open and shut, open 
and shut, as she turned off the flame under the kettle, dry now and empty, 
blackened on the bottom and in one wide streak up the side. Sitting forlornly on 
the spout, the silenced robin returned her stare with one accusing eye.
Robins, Gladys thought, are supposed to say, "Cheer-up!" It seemed very funny. 
Laughing, she reached for the insulated handle, dropped it again as it burned 
her fingers. The sudden pain cleared her head. She folded a pot holder around 
the handle and carried the pot over to the sink. The hiss and sizzle of cold 
water hitting the bottom, spattering up against the dry-hot sides, was familiar, 
reassuring. She saw the peas still standing on the worktable, half shelled, and 
thought with a grateful start, We still have to eat.
She tackled the small task with a furious release of pent-up energy, her fingers 
working with accustomed speed and knowledge through the pile of unshelled pods; 
she finished just as the toy clock struck four. In fifteen minutes the governor 
would speak. She shook the peas loose in the colander, but her hand, halfway to 
the tap, stopped in mid-air.
The water—was the water all right?
The phone pealed urgently, and Jon's face swam before her, his voice sounded in 
her ears. She started running for the front of the house, but the pounding of 
her heart made her slow down. You couldn't keep on running, no matter what kind 
of emergency it was.
"Jon!" she breathed. There was no answer, only the tense silence of a telephone 
where someone waits to speak. "Jon," she cried again, "Jon, where are—"
"This is Telephone Central," a mechanical voice broke in, "call­ing to check 
your wire. Thank you for an-swer-ing."
"But what . . . who . . . ?"
"This is Telephone Central," the voice said again, "calling to check your wire. 
Thank you for an-swer-ing."
"Operator!" Gladys demanded. "Operator, you cut into my—"         
"This is Telephone Central," it began to repeat. They couldn't hear her at all. 
It was a one-way connection.
Gladys didn't believe it. She stood there, jiggling the hook futilely, until the 
phone went dead, buzzing monotonously in her ear.
She dropped the receiver back on the cradle, then picked it up again and dialed 
the operator with a swift angry circle of her finger. Nothing happened; no 
inquiring voice, not even the comforting delay of a ring on the other end.
Angry at herself now, she hung up and tried again. This time she waited for the 
dial tone. Now at least it rang—on and on, endlessly. She was ready to give up 
for the last time when the oper­ator's precision-machined voice finally asked 
what she wanted.
"Emergency Headquarters, please." Miraculously the operator made the connection 
without questioning her need.
Then there was a man's voice at the other end, bored, weary, but human. Gladys 
tried to stay cool and rational, but the man's voice was too close to kindness 
and her purpose thawed. Horrified, she heard herself babbling about water, and 
her husband in the city, her son, and the bombs, until he interrupted sharply.
"This is a priority wire, lady. What do you want?"
One at a time, she told herself firmly, one thing at a time.
"My husband," she said quickly, "my husband is in the city. How can I find out—"
"You'll be notified if we get anything," he broke in. "It'll all be on the radio 
when the governor talks. You listen in to that."
A dozen urgent unanswered questions circled dizzily in Gladys' mind. She was 
terrified that the man would hang up. "My son," she threw at him hastily. "He's 
at school. He's away at Texas Tech."
"An engineering student?" The voice sounded faintly interested. "Yes," Gladys 
breathed hopefully.
"All technical students are being mobilized into the Army," he said.
Gladys gasped and recovered. "But he can't—I mean he's only seventeen    "
"All technical students are being mobilized," the man insisted. Gladys didn't 
believe it; it was absurd. "But there must be some way I can find out—"
"The Army will notify you."
"The school's in Houston," Gladys said hopefully. "Do you know anything . . . ?"
"I'm sorry, lady. That's all I can tell you." The phone clicked again and buzzed 
while she stood there holding it to her ear until finally another of the 
mechanical voices cut in.
"Num-ber, please?"
Gladys couldn't think. One immediate question filled her mind now. "The water," 
she implored. "I've got to know about the water. Is it all right? Can I use it?"
"I am sor-ry. We do not have that information at this exchange. You will be 
noti-fied by the prop-per author-rities."
A definite click at the other end broke the connection. Gladys put the receiver 
down slowly. Jon . . . Tom . . . what did she know that she hadn't known before? 
The water . . . "all technical students" . . . "proper authorities" . . . 
Phrases swam around in her head and suddenly achieved meaning.
She had to remind herself again not to run up the stairs unnec­essarily. 
"Barbie," she called, and waited to hear the door of Ginny's room opened. 
"Barbie, you know where Tom's old schoolbooks are?"
A vague affirmative floated down the stairs.
"You go look and bring me down everything on physics. Right away."
"Mom, there's two shelves full of physics!"
"Well, you know what I want," Gladys said impatiently.
"I don't see how I'm to know what you want if you don't . . ." The injured tones 
drifted down the stairs.
"For heaven's sake, Barbara, just use your judgment for once." No answer, but 
footsteps marched down the hall. She called me Mom again! Gladys thought 
suddenly. I have to be careful . . . I have to watch myself.
The kettle began to whistle. Gladys couldn't remember why she had put it on 
again, but now she got down a big canning jar and filled it, running boiling 
water over the top and sealing it tight. She put it out on the window sill and 
filled the kettle once more. At least they would have drinking water if they 
needed it.
The clock said four-ten. Barbara pushed the door open, hugging a toppling stack 
of books to her bosom. "I hope these are right," she said stiffly.
"I'm sure you chose better than I could," Gladys assured her. "Maybe you can 
find what I want. Do I have to boil the water or anything like that? Maybe I 
should have read up more before . . . but I don't know; I never could believe, 
really . . ."
"It wouldn't do any good," Barbara said knowingly. "Even gas masks don't help." 
But she was trailing a finger down contents pages, riffling open the most 
promising book. "Maybe some of the stories in those magazines he used to read 
would tell you more. Really, Mother"—she was upholding Tom's seven-year-old 
family argument—"they had some pretty good stuff in them . . . anyhow Tom said 
they did."
"We wouldn't know what to look for," Gladys told her. "We couldn't go through 
all the magazines. Anyhow, he was afraid I'd throw them out and he put them down 
in the cellar in a wooden crate. I don't even know which one it is."
"Mother," Barbara broke in suddenly, "who called up before?"
"They were just checking to find out if the phone was working." Gladys took a 
deep breath. How much can I tell her? How much should she know? After that 
panicky quarter hour at the radio upstairs it was hard to decide.
"But I called Emergency Headquarters and they said they didn't think Tom's 
school had been bombed. They said the Army would notify us; they're drafting all 
the technical students."
"Did they give you his address? Did they know what part of the Army he's in?"
Gladys shook her head. "They're supposed to notify us." She couldn't understand 
the easy excitement of this reaction.
"Here's something," Barbara was saying. "It tells about safety measures at Oak 
Ridge           " She stopped short at the look of dismay on her mother's face, 
and then comprehension flooded over her. "Oh, Mother, everybody knows we're the 
strongest country in the whole world—we've got a"—she struggled with the words, 
try­ing to get them straight—"a stockpile of bombs, and bases and planes and 
missiles, and—" She stopped. "Tom told me," she confided. "He always knew it 
would happen, but you never let him talk about it, and he was always wishing it 
would wait till he was old enough and now he's in it, don't you see? I'll bet 
he's so excited he can hardly—"           
She stopped short, vaguely aware that she had said something wrong. "But, 
Mother, don't you see there's nothing to worry about? It's not like fighting in 
the old days. Tom won't have to go to the front or anything. He's a technician, 
and he'll work at the base, and —well, the danger is only in the big cities, 
and—well, they must have the radio or telegraph or something working all over 
the country already, or they wouldn't have known about Tom's school. Mom! 
Where's Daddy?"
With numbed lips Gladys framed the lie. "He's all right, honey. I'm sure he 
wasn't hurt, only they won't let him out of the—the danger zone, until 
everybody's checked. I don't understand, but the governor is—" Her eyes flew to 
the clock. "It's started already.
Make sure Ginny's all right, will you, Babs? And then come down if you can." She 
flung it over her shoulder, already on the way to the radio.
The speaker was giving forth a low authoritative rumble, none of it 
distinguishable as words, but the sum total of it clearly the governor's speech. 
She turned it up too far, and a bombardment of words filled the room.
"The Army is fully mobilized and there is nothing further to fear. There will be 
no more attacks. A screen of radar shields every inch of our borders, from below 
sea level to the far reaches of the stratosphere. Nothing can get through. We 
are living inside a great dome of safety, our whole nation protected by the 
radar sweep from bases prepared long ago."
But they didn't work. It didn't work before. Gladys tried to understand.
"Our entire energies now must be directed to rescue work in the bombed areas, 
and to safety measures in nearby zones. When I have finished, the emergency 
radiologist for the entire area will speak to you. For full information about 
safety measures, be sure to keep your radio tuned in. Several important 
announcements will be made by the radiologist. In closing, I want to comment on 
the remarkable courage—the heroism—displayed by all of you in this national 
emergency. In times of great crisis the true mettle of a people emerges; and I 
may say, without fear of exaggeration . . ."
For a moment she was aware of Barbie at her shoulder.
"The governor?" the girl asked, awed. Gladys nodded, motion­ing for silence. The 
governor—and he was only a tired man, trying to cover his own confusion with 
words.
Still, it was the words that mattered. She listened obediently, attentively. 
Barbie went off toward the stairs, lingering over each footstep to hear as much 
as she could.
". . . sustained so great an attack with such single-minded determination to 
carry on in the face of danger—never has any coun­try on earth had better cause 
for pride in its fearless and co-opera­tive citizenry."
More words—no courage, no confidence, no hope—only the voice of a weary 
salesman, suavely peddling unwanted wares.
"For reasons of security, it is impossible for me to tell you more at the 
present time, about the extent of the damage incurred, or our plans for 
retaliation. But you may carry on with your duties to home and country, assured 
that the enemy shall not go unpunished! At this moment plans that have lived 
only on paper for many years are grinding slowly but surely into action.
"Our enemies shall learn now to fear the eagle in its nest. Thank you, my 
friends. Courage and patience are all we need to win."
Gladys heard the last words with a sinking sensation of bewilder­ment. The man 
had said nothing, nothing at all. Nothing about the city, about the people 
trapped there . . . nothing but words. . . .
"That was Governor Cauldwell, speaking from Emergency Headquarters. Please do 
not turn your radio off. In one minute you will hear the district radiologist. 
While waiting, please supply yourself with writing equipment. You will hear 
information of vital importance. Get paper and pen or pencil now. The 
radiologist will be on the air in forty seconds."
"I'll get it, Mom." Gladys didn't know Barbara had come back until she spoke.
"Thanks, baby." She took the pad and pencil and looked up into her daughter's 
excited face. "I don't know what I'd do without you. I really—" 
She stopped. The radio was clearing its throat and the an­nouncer's voice had 
come through again.
"Here you are, ladies and gentlemen. The man who holds our safety—yours and 
mine—in his hands throughout this emergency —District Radiologist Harold F. 
Hennessy, speaking from Emer­gency Headquarters. Will you come in, please, Dr. 
Hennessy?"
A second's silence, broken only by the incessant low-pitched barking of the 
static—then one more void in the welter of voices.
"One hour and fifteen minutes ago you heard the first radio report of the 
bombing of New York City. You know now that our whole country has been attacked 
and severe damage has been in­flicted in many major cities.
"For security reasons I cannot tell you the exact extent of the damage, but I 
can tell you that communications are being restored and that a national 
government will shortly be in operation.
"For the rest of you—you already know that the island of Manhattan, where the 
largest damage was inflicted, has been com­pletely closed off. Washington 
Heights, where radioactivity is below danger level, including the entire area 
from 125th Street to the river, has been transformed into a gigantic emergency 
headquarters, field hospital, and Army base. Scores of radiologists are at work 
there, testing conditions to provide for the safety of suburban areas. Rescue 
squads are penetrating from the hospital base there to the lower part of the 
island, inspecting every building, subway, sewer, or shelter of any kind still 
standing where survivors may be holding out.
"At the present time fires are still burning in many parts of the city, but most 
of the larger buildings are still standing, and many of these are fireproof. 
Outside the areas of direct hit, many survivors are expected."
The words were stern; there was no attempt to allay fear, but like the dentist 
who says, "This will hurt a little, but it won't take long," Hennessy renewed 
courage by the simple admission that things were bad. The knowledge, new to 
Gladys, that the national government had broken down, seemed credible and 
bearable, as long as something was being done.
"Another hospital base is now being established in the Pelham Bay section of the 
Bronx, to care for victims of the bomb burst in the lower riverside area of the 
East Bronx. Similar smaller bases will be set up as rapidly as possible in the 
outskirts of Brooklyn and Queens, and hospitals are already treating emergency 
cases in some suburban areas.
"No one at present is being allowed to leave the areas of heavy contamination 
except by way of the hospital bases and decontami­nation centers. A cordon of 
police and National Guardsmen is being thrown across Westchester County at New 
Rochelle and across Queens County at Jamaica. Similar patrols are being 
estab­lished by the local governments in New Jersey. We are anxious to release 
survivors as quickly as possible, but it is essential to prevent exposed 
individuals from leaving the area without a thorough examination. Special 
equipment and training are required to detect the presence of atomic radiations 
and many survivors within the danger zone may be unaware of their own condition.
"Remember—trained personnel are now at work directing res­cue squads. Operations 
are being carried out in accordance with well-integrated plans developed and 
improved over many years. Unorganized attempts at assistance or escape can only 
result in panic and confusion. Our object is to move everyone as quickly as 
possible out of contaminated areas and away from any danger of infection.
"For the time being your first concern must be your own safety. Radioactive 
rain, resulting from the underwater explosion, as well as dust, smoke, and wind, 
may endanger large areas around New York City. The entire area of Greater New 
York, including Staten Island; Westchester County as far north as Pleasantville; 
the lower part of Fairfield County, including Ridgefield and Wilton, in 
Con­necticut; all of Suffolk County in Long Island; and all parts of New Jersey 
along the Hudson from upper Middlesex County to the New York State line; and in 
Rockland County in New York State, as far north as New City—"   
"If you live inside this district you will receive a visit within the next few 
hours from an emergency squad truck. Members of emer­gency squads will be 
prepared to answer your questions and to handle immediate difficulties.
"If you live outside the limits I have described you are requested to stay near 
your homes and hold yourselves ready to assist Emer­gency Headquarters. Your 
help is desperately needed in the danger zones.
"Further information and instructions for all will be broadcast over a local 
station in your vicinity. Please listen carefully and write down the information 
that is given you. But before you turn your dial, one last word of 
encouragement. We have been damaged but not destroyed. Local governments are 
functioning. Trains are run­ning in most sectors. Local wire and telephone 
services are in operation. Emergency Headquarters are operating in the vicinity 
of every bombed area. Amateur radio operators are already filling in nationwide 
gaps in communication. Everything that can humanly be done to save lives and 
prevent further disaster is being done."
Abruptly the voice stopped and it was hard to tell whether the sound that 
followed was a snort of disgust or just more static.
"In order to conserve power and to prevent this information from reaching the 
enemy, this broadcast will be continued over a low-power short-range station. 
Please tune your radio now to 980—that is number 980 on your radio—number 
980—please tune your radio to number 980 . . ."
Gladys got up stiffly and handed the pad and pencil to Barbara. Will you listen 
carefully, Barbie? I want to take a look at Ginny —she's too quiet." Barbara 
nodded raptly, already turning the dial, intent on finding the station.
"I'm not too quiet." It was a high-pitched indignant voice, im­mediately behind 
Gladys' elbow. Perched on Jon's big lounging chair, legs straddling the fat 
armrest, Ginny rested one foot defi­antly on the forbidden upholstery. A tense 
smile tried to deny round frightened eyes in her white face—a shockingly mature 
face from which curved baby contours had vanished in an hour's time. Gladys 
scooped the little girl into her arms, feeling the nerv­ous resistance of thin 
wiry muscles. Ginny's head burrowed into her shoulder.
"I don't like that man, Mommy. Turn him off." The words were muffled, and Gladys 
could feel the moist mouth moving against her throat. She sat down in the big 
chair, cradling Ginny in her lap.
"I can't turn him off, baby. We have to listen and find out something. See how 
Barbie's going to write it down!"
Ginny obstinately buried her eyes against her mother's face. "I don't want to 
look. I want to turn him off."
"Why, honey? Why don't you like the man?"
"He won't let my daddy come home. Turn him off and make him let my daddy come 
home!" At last the tears came. Gladys didn't try to stop the convulsive sobs. 
She held Ginny on her lap quietly, soothed her with firm hands and wordless 
comforting sounds.
Barbie looked up from the radio, annoyed, gesturing from Ginny to the 
loudspeaker, and Gladys stood up, stumbling a little with the weight of the 
child in her arms. In the kitchen they could sit together in the big old rocker 
until the shock wore off and Ginny quieted down.
 
THREE
 
The sobs came fewer and further between, until finally Ginny picked up her head 
and stared at her mother out of great doleful eyes. Gladys reached for a paper 
napkin to wipe away the tears, but Ginny pushed her hand away and began rubbing 
at her own eyes with crayon-stained fists. The final effect made it easy for 
Gladys to laugh, and when she carried Ginny over to the mirror the little girl 
joined in.
But the question had not been forgotten.
"Why won't that man let Daddy come home?"
Gladys wondered how long Ginny had been in there listening, and how much she had 
understood. It was a continuous source of astonishment to her, the ability of 
small children to comprehend anything frightening or misleading, while 
presenting a blank re­flecting surface to all useful forms of knowledge.
"Well," she began, "there was a big explosion in the city today, and everybody 
has to be extra careful for a little while." "Did Daddy get hurt?"
"I don't think so. Daddy had to go way uptown to see a man today, and the 
accident was all the way downtown."
"Well, why won't they let him come home?"
Well, why don't they? I don't know. "I guess they need all the strong men to 
help the people who are hurt, darling."
That was inspired; Gladys wished she could satisfy herself as easily. The little 
girl broke her stiff stance and ran to wipe her eyes formally on the kitchen 
towel.
"Can I go out and play now?" she demanded. Gladys glanced dubiously at the 
clock.
"It's too late, Ginny." She didn't wait to find out if the act was convincing. 
"Did you finish your drawing?"
"I'm tired of it."
"What did you make?" Gladys repressed a sigh. "May I see it?"
The little girl was thoughtful. "I guess I'll have to finish it first." She 
started toward the door and then stopped and went back to the sink. The water 
glass was standing where it always did, well within reach for Ginny and her 
smaller-sized friends. It took Gladys a moment to realize what was happening.
"No, honey." She snatched the glass from her daughter's hand and got the sealed 
jar of water. "Drink this instead."
But her own fear was in her voice, in her face, in the way she took the glass.
"I don't want to. What is it?" Ginny responded promptly. 
"Water."
"Why can't I drink the other water?"
"Just because."
Ginny recognized the note of finality. She took the glass and pouted. "It's 
warm."
"I'll put an ice cube in."
"I don't want an ice cube." She was dangerously close to tears again. "I just 
want a drink of water."
To save her life, Gladys couldn't think what to do next; then the door burst 
open, and Barbara came in, waving the pencil and pad with wild excitement.
"I've got it all, Mom. They're starting to repeat it now, but they said to keep 
the radio on and they said if there are any flashes they'll ring a gong or 
something so people will come back and listen."
Gladys took the pad and glanced at the penciled scrawl. Bar­bara had recently 
been affecting a sophisticated backhand penmanship, but today she seemed to be 
growing rapidly back toward childhood in every way.
"The emergency trucks are starting around now," Barbie was rattling on. "And 
they're going to give us equipment and sheets of information and everything—"
"Hold on a minute." Gladys turned to Ginny, so absorbed in her big sister's 
report that she was sipping the warm water without a murmur. "Aren't you going 
to show me your picture?"
"For heaven's sake, Mother," Barbie broke in, "don't you want to hear—"
Gladys quelled her with a look.
"For 'evan's sake, Mommy," Ginny imitated her sister.
Gladys smiled and added a firm push on the small behind to a one-word dismissal. 
"Scoot!" It was emphatic.
With enormous dignity Ginny put down the glass of warm water and walked slowly 
out of the kitchen. Gladys held up a warning hand until the footsteps had passed 
the dining room.
"Now"—she turned to Barbara—"tell me first, did they say anything about the 
water?"
Barbie shook her head impatiently. "No, they didn't say anything about things 
like that. They said we should ask the emergency truck people about anything 
that worried us. All they said was the trucks would come around and we should 
stay indoors and not go out till after the trucks come—and they want blood 
donations, but I don't think from us—and there's information you're supposed to 
have ready for the trucks when they come."
"What do they want to know?"
"You have to write everything about Daddy—his name and de­scription and 
everything. Everyone who has anybody in the city is supposed to do that. A whole 
description so they can identify him in case        "
She stopped, and cast a worried look at her mother, but Gladys seemed calm.
"Well, anyhow, they want a description and they said be sure and write it 
clearly. Then you have to do another sheet for us—one for each, I mean. You're 
supposed to write down our names and ages and put the address on, and then put 
down where we were during the day. Every place anybody went, and what time it 
was. You have to do a separate sheet for each one and put them on the bottles—"
"Bottles? What did they say about bottles? What for?"
"Oh, that's for the urin—urinas—" She took the scribbled
note sheets from Gladys' hand and skimmed through them till she found the word. 
"Urinalysis," she pronounced triumphantly. "They want everybody to give them a 
sample. You're supposed to sterilize bottles and put it in, and then put the 
paper with the information about each person on the bottle. I mean—well, when I 
say it," she finished defensively, "it sounds all confused, but it isn't, 
really."
"Are you sure you got that straight? What would they want the samples for?"
"I don't know. I don't know what they want them for, but that's what they said." 
Barbie's tone was aggrieved. She handed the papers back to her mother and 
pointed to the spot she had been studying. With the verbal report to help her, 
Gladys found it easier to make out what Barbie had written. Apparently that was 
what they wanted.
"I think I understand," she murmured. But she didn't. "What's this?"
"Oh—that's about the phone. They kept saying not to use it for anything except 
emergencies."
"Thanks, dear," Gladys said absently. "You did a fine job." She checked through 
the pages again, then pulled her chair up to the table and tore a fresh piece of 
paper off the pad.
"Mom . . ."
Gladys was having trouble with the sheet. Her eyes didn't seem to focus right 
when she had to put down the necessary statistics. She tried to brush aside 
Barbie's intruding voice and concentrate on the pencil and paper.
"Mom, I guess it's all right to drink fruit juice or something out of the 
refrigerator, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course." The refrigerator door slammed and she heard the noise of 
pouring absurdly loud, as if whatever had gone wrong with her eyes was making 
her ears work better.
She didn't hear the footsteps, though, because the sudden touch on her arm made 
her jump.
"Mom—would you like me to do it for you?" The shy politeness in her daughter's 
voice almost pushed Gladys over the edge into tears, shameful and revealing. She 
managed to smile an equally polite and almost as shy, "Thanks," and pushed the 
pad across the table.
She sat there until things came back into focus again and then she continued to 
sit, watching Barbara fill the sheet with a meticu­lously legible description of 
her father.
They understand so much, she kept thinking. You don't know it until something 
happens, but they're so grown up inside.
She got up and went over to the bright-colored Tyrolean plaque on the wall that 
held a tiny pad of paper for marketing lists. The top sheet bore notations from 
another world: "soap flakes," "soda," "call cleaner." She tucked the slip of 
paper in an apron pocket and began jotting down on a fresh sheet the things she 
wanted to re-member for the emergency squad.
In the front room the phone came to strident life again.
Barbara looked up, but Gladys was already through the door. This time she didn't 
let herself think at all about what it might be; but still her hand hung 
hesitantly over the receiver. When she finally brought the phone to her ear she 
had no chance even to say hello.
"Gladys?" a voice demanded. For a moment she couldn't identify it and then the 
voice rushed on. "This is Edie Crowell."
Of course, Gladys thought. But what's wrong with her voice?
"Hi," she said with forced brightness. "Are we allowed to use the phone now?"
"I don't know—we're not supposed to, but I couldn't stand it any more. Phil was 
on his regular route up in Peekskill when it happened and they called me up and 
said he was drafted for rescue work. I'm here all alone and I keep thinking 
about him and —I tell you, I'm going crazy, Glad!"
Why, she's hysterical. Gladys could see the Crowells' big white house through 
the hall window. It had a lot of rooms for a worried woman to rattle around in.
"It must be awfully lonely," Gladys said, trying to get used to this sudden rush 
of pity for Edie Crowell. "But listen, Edie, is it all right to use the phone 
now? Didn't they say something about leaving the wires clear?"
"Gladys, you're inhuman!" Edith shrieked. "I only called to find out if I could 
come over. I just can't stay here any more by myself."
"Well, we're not supposed to go out." Gladys hesitated. "Why don't you wait for 
the emergency truck to come around and maybe they'll say it's all right. You 
know we'd be glad to have you here. Oh, Edie," she burst out, "why won't they 
let them out of the city?"
"Let them out?" The voice rose to a shrill crescendo of panic. "You want them to 
let people out to spread radiation disease everywhere? Every living soul in the 
city is as good as dead. Let them out?" She was practically screaming now. "What 
I want to know is why do they waste more lives sending rescue squads in?"
Gladys' head was very light. It was spinning around, trying to get up enough 
momentum to free itself from the lead weight of her body. She groped for the 
chair, telling herself that Edith was half crazed with worry, that she didn't 
know what she was talking about.
"But," she said feebly, "they said on the radio—"
"Lies!" Edie stormed. "They haven't told us the truth all these years, do you 
think they'll tell it now? They said it couldn't happen, didn't they? All that 
nonsense about radar screens!"
"Edith!" Gladys broke in against the current of mania. "Stop it! You've got to 
stop it! Right now! They're not lying to us. I don't know what happened before, 
but this is real, this time. Jon's in the city, and he was there all day, and at 
least they're doing something to try and get him out. The other time, in Japan, 
they saved a lot of people."
"Japan!" Edith raved. "That was nothing. They didn't even—"
"Edie, you shut up—shut up! Shut up!" She repeated it sav­agely, so deep in her 
throat it came out like a whisper. "I won't listen. I'm going to hang up."
Ginny was coming down the stairs, carrying her picture in one hand. Gladys kept 
her voice low, turned her head so the child couldn't hear.
"You stay off the phone, do you hear me? If Jon and Phil can stand it in the 
city, you can stand it there by yourself!" She slammed the receiver down 
viciously, not trying to control the surge of anger. It seemed to make her 
stronger, helped her throw off the permeating weariness.
"What's the matter, Mommy? Why are you mad?" Ginny had come up behind her.
"Because I was talking to a very, very silly woman." Cleansed by fury, she found 
she could even be gay now. She admired the drawing enthusiastically and saw the 
child relax before her eyes, as her own manner returned to normal. "Go on now." 
She shooed Ginny into the kitchen before her. "We're all going to make supper 
together, and you can help. How're you doing, Babsy?"
"Mother, I've asked you . . ." Barbara said coldly, straighten­ing up over her 
work.
"I'm sorry, darling." The baby name, forbidden for almost two years now, had 
popped out irrepressibly at the sight of the young shoulders hunched over the 
kitchen table, the tightly clenched pencil laboriously covering fresh paper. It 
was just so that a younger Barbara had sat over her homework at the same table, 
night after night, in the last of the city apartments.
Gladys laughed, and saw it was wrong, then couldn't stop herself. "I'm sorry, 
but you looked so . . . so . . ." There was no way to explain. "Well, I'm 
sorry!"
Unassuaged, Barbara held up three finished sheets of paper. "These are done, if 
you want to look at them," she said stiffly.
"If, you think they're all right I won't bother," Gladys answered hastily. "I 
want to get those bottles ready, and get started on .upper—sec if we can get 
done before the truck gets here. You make the salad, Barbie, and Ginny can set 
the table." But she couldn't help adding, "Just be sure you've got down 
everything about the times you and Ginny went outdoors during the day. I didn't 
go out at all."
"That's what I'm trying to do." Barbara was still on her dignity. If you think 
Virginia can spare a moment before she starts setting the table, maybe I can do 
this one right."
Gladys kept herself very busy pulling mason jars off the top shelf, until she 
could stop smiling. Then she climbed down and commanded Ginny to answer her 
sister's questions. She got out the big pot that had once sterilized the babies' 
bottles and filled it with water for boiling.
The roast was still standing on the table where she had left it hours before. 
There wouldn't be time to cook that now. She put it back in the refrigerator and 
got out some of the cube steaks she kept for Jon's midnight raids. Outside the 
sun was beginning to set and she turned on the lights. The steaks sputtering on 
the broiler and the children's voices in the lamplit room brought life suddenly 
hack to a familiar, livable plane.
She issued brisk orders, and the two girls obeyed swiftly, happy to seize on a 
pattern of behavior that they knew. It was a victory when Barbara so far forgot 
the world outside that she squabbled briefly with Ginny over the proper 
placement of the forks.
It all went quickly—too quickly, because when they were done the three of them 
had to sit down around the kitchen table, as they always did, when Jon stayed in 
the city too late to come home for supper.
 
FOUR
 
The mood that had sustained them through the bustling preparations for dinner 
fell rapidly away. Nobody men­tioned Jon; but not wanting to mention him, they 
didn't talk at all. Once tires screeched on the street out in front, sending 
Barbara and Ginny both dashing to the door.
Gladys heard the door open, and fear shot through her, raised her out of her 
chair and after them to bang it closed again. She turned on them with flaming 
sudden anger.
"Barbara, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! You knew better than that! Ginny, 
next time you leave the table you're going straight up to bed!" Shame reddened 
in the older girl's face, and a tremulous underlip shaped itself into a pout on 
the five-year-old's. Without a word Barbara turned on her heel and started back 
to the kitchen. Ginny just stood still, facing her mother. Her small red lip 
curled outward as if it wanted to wrap itself around her chin, and the visible 
reaction, finally, transformed itself into a vocal one.
"I want my daddy," she sobbed. "I hate you. I hate you and I want my daddy!"
Impulsively Gladys bent down to the child, now seated squarely on the floor, and 
tried to fold the stubborn baby flesh in her arms.
I want him too. Oh, Ginny, if you knew how I want him!
The words were in her mouth, in the tears that lay ready behind her eyes, in the 
lump of loneliness growing in her breast, but she didn't say them. The child was 
frightened enough already. She satisfied her own yearning arms with a quick hug.
"I want my daddy!" Ginny shook off the embrace.
Gladys straightened up stiffly. "Well, you'll have to be a big girl and wait 
till he comes home." The words were pathetic in their weakness, but they were 
all she could offer.
"I won't. I want my daddy. I'll run away and find him." The little girl did not 
move to make good her threat, but the words stopped Gladys, already halfway 
through the room. She went back and locked the door and windows, bolted them, 
too, firm against small hands . . . and proof against invaders from outside. It 
should have been done anyhow.
"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" The words of controlled rebellion faltered 
as she went out. By the time she reached the kitchen she could already hear the 
first sobs shaking the little girl in a convulsive release of violent emotion.
Barbie stood at the table, looking down silently at her half-eaten supper. 
"Aren't you going to do anything?" the girl demanded.
"No. Sit down and eat your supper. She'll come in when she's ready." Every 
impulse urged Gladys to go back, but she knew that any other day Ginny's 
squalling would leave her unperturbed. Special sympathy now would only get the 
child more upset. She couldn't be placated; she just had to cry it out.
"But, Mother, you can't just . . ."
"I said, sit down and eat your supper," Gladys repeated slowly. "I thought you 
were old enough to know better, Barbara."
Blushing again, and miserably aware that she had started the whole thing by 
running to the door, Barbara pulled back her chair, the legs scraping against 
the linoleum in a long-drawn-out screech that set off their nerves to skittering 
frenzy again. Dog­gedly Gladys attacked lukewarm peas and potatoes.
The crying stopped. There was no sound in the house except the determined 
scraping of Gladys' fork across her plate. Barbara sat with downcast eyes, 
staring at her plate.
"Mother, I . . . I don't feel so well. May I be excused?" The formality of the 
request left Gladys no alternative.
"Certainly, Barbara," she said coldly. "Perhaps you'd better go upstairs and lie 
down?"
"I think I'd better." Barbie robbed her of the victory, accepting the proposal 
as willingly as though it were not a command.
"I don't feel good either." The swinging door edged noiselessly open to permit 
the entry of a small red nose, tight white lips, and a stray lock of soft brown 
hair. Ginny herself stayed hidden behind the door.
More relieved than she wanted to admit, Gladys unashamedly reversed her tactics. 
"Well," she announced blithely, "that fixes us all up, because I feel perfectly 
rotten. Let's throw out all this junk and have some good hot tea."
The red nose snuffled once rapidly, and the waving strand of brown hair advanced 
through the door, followed by a transformed child. "Tea?" she asked. "Really 
truly tea?"
"Really truly, goopy." Barbara relaxed immediately. "I'll fix it, Mother." She 
got up, with plates in each hand, in a flurry of activity. Gladys would 
cheerfully have traded places with her daughter, but she forced herself to sit 
still and wait while Ginny made a casual sidewise advance to the table. Finally 
one small hand came to rest on her knee. Then with a sudden scramble the little 
girl was on her lap, hugging her in a passionate frenzy of reformation, nestling 
and nuzzling against her until, communion achieved, the small head came bolt 
upright again. Then red-streaked eyes watched anxiously, still not entirely 
convinced, as Barbara poured steaming water over tea leaves and brought the 
covered pot to the table.
"Tea!" In her own seat at last, Ginny cuddled the warm cup in both hands and 
took a great noisy sip of the milky stuff. "Tea!" she marveled, and Barbara 
smiled at her mother again.
It was a hiatus in the storm, a valley of safety where they were safe and 
peaceful together for ten minutes that night. Later Gladys remembered it, 
relived every one of those minutes in the warm, bright kitchen, with both her 
girls trusting her, secure, mysteriously confident in her power to fix things, 
somehow.
Then Barbara was pushing her chair abruptly back and reaching for one of the 
jars Gladys had ready. She shouted something through the flying door. ". . . 
while I can." And it was strange enough behavior for a grown girl. But emotional 
ups and downs could do these things, as Gladys suddenly realized with painful 
acuteness. Apparently the youngest one was alone in her freedom from reaction to 
too great tension.
Gladys gave Ginny a smaller bottle and sent her after her sister, to the 
upstairs bathroom, no less amused than she was astonished that for once her own 
urgency was more compelling than her young daughter's. Barbara could take care 
of the little one. She herself needed a moment alone to mend her defenses.
She left the dishes for the time being, half aware that they would be a welcome 
task later, and when she was done labeling her own jar she went into the living 
room. There was music coming over the radio, and upstairs the sounds of 
footsteps and running water. Gladys moved about straightening things from long 
habit putting the room to rights for the evening, switching on lights.
It was all so normal, so usual, so like every other day. Against her will she 
was drawn to the window, where street lights should be casting shadows from the 
spring-greened maples. But out there it was dark and only the cloud-cased moon 
sent an occasional waver­ing shape or shadow around the street.
The noises upstairs were not normal or usual. Barbara wasn't getting ready for a 
date; Ginny wasn't undressing for bed. They were busy filling mysterious jars 
for strange men to take away. She realized that the noise of combat and 
persuasion had died away upstairs. The girls were taking a long time for a 
simple job. Maybe she'd better go up.
Gladys stood at the foot of the stairs, and familiar sounds and shadows grouped 
themselves into a pattern. The light was on in Ginny's room. A low rhythmic 
murmur revealed itself as Barbara's voice when it rose to a dramatic word or 
phrase. Barbara was reading aloud to Ginny.
One light went out, and footsteps measured the length of the hall, toe-steps, 
really, cautious and quiet, walking away from the room of a child just fallen 
asleep. The bathroom door closed, shutting out the remaining light. Gladys 
hesitated on the first step. She wanted to go upstairs, to tuck Ginny in, to see 
what Barbara was doing. But she had an obscure feeling that something important 
was happening, something she shouldn't interfere with. Something that had 
started in the kitchen, at dinner . . . or before that, upstairs, in front of 
the little radio. Something that had made Barbie offer to write the report about 
Jon, had made her put Ginny to bed without being told.
Whatever it was, it belonged to Barbara. Gladys went back to the living room and 
sat down, made herself stay there till the girl came into view on the bottom 
steps.
She was holding the two glass jars, big and little, carefully balanced in her 
hands.
"Ginny's in bed." She went straight across the living room toward the kitchen, 
carrying the jars. "I told her you'd come and look in on her later." She 
disappeared into the dining room and reappeared a moment later, carrying all 
three jars on a kitchen tray. She took the tray out to the hall table and stood 
there, wrapping each one carefully in its labeling sheet.
"It'll be all ready when they come." She was elaborately ex­planatory, as if she 
knew her mother would never otherwise understand why she had bothered.
But I do . . . I do . . . Only there was no way to say it, no gesture she knew 
how to make.
Impulsively she went over to the china closet in the corner and opened the 
cupboard in the bottom where they kept the rarely used liquor. Jon wasn't much 
of a drinker. She pulled out a couple of bottles and held them up, studying the 
labels.
"I'm going to have a drink," she announced, and now the whole thing seemed 
silly. Was this a symbol for maturity? She tried to sound natural. "Would you 
like something, Barbie? A little wine or"—she couldn't help hesitating—"perhaps 
some brandy?"
"Mother!" Barbara was clearly shocked.
Gladys held up the bottle. "Well," she asked a little sharply, "do you want it 
or don't you?" She watched the struggle of conscience and curiosity on her 
daughter's face. Barbic's new-found maturity might be fundamental, but it had 
not yet begun to affect her superficial reactions and attitudes.
"We could make some eggnog." Gladys proposed a compromise. "It might settle your 
stomach a little." She started toward the kitchen, but Barbara jumped up to 
intercept her. She wondered if she had the same look of foolish guilt on her own 
face.
"I'll do it, Mother. Francie's mother taught us how, once." She grinned then. "I 
guess I never told you about that."
The bright smile twinkled familiarly until the girl vanished through the 
dining-room door. Gladys turned the radio up louder, wondering how many other 
things she would learn about her chil­dren in the days ahead.
". . . rioting and panic in some sectors." The brutal words from the loudspeaker 
drove everything else out of her head. "However, Emergency Headquarters in all 
districts are carrying on a determined effort to maintain order. If you have not 
yet been visited by an emergency squad truck, please do not become alarmed. 
There has been no trouble in this section and emergency measures are proceeding 
as scheduled. All of you will have been visited by trained squadmen before 
midnight tonight. Stay indoors. Do not use the telephone unnecessarily. 
Assistance is coming to you.
"We repeat our news broadcast. Amateur radio communication lines are now 
operating throughout the country. The amount of damage done to major cities is 
still unknown, but government is functioning from secure headquarters, and the 
Army is already mobilized for retaliation."
Gladys listened dutifully, knowing these things should concern her. But they 
never said anything about the city, about survivors, about evacuation . . . 
about Jon!
Her attention wandered back to the radio. "There have been reports of rioting 
and panic in some sectors, however . . ." The announcer was repeating what she 
had heard before.
"Do not become alarmed," he said.
Gladys caught a glimpse of her own face in the mirror over the mantel, and the 
long lines of haggard middle age shocked her. It seemed frivolous, in the face 
of the fear that hung about them, to go upstairs for powder and lipstick. But 
she had to go up and look at Ginny anyhow, and she felt dirty, spoiled. She 
could at least wash her face.
The bright light in the bathroom hurt her eyes—gleaming polished porcelain and 
paint. The evening mess was all cleaned up; Barbara was certainly going through 
a change. Tenderness rushed over her again, and compassion, for the girl who was 
too young to grow up so much. Gladys doused her face in cold water and pulled a 
stiff-bristled brush through her hair. Combing it, she took a good long look in 
the mirror and added fresh powder and lipstick after all. Then she stopped in 
her room long enough to remove the confining girdle, stockings and shoes, and 
padded downstairs again in soft furred slippers, cherry red to match the warm 
wool robe Jon had given her for Christmas.
Barbara had the foaming pitcher already set down on the coffee table and was 
reaching for two of the hand-painted glasses from the top shelf of the china 
closet. Formally, like a child's tea party, Gladys poured the drinks. Then she 
curled up on the sofa and let tiredness claim her. Gradually warmth penetrated 
downward and spread out inside her. She could feel the tension in all her 
muscles flowing away; now there was nothing to do but wait. She sipped at the 
drink, and the glass in her hand grew heavy, until she put it down on the end 
table, unfinished, and remembered to pick it up for another sip only with 
difficulty. Nothing to do but wait . . .
 
The City
 
There was no way out of it; he'd have to go all the way uptown to see McMahon 
before he could close the Kellogg deal. He grabbed a cab, irritated at the 
unlooked-for expense; irritated at himself for not bother­ing to get the car, 
for not even thinking of the subway; irritated at all the shouldering, shoving 
people who—like himself—didn't have sense enough to get out before it was too 
late.
Out of what? Too late for what? He didn't know. He thought of the headlines in 
the morning paper, but that was foolish. You didn't take those things seriously, 
personally. It was just—too many people, not enough time. There used to be more 
time.
He paid off the driver, and as soon as he walked into McMahon's dining room he 
realized what was wrong with him. He was hungry, that was all. He accepted a cup 
of coffee and watched the old hypochondriac finish off lunch enough for twelve 
healthy men.
Mack was surprisingly reasonable. They got everything cleared up in a few 
minutes, except the paragraph he'd known there would he trouble about. He could 
get out and get soon. Then they saw it.
The big window across the room faced east; at first all they saw was a darkening 
of the sun, a funny color in the sky. They went over to the window, and there it 
was, blossoming out in the sky away downtown, so beautiful you forgot to be 
scared . . . or else you were so scared it wasn't like any fear you could 
recognize.
They watched the big cloud form in the sky over the bay: white, then tan, muddy, 
and at last a swirling pinkish mass. They began to believe it, really, when the 
swirling stopped and the climbing column of steam turned back on itself and 
became a pounding pillar of rain, falling out of the giant cloud like a trick 
shot in a movie.
They didn't say anything, except just Mack's one word, "Well!" Then they turned 
and headed for the door, walking, not running, because that was the way McMahon 
was. But he noticed Mack had forgotten to limp. He edged past the older man, 
being polite but determined about it. Then he flung himself down the staircase, 
leaping, running, taking two, three steps at a time. He was on the second 
landing when the blast shook him.
The house shuddered, but it stood. He kept going down, more carefully now. 
Another blast, and he could hear windows breaking, but not the sound of the 
bombs. He felt the blast; he didn't hear it. Then there was one he heard, 
different, close by.
A gas tank going up, a real old-fashioned explosion; he had time to recognize it 
before a flying beam found his head.
He couldn't have been out long, because it was still light when he dug himself 
out. Up the block three different fires were burning clouds hung over the city 
in every direction, but they weren't using that trick movie shot any more. The 
clouds were gray, good old honest gray, no rosy linings . . . or was it glasses? 
Did you use smoked glasses to make the color show? He couldn't remember. Someone 
was running down the street, passing him.
"Mister!" he shouted. "Mister, I'm lost!" He began running, too, running after 
the other man, trying to catch him and find out how to get home.
 
FIVE
 
"Wake up, Mother." It was Barbara bending over her, shaking her shoulder. 
"Mother, please don't go back to sleep." The face was pale and drawn, sharply in 
focus now.
"What is it?" Immediately Gladys was wide awake. Then, as Barbara relaxed, she 
realized there was no immediate crisis. "I must have dozed off."
The girl nodded her head. "I wanted to let you sleep, but I guess the eggnog . . 
. and all that stuff on the radio . . . I don't feel so good, I've got kind of a 
headache and—"
"Of course, baby." This was easy. Among all the strange new things these words 
came automatically. "You go upstairs and take an aspirin and get into bed" It 
was wonderful not to have to think what to say. "If you can't get to sleep, call 
me."
She managed an encouraging smile, and Barbara responded with a watery imitation 
of her own grin.
"I'm sorry," the girl fumbled. "I don't like to walk out on you . . ."
"Go on," Gladys told her. "Shoo! Get to bed."
The old formula was still good. Barbie turned obediently and went up the stairs.
Gladys glanced at her watch. It was only a little after nine. She hadn't slept 
long, and she was stiff all over, but she felt better. She walked around the 
room, getting the kinks out of her joints.
She could hear Barbara splashing in the bathroom. Once a door opened, and once 
she thought she heard Ginny's voice pleading outside the bathroom, then the 
click of the latch and the two voices raised a little in minor altercation, 
quiet now and then arguing again. After a while there were footsteps going down 
the hall, and finally Barbara returning to her room alone.
Gladys turned the radio up a little louder and sat down in the big armchair 
where Jon listened to the baseball game, Saturday after­noons. Her fingers 
rubbed the worn upholstery, wandered of their own accord to the table that held 
his pipes and tobacco, riffled the pages of the big, bright-colored 
merchandising magazine in the rack underneath. Frightened by the longing that 
crept up on her, she tried to concentrate on the radio.
"Evacuation is already beginning in some sections. Please do not call Emergency 
Headquarters for information. If you are to be evacuated, you will receive 
instructions . . ."
Something was thumping at the door. It was heavy, authoritative, but strange. 
She hesitated, trying to make it out, and it came again, imperatively. She went 
to the front window that gave a clear view of the porch and pulled back the 
drape.
She had forgotten to turn on the porch light, and the street lamps were off. In 
the moonlight only the bulky outline of a man was dimly visible. Another bang on 
the door: Gladys almost ran to un­bolt it, opened it hastily, and stepped back a 
pace in sudden panic.
The visitors took her reaction for invitation. They stepped inside and closed 
the door behind them. Not until then did either one of them lift the visor set 
into the helmet top of the bulky one-piece suit that covered each completely, 
shoes, hands, head, and all.
The simple act of revealing their faces changed them from fictional monsters to 
human beings. Gladys breathed again, and recognized one of the men, with 
surprise, as Peggy Turner's hus­band, Jim. The man with him was young and 
serious-looking.
"This here is Dr. Spinelli, Miz Mitchell," Turner introduced him. "He's an 
intern over at the new V. A. Hospital."
Gladys tried to acknowledge the introduction with a smile but her mouth was 
still stiff from the moment of fear.
"Sorry if I gave you a turn, Miz Mitchell," the big man apolo­gized, "but I knew 
you had kids here, so I thought it would be better to knock instead of ringing 
the bell. I know it makes a funny sound with these gloves on."
"Oh, it wasn't that. It was just—well, you look so strange."
"You should hear the kids, some places we go," he broke in, grinning. "They 
think we're Martians or something. Some of 'em never quit bawlin' till we go." 
He laughed, a bid sounding mascu­line laugh that made her worries seem silly.
"Do you . . ." She hesitated. "Is it dangerous outside? Is that why you have to 
wear them?" she blurted out defiantly.
"Now don't you get yourself upset, Miz Mitchell," he reassured her. "We got to 
wear these things because we go out so much in different neighborhoods. Some 
places could be dangerous, and we never know till we get there. But this street 
right here, you could go out for a pleasure walk and never get hurt."
Dr. Spinelli cleared his throat uncomfortably. Gladys turned to him, 
questioning, and he said hastily, "Mr. Turner's absolutely right, Mrs. Mitchell. 
But just the same, you better not try it." He produced an apologetic smile. 
"This neighborhood's been perfectly safe all along as far as we know, but there 
are still clouds of hot stuff blowing around. You shouldn't go outdoors until 
you get word it's all right—maybe sometime tomorrow."
Jim Turner bent on the younger man a glance of amusement that brought a slow 
flush up over the bony features. Gladys remembered the urine samples and reached 
for the tray.
"Do you take these now?" she asked, too brightly, breaking the silence.
The young doctor accepted them eagerly. "I'll take them right out to the truck," 
he said. "I have to ask you a few questions later, but I can get these checked 
meanwhile."
She noticed that he stowed the jars away carefully in a big pouch pocket built 
into one side of his suit, and fastened the zipper securely before he opened the 
door.
Turner followed her into the living room. "Don't let the young feller worry you, 
Miz Mitchell," he repeated. "He's a nice kid, but he's fresh out of school—all 
he knows is out of books, and he thinks that's all there is to know. We got to 
wear these outfits just because we're out so much," he insisted. "No real danger 
anyplace around here now, but you know how it is—a little bit here and a little 
bit there . . ."
He opened up the bulging pouch on his own suit, exposing a sheaf of rough white 
paper, and counted off several sheets. "Now this'll tell you more about 
everything than I could do myself," he said. "You can study it up after we're 
gone, and then if there's anything still bothering you, we'll be around again 
tomorrow, and I can explain it to you."
Gladys took the papers from him. They were numbered in se­quence, as if they 
were meant to be fastened together as a booklet. On top of the first page it 
said in big block letters:
VITAL FACTS FOR CIVILIANS-ATOMIC WAR-RADIATION EFFECTS-EVACUATION
Underneath, everything was in close black type, blurred slightly from rapid 
mimeographing. She tore her eyes from the page, trying to get her thoughts 
together, to remember all the things she had to ask. Turner was saying 
something, but she didn't listen. She had written everything down someplace. Of 
course, it was all in her apron pocket, upstairs.
"Listen," she said, "some things have got me worried." There was one special 
thing that couldn't wait till morning. What was it?
Then she remembered. "Is there anything in here about the water?" 
"Water?" He didn't understand.
"Is it all right?" she persisted. "Do we have to boil it or anything?"
"Nothing to worry about there." He seemed very confident. "The water's okay. 
They've got a gang of Geigers on it all the time. Anything went wrong, they'd 
cut off the supply."
He saw her mouth open for a horrified protest. "I mean, just the supply from the 
local reservoir," he amended quickly. "There's some way they can bring the water 
straight through and bypass this reservoir altogether. Might be without for a 
couple of hours, but no more than that. Boiling wouldn't help anyhow," he added. 
"You can't get hot stuff out that way. You just relax and take it as easy as you 
can. I'll be around again on the truck, and when you read through those papers 
you'll see we didn't leave much out."
"But how . . . who's doing it all?" For the first time Gladys was curious. 
"Who's running everything? Who put these out?" She rustled the papers in her 
hand.
"Oh, we've been getting ready for this a long time." He smiled knowingly. "Our 
country wasn't so dumb."
"I know," she said impatiently, "the bombs and planes and all that. You can't 
read a newspaper without knowing about those things," she added bitterly. "But I 
didn't know about anything else—the trucks you're using, and those—diving-suit 
things you wear "
"Well, nobody else knew either," he assured her. "Nobody who wasn't in it. When 
you want to win you got to keep a poker face and play it close to the vest. And 
any time the government let out any information about what we were doing some 
scientist would start yelling about warmongers, or some reds would have a 
demon­stration."
"Well, when did you . . . ?" Then she realized: Of course—the "business trips"! 
She sat down on the edge of the sofa, thinking, and looked up at Turner with a 
new respect. I wonder if Peggy knew?
"I was in the Reserves," he said, "and I guess I had the right kind of 
background or record. They sort of cased me in slow. They had to be pretty 
careful about picking people who could keep their mouths shut. Now," he changed 
the subject firmly, "let's see, is there anything else you got to know? They're 
gonna be wanting blood donations, but I don't think they'll take 'em from folks 
this close to the city. Not till after the lab boys get them samples checked, 
anyhow."
When she wanted to know what the blood was for he pointed again to the papers 
he'd given her.
"It's all in there—in that part about radiation disease," he said. "You read 
that good, and you'll know practically as much about it as I do. Now there's one 
other thing I got to tell you, about evacuation. If—"
A muffled pounding at the door interrupted him. This time Gladys flew to open 
it. The young doctor came in and went straight into the living room, waiting 
until Gladys had closed the door again before he raised his visor and nodded 
curtly to Turner.
"Looks okay. The Geiger doesn't show anything," he told Gladys. A peculiar 
feeling of antagonism between the two men seemed to fill the room. It was 
upsetting; she almost didn't hear the question the doctor was asking.
"I'm sorry." She tried to cover up the wave of irrational resent­ment. "I'm 
afraid I didn't . . ."
"Just a routine question," he explained. "Has anyone in your family been ill any 
time during the evening?"
"Well, none of us felt too good." She didn't know whether it counted, really, 
but she started to tell him about the incident at supper. The doorbell buzzed 
sharply. Turner waved her to go on and answered it himself.
He was back almost immediately, explaining, "They need me there." There was an 
edge of triumph in his voice that Gladys didn't understand. But he couldn't go 
yet; there were too many things she still had to know.
"Will you be back?"
His visor was already halfway down, but he opened it again and turned back to 
her.
"I think I told you just about everything," he said. He was reas­suring again, 
but impatient too. Whatever was waiting for him outside, he wanted to get to it.
Why, he likes this! Gladys thought suddenly. He's having fun! "Anything special 
on your mind?" He was waiting, restlessly polite.
"About the water," she said urgently, remembering her fear. "I know you said it 
was all right, but . . ." She felt foolish, pressing the matter, but she had to 
ask. "Didn't I hear something about germs that could be put in the water supply? 
Wouldn't boiling help that?"
"They're checking that too," he told her impatiently. "You don't have to go 
looking for extra work, Miz Mitchell. You'll have plenty to do, just following 
instructions. If there's anything dangerous, we'll let you know. Now . . ." His 
voice was warm and genial again, reassuring her. "If that's all that was on your 
mind . . ."
He wouldn't wait any longer.
"No!" she exploded. "No, that's not all! There are a million things on my mind. 
I want to know why my husband can't come home, and what to do for my children, 
and where my son is, and whether my house is safe. How long is this whole 
impossible thing going to go on? How long do I have to wait to find out if my 
hus­band's alive or dead?" The involuntary violence of the declaration left her 
startled and ashamed. She sat down again weakly. "I'm sorry." Her voice was 
dull. "I know you can't tell me any of those things."
He made the faintest motion toward the door. "There's nothing else, then?"
"No," she agreed, "there isn't anything else."
The doctor was nice. He waited until the door was closed and said, as if nothing 
had happened, "You all felt better after the tea, though?" He smiled for the 
first time, really, a smile that used his whole face. It was unexpectedly sweet, 
and totally disarming.
"Yes . . . oh yes." She wanted to thank him, but she didn't know how. It was 
hard to concentrate on the story. She heard the motor start up outside and was 
suddenly panic-stricken. He was going away; she knew he wouldn't come back. He 
thought she was just another hysterical woman.
The doctor was asking her to go on. Of course—they couldn't go without him! But 
she could see he was worried too. She told him about Barbie feeling bad again 
after the eggnog.
"That doesn't sound so bad," he told her. "I think everybody in the country must 
have lost his appetite tonight." He smiled again, that surprisingly charming 
smile in his long, sober face. "Of course we won't know anything for sure until 
we get real lab analy­ses on all the samples, but so far there is no reason to 
believe that your children were exposed to anything. Your girls' symptoms don't 
sound too serious—you would know if either of them had been really sick? I mean 
real nausea with vomiting."
"Good Lord, yes!" She found it was possible to laugh. "I'd have had to clean it 
up."
"Well, I guess that takes care of everything." He paced rest­lessly to the 
window and tried to look out. Then he stood still, his head cocked to one side. 
What was he listening for? "Look," he said suddenly, "there's one question of 
yours that I can answer." He stopped, hesitated, and then explained, "I don't 
think I'm supposed to tell you. I'd rather Turner didn't walk in on it. . . . 
But you shouldn't count too much on your husband getting back here soon. There's 
some talk about evacuating this whole section—and I know they've stopped sending 
patients through to the hospital here. It's the same thing I told you before: we 
won't really know how safe this neighborhood is until after the analyses are 
finished at the lab."
"You mean you don't even know yet whether it's all right out there?" She stared 
at the soft drapes closed across the windows, as if she could see through to the 
unknown danger.
"Oh, I'm sorry—I didn't mean to make you think that. We know it's okay right 
now. What we have to find out is whether it was all right all day—and whether 
it'll still be all right tomorrow."
"But the bombs were miles away! How could there be any danger around here?" she 
demanded.
"It's not that simple," he explained. "There's dust and smoke from the city—God 
knows what a freak wind could do. And with the underwater bombs, there's the 
rain—and then we don't even know yet what kind of bombs they used. I mean what 
they had in them—there are different kinds of fission materials, you know. They 
need different treatment. And we don't even know how the damn things came 
over—excuse me, Mrs. Mitchell. I get—"
"Don't be silly." She wanted him to go on. "I'm a big girl."
"Well, we don't know whether they were bombs or guided mis­siles. Our radar 
didn't catch any airplanes overhead, and that looks bad. The war heads could 
have been on self-propelled missiles with atomic engines, and that would mean—"
Gladys made a helpless gesture of protest. "I'd like to explain it all, Mrs. 
Mitchell," he wound up ruefully, "but I'm afraid it would take too long, if you 
don't understand that part. You'll just have to take my word for it. Until we 
know more about the nature of the bombs we have to double-check everybody and 
everything anywhere near a bombed area. And these urinalyses will give us a safe 
check—at least as long as the lab equipment holds out."
"I guess T should have read more about it before," Gladys said diffidently. "I . 
. . well, I just couldn't believe it. I never really believed any nation would 
use it this way."
"We did," he said harshly. "We used it in 1945. In Japan. Why wouldn't somebody 
else use it on us? God knows—" He stopped himself. "I'm sorry," he said shortly. 
"After all, it isn't your fault. I'm just blowing off steam."
"Well, it was your turn," Gladys smiled. "I blew my top a while back."
He looked bewildered and then remembered. "That was nothing! You should see some 
of the women we run into. I think it was probably just because you've been 
behaving so well that I forgot I was supposed to be helping you. Anyhow," he 
resumed briskly—and Gladys thought suddenly, He's so young!—"the thing to 
remember about radiation disease is that it can be treated and cured just like 
any other disease . . . just so we catch it early enough."
"What do you mean? How early?"
He didn't answer right away; he was listening again. Faintly, now, Gladys heard 
the motor starting up again, but far away, as if it were down at the other end 
of the block.
"I'll explain that later," he said hastily. "They'll be back in a minute now, 
and there's one other thing I wanted to tell you. Please don't let it alarm 
you—but that wasn't a bad idea you had about the water—just to make extra sure. 
We don't know whether they're going to try any bacteriological—"
The ringing of the telephone aggravated an already heightened imagination.
"Hello," she breathed into the mouthpiece, hope and fear fight­ing for 
possession of the syllables.
"Oh, Gladys, I'm so glad you're still up. Did that squad truck get to your house 
yet?"
Edie Crowell again. "They're here now." Gladys was annoyed. "I mean, the doctor 
is. Do you need him?"
"How could I possibly know whether I need him? They won't tell us anything, so 
we have no way of knowing if there's anything wrong. I just thought I heard a 
motor outside, and I wondered if the truck was getting near the house yet." A 
stifled sob came over the line. "Gladys, can't you understand? I'm here all 
alone, and I keep hearing about these rioters and looters and maniacs out in the 
streets    
"What on earth are you talking about?" Fear tightened in her throat again. 
"What's wrong with you, Edie?" She was dimly aware of the doctor crossing the 
room to answer another muffled thump­ing at the door.
"Well, Betsy called me up and told me all about it," Edith rushed on 
defensively. "She got the information because she works for the Telegraph. There 
are all kinds of people wandering around who escaped from the city, and they're 
crazy because they know they're going to die, and they're breaking into people's 
houses, and drink­ing, and attacking women, too. And I'm all—"
Oh, my God! Helplessly Gladys moved the receiver a little further from her ear 
to protect herself from the penetrating shrill­ness. Finally, unable to listen 
any longer or even to find words to end the conversation, she dropped it 
unceremoniously back on the hook. The doctor had returned, bringing Turner with 
him. Flushed and frightened, she repeated what Edith had told her.
"We better get over there," Dr. Spinelli said wearily.
Turner nodded agreement. "I know that one. Thinks she owns the whole town. Give 
her something to knock her out, Doc, or she'll be making trouble all night." He 
turned to Gladys. "You'll be all right, Miz Mitchell," he promised. "Just don't 
get panicky. If you have any trouble, remember I'll be around again tomorrow."
He laid a gauntleted hand on her shoulder, and she knew it was meant to be 
reassuring. But something in the touch of the heavy glove sent chills chasing 
down her spine. She was glad when he wheeled his bulk around, pulled his visor 
smartly down, and headed for the door.
A soldier off to the wars! It was funny, until she realized that was just 
exactly what he was.
 
SIX
 
She was still shivering. Her hands were icy, and the teapot on the table offered 
no warmth when she touched it. She picked it up and carried it back to the 
kitchen. It was while she sat waiting for the fresh water to boil that she 
realized neither of them had answered her question about the things Edie said on 
the phone. She remembered the doctor's shrug and Turner's impatience to be 
gone—but they had never once said whether it was true.
She tried to fight down panic, telling herself she was as bad as Edie Crowell, 
that she couldn't afford to give in to the fears and vapors that a childless 
woman could have. Still the thought per­sisted, and even as she sipped at the 
comfort of hot tea in a brightly lit room she couldn't throw off the newly 
aroused fear—the age-old fear—of wild men lurking in the dark. Every noise 
outside was a skulking footstep, and every familiar creak in the house a 
stealthy intruder.
Hastily she picked up the teapot, and took it into the living room, where the 
radio was producing music. She listened incredu­lously to the pulsing rhythm of 
a song she had danced to with Jon—when was it? A week ago? Four days? In another 
lifetime? Standing there alone, in the middle of the room, she could feel his 
arms around her, and the still firm length of his body against hers, their legs 
moving together, his head bent toward her, so she could see the gray that was 
beginning to touch the edges of his hair—and the urgent pressure of his hand on 
her back that made her forget the gray.
The music changed, drifted into an old, old song, played without words, taunting 
her memory. The yearning conviction of Jon's near­ness left her, but, eyes still 
closed, she managed to keep him in the room. He was in his leather jacket, the 
old brown suede; he had taken the trash can outside and a gust of cool night air 
came in before he locked the back door again. He was bent over his desk, plowing 
grimly through a piled-up stack of papers. On the ash tray at his hand a 
cigarette burned monotonously, offering up incense at midnight to the gods of 
success. He was down on his back on the floor, mock wrestling with Ginny, 
scrambling and rolling around, his uneven white teeth parted in a shout of good 
will toward the world. He was, best remembered of all, standing legs akimbo in 
the bedroom, his hair still damp from the shower. The fresh white, lightly 
starched shirt bloused out smartly as he buckled his belt flat across his narrow 
waist and hips. The smell of talc and shaving lotion was so real, the billowing 
white shirt so crisp and right, that Gladys knew, suddenly and surely, that Jon 
was there with her; this whole thing, this impossible afternoon and evening, was 
a nightmare, a sick dream, and in a moment her husband's hand would be on her 
shoulder; his voice would be bantering, refusing to take serious stock in 
woman's ills, but just the same he would ask her, "Tea make you feel better, 
honey?"
On the radio the announcer's voice broke in over the fading strains of the 
music.
"Until there is further news we will continue our selections of favorite songs. 
Stay tuned in to this station; we will interrupt this program to announce any 
new developments. Next we have an old favorite—'Stardust.' Stay tuned in." The 
music began again. The haunting, nostalgic strain. The song of her own 
adolescence. This was no nightmare. Jon wasn't in the kitchen. He might never be 
in the kitchen again.
The songs changed, and every now and then the announcer spoke for a few extra 
minutes between selections, with news designed to be reassuring. "Our radar 
screen has now been pro­nounced impenetrable by Army experts," they kept saying, 
and, "Survivors have been found on the island of Manhattan, even on the narrow 
strip of land west of the main explosion."
She picked up the sheaf of rough-paper mimeographed sheets Turner had given her 
and tried to read. She put aside the one on radiation sickness and found one 
labeled "General Instructions and Information."
BLOOD DONATIONS—required of all citizens not resident in danger zones or in 
areas immediately adjoining danger zones. Well, she had given blood before; if 
they came for it she could do that much.
DANGER ZONES—those where the bomb blast had been visible and those that had been 
swept by radioactivity following the blasts. Well, this was neither . . . and 
then she remembered that moment in the laundry, the instant of brilliant, 
blinding sunlight, and then the cloud and darkness. Was that the bomb blast? 
What time had that been? Was that what they meant by "visible"? But if it were, 
surely, she'd have known sooner than she did. The neighborhood would have been 
alive with talk and fear and rumor.
"It must have been something awfully important," Barbara had said. "Everybody 
called up; all the mothers." And the phone kept ringing—the phone at home. She'd 
never answered; she thought they were all for Barbie. And that nice young 
teacher: ". . . so good of you," Miss Pollock had said. Because she hadn't 
called up, of course.
She riffled unenthusiastically through the sheets. She knew she should read them 
through and she didn't want to. She was too tired; it was too easy to get 
scared. On the radio, music and an­nouncements repeated themselves, old songs, a 
generation old; old news, an hour, almost a day old. The sheets of information 
that she didn't want were a blur of black and white, turning gray. The 
cherry-red robe held her warm as if, being a present from Jon, it still held the 
feel of his arms in its fiber.
His arms, and his mouth . . .
How silly, she thought drowsily. How silly to feel this way now: a respectable 
old married woman wanting her husband as she had wanted him almost twenty years 
before, feeling the same desperate urgency for him. She stroked the soft wool of 
the robe and shrugged down inside the collar, rubbing chin and check on the 
comfort of it.
Resolutely she picked up the sheet about radiation sickness. She stumbled 
through a prefatory paragraph. It was nothing to become alarmed about, the 
pamphlet assured her; it was no mystery; it could be cured. Adequate supplies of 
blood for transfusions were already being collected. "Injections of toluidine 
blue restore the ray-im­paired ability of the blood to clot. Phenyldrazine is an 
antidote for anemia. . . . Urinalysis will readily detect the presence of more 
dangerous and faster-working fission products. Alpha emitters such as plutonium 
. . ."
She skipped the introduction, wondering why every effort they made to reassure 
her, with radio announcements and music, scien­tific phrases and soothing words, 
did nothing but frighten her all over, again. There . . . "SYMPTOMS. After first 
general malaise and period of apparent good health, victim will be subject to a 
variety of symptoms. Hair may fall out; itching, burning, or skin discomforts, 
including boils and blisters, skin hemorrhages, etc., may develop. Weakness . . 
. nausea . . ."
The sheet dropped from her hands. Out of the jumble of un­familiar words and 
phrases the only thing that made sense was the sudden memory of dinner, of 
Barbara, picking at her plate. "I . . . I don't feel so well." And Ginny, 
repeating, "I don't feel so good." Barbara, rushing so suddenly from the kitchen 
. . .
That was nonsense; the doctor knew all about that, and he said it was all right. 
The doctor would have known.
She picked up the sheet again and held onto that thought. He would have told 
her. She stood up restlessly. Her watch said twelve forty-seven. That was 
impossible; it must be later than that. On the way through the dining room the 
big oak clock said twelve forty-eight. They couldn't both be that far wrong.
The music on the radio gave way again to the announcer's molasses tones. "All 
residents of lower Westchester County are urged to be prepared for evacuation," 
he said, and it didn't make sense. This was lower Westchester. She listened as 
he repeated it and went on. "Spotty danger zones have been located, along the 
banks of the Hudson, and in the Larchmont-New Rochelle area. Residents of these 
areas are already being evacuated. Please do not become alarmed. If your 
neighborhood is in a danger zone you have already been informed. However, all 
residents in the lower part of the county are urged to be prepared for an 
evacuation order any time in the next few days. For further information, please 
read your instruction sheet carefully." Gladys found the mimeographed pages on 
the sofa where she had thrown them down. She searched through the close-typed 
pages.
EVACUATION. There it was. "If you receive a warning to prepare for evacuation, 
by radio or telephone, do not become alarmed. The measure is taken to protect 
you. It does not necessarily mean that you are in a danger zone or that you have 
been exposed to danger­ous radiations. Many people who have not been exposed 
will be evacuated for their own future safety. Wherever possible, the plan is to 
evacuate all persons within a ten-mile radius of any known danger zones. DO NOT 
MISTAKE warning for an evacuation order. Orders for evacuation can come only 
from Emergency Headquar­ters. The radio or telephone warning will come first.
"If you receive an evacuation order, after the warning, you will still have time 
to prepare your family and possessions. If you do receive such an order, study 
the suggestions below carefully, and start preparing immediately. Remember, no 
one will be allowed to take more than he can carry himself. Take only those 
things that you are certain you will need. If there are valuables in your home, 
which you are forced to leave behind, give a list to your squadman to be filed 
at Emergency Headquarters. Small items of jewelry and similar valuables may be 
given to the squadman, if well wrapped and clearly labeled. . . ."
Gladys put the sheet down. All kinds of people wandering around, Edie Crowell 
had said, crazy, drinking, housebreaking . . . You could think about your home 
and possessions, you could plan on hiding things, on saving and packing. People 
had done that before; that was what war meant. It was the other part you 
couldn't think about: strange deadly radiations, silent, invisible killers.
The announcer finished repeating his message, and some idiot in the broadcasting 
station started playing cowboy songs. Gladys turned the radio down as low as she 
dared and set about making up a list of all the things they'd need. Ginny 
wouldn't be able to carry anything—not much at least. She'd want a toy, probably 
Pallo, and she might be able to handle a small suitcase, the tiny one she used 
playing around the house. Barbie was strong; she could take a big bag. And 
another big one for herself. She thought of substituting two smaller cases, to 
make balancing easier, but she'd have to keep a hand free, with Ginny along. The 
things to go in: pajamas, bathrobe, slippers, toothbrush, hairbrushes and combs 
. . . She stopped herself. This was the wrong kind of thinking. One brush and 
comb could do for all of them. Towels? A couple if there was room. She thought 
of stories of the last great war in Europe, and added soap, toilet paper.
Blankets? No. She could wear her fur coat, and Barbie the heavy camel's hair, in 
spite of the warm weather. They could sleep under them if they had to, and Ginny 
could use the bathrobes. One set of decent clothes for each of them, dress, 
stockings, slip, everything, but they'd better wear slacks and shirts traveling. 
She tried to remember where she'd put the blue corduroys.
Upstairs, in the attic, maybe, something creaked, and the wind blew the branches 
of the old elm against the house. Thud, rattle, thud, rattle—the branches of the 
elm, and a loose window rattling.
Gladys sat bolt upright. Her watch said one-twenty. She ducked around swiftly, 
to the peeping window, but there was no one on the porch. Thud, rattle. Not a 
man knocking. No one banging at the door. Just the tree and a window, nothing 
more. She was glad now that she had locked up everything downstairs, when Ginny 
had her tantrum.
But that was only downstairs.
She started at the top, in the attic. She had to force herself to open the trap 
door and reach for the light string, then go prying around with the flashlight, 
into all the dark corners where an invader could hide. She checked the small 
windows, made sure they were locked.
It was easier when the attic was done. On the second floor there was the 
familiar big bedroom, Tom's room, and the guest room. Carefully she locked the 
only window that was open.
She hesitated to use the overhead light in Ginny's room, but if she left a 
shadow unexplored she'd worry all night. Resolutely she switched it on and 
scanned the room, then turned it quickly off again, as Ginny started burrowing 
under the covers to escape the light.
Under the gentler beam of the flashlight the child slept in her favorite 
position, knees drawn up under her, arms sheltering her head. Her breathing was 
even and regular. Her cheek, when Gladys touched it, was warm with sleep, and 
nothing more. Most assur­edly her hair was not falling out, nor was her soft 
baby skin marred with angry rough blotches.
In Barbie's big back room, only recently converted from bright-colored washables 
to adolescent chintz and frills, it was perfectly safe to keep the light on. 
Nothing short of mayhem could ordinarily wake Barbara before she had slept her 
fill—and at that, it would have to be a noisy kind of mayhem. Now pink-pajamaed 
limbs sprawled out in every possible direction from the tangled knot of 
bedclothes; wavy dark hair tumbled over the wrinkled pillow slip; the gently 
curved young breast rose and fell evenly.
Gladys went over and dropped a kiss lightly on her daughter's untroubled 
forehead. She made a futile attempt at straightening out the blankets, but gave 
up when Barbara stirred restively. She turned to go, and a sleep-soaked, 
half-aspirated word followed her.
"Mommy?"
"Yes, baby," she whispered. "I'm sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep."
"Is Daddy home yet?"
"Not yet, darling. Go back to sleep." Now that the girl was half roused anyhow, 
Gladys bent again to smooth the blankets. Auto­matically Barbara lifted a leg to 
let the sheet be unwrapped.
"I wish Daddy would come home," she said.
"I know, baby. I do too. He will." She sat on the edge of the bed, stroking the 
girl's head, knowing she wasn't really awake. Barbara had been known to carry on 
conversations for as long as half an hour in the middle of the night, and never 
remember a word of it in the morning. She whispered, low enough so Barbara 
wouldn't hear if she was asleep, "Do you feel all right now, Barbie?"
"Sure." There was healthy irritation in the answer. "There's nothing wrong with 
me. You go to bed, Mom." She turned over, away from the stroking fingers, and 
was immediately asleep.
Bed? Gladys thought. Why not? She had never gone to bed before, until Jon was 
home, but tonight—tonight it would be silly to wait up for him. She thought of 
the bed, cold and empty and alone. Not alone as it was when Jon was working late 
downstairs, nor as it was when on a rare Sunday morning he crept out to let her 
sleep, and fixed breakfast to bring up to her later. But now a differ­ent kind 
of alone, something she'd never thought about without a shudder that drove the 
thought away—alone, perhaps, and cold for the rest of her life. No.
She might curl up on the couch in the living room. Then if the phone rang, or if 
anything at all happened . . . "People wan­dering . . . crazy . . . 
home-breaking, drinking . . . attacking . . ." If anything at all happened, she 
would be there, ready, and not in her empty bed.
She had to do something. She would never stay awake if she didn't find something 
to do. She couldn't go down there to the empty living room and the terrifying 
radio.
She opened up the big upstairs closet, the one she'd been mean­ing to clean out 
for years, and began exploring for things they might need.
There was Jon's camping stuff, unused since he had given up fishing in favor of 
golf. The nested pans and utensils would be useful. And maybe the knapsack. She 
slid the straps over her shoulders and stifled a giggle, remembering her one 
dismal attempt to tramp through the woods alongside her new husband with one of 
these things on her back. Maybe Barbie could use it; she was a more athletic 
type.
Then, with half the things on her list collected, and as many more that weren't 
on the list at all, weariness fell on her like a smothering blanket. The wind 
must have started up again, because she could hear the tree and the window once 
more. Thud, rattle . . . thud, rattle. She wasn't imagining it. Thud. Rattle. 
Thud. She glanced again at her watch. Almost four! Well, she could try to wake 
Barbie, in another hour. But somebody had to stay up.
Down in the living room she found the cold teapot and took it back to the 
kitchen, then decided on coffee instead.
The electric clock said three fifty-six. Outside there was a gray hint of dawn 
approaching—not enough to make any real light, just enough to make the shadows 
seem darker. She sat at the gleaming white-topped table, struggling to keep 
awake until the robin on the kettle whistled for her, and once more the noises 
and imagined footsteps assailed her. The rattle and thump of the wind sounded 
for all the world like someone trying to force the door. The porch creaked, and 
she was sure someone was out there, but she wouldn't look. Again it creaked, and 
still she wouldn't look—but she did.
There was a man outside the glass panes of the door. She shut her eyes to blot 
out the image. When she opened them again the man was still there. He knocked on 
the doorframe—thud; he shook the doorknob—rattle. Gladys couldn't understand why 
she was no longer afraid. Thud . . . rattle; thud . . . rattle.
Hope sped through her mind and was gone almost before it came; Jon had a key. 
And the squadmen used the front door. A neighbor? Edie Crowell, driven at last 
to leave home in spite of all the warnings? No, the shadowy bulk was definitely 
masculine. Of course, it was the hat; there was no mistaking the outlines of a 
man's hat.
Thud, rattle. He was at it again. Fascinated, Gladys sat at the table and 
watched the door shake. She couldn't think of anything to do about it. The noise 
stopped, and the man, whoever he was, moved off a little.
He's going away, Gladys thought, almost disappointed.
The robin began to emit a low preparatory whistle, and she reached for a pot 
holder and pulled the little bird off its perch at the end of the spout. She 
kept watching the door. A vague shape moved outside; the man hadn't gone away 
after all. He seemed to bend down, and then something slithered through the 
crack between the threshold and the door. A piece of paper lay on the floor, 
small, close-lined, with three ripped round holes to show where it had been torn 
out of a loose-leaf memo book. She took a single step forward to pick it up, 
then instinctive caution stopped her from exposing herself in front of the glass 
pane in the door.
The pot holder was still clenched in her hand. Inspired, she picked up the 
kettleful of boiling water and approached the door, slowly, from the side, until 
she could reach out one foot and slide the paper closer to her. She bent over to 
pick it up, convinced with every move that she was about to drench herself with 
scalding water. But when she straightened up again, shakily, she had kettle and 
paper both clutched safe.
She remembered to back away to a safe angle before she put the kettle down and 
pinned her attention on the note. The scrawl was hasty and barely legible, the 
characters small and crabbed, reminis­cent of nothing so much as notes taken in 
college lecture halls, quick small letters written rapidly in an ill-lit room. 
It was oddly reassuring; you couldn't picture a fear-crazed housebreaker 
form­ing such dry, concise letters. She read, with difficulty, "Please let me 
in. Have something important to tell you. Explain everything—too much to write. 
Don't worry—am not dangerous."
Almost, she opened the door; it was completely convincing in its terse 
simplicity. Maybe he had a message from Jon! She started toward the door, and 
halfway there thought better of it. She got a sheet from the marketing pad and 
scribbled on it hurriedly, "Who are you?"
Then she was stopped. She couldn't slip it back under the door. The crack was 
too narrow. Pushing anything through would take careful maneuvering, and while 
she was bent down at the threshold the man could break the glass pane over her 
head, or push the whole door in on her. If he was dangerous it would almost be 
safer to let him in than to take that chance.
The window over the sink opened out on the back porch. Still watching the door, 
she opened the right-hand casement a half inch and let the paper flutter down, 
then banged the window hard to attract his attention, and locked it securely.
It worked. Footsteps creaked on the porch, and the shadow dis­appeared from the 
doorway. She couldn't see anything out of the window. He must be reaching from 
the side as she had, not taking chances either. Looking into the well-lighted 
kitchen, he had prob­ably seen the hot-water kettle in her hand. She crossed 
over to the door and waited there until the shape reappeared on the other side 
of the glass pane, and then disappeared again briefly, bending down to slide the 
same paper back under. Edging it over with her foot, she got well out of range 
before she stooped to pick it up. She was beginning to feel very silly, 
balancing the kettle all this time, but she held onto it, grimly reminding 
herself that it was better to be foolishly careful than just plain foolish.
"Dr. Levy—teacher at Burl's—your daughter Barbara is in my math class," she 
deciphered under the smudges made by the sole of her slipper.
Dr. Levy . . . The name was familiar, but she couldn't recall Barbie talking 
about him. Who was it? Where did she remember it from?
She stood there, staring at the note. I've got to decide what to do, she 
thought. Right now! She saw another sheet from the same memo book come through 
under the door and, less cautious this time, retrieved it more rapidly.
"Please let me in," it said briefly. "Can't stay here. Getting light. Will be 
caught."
If she didn't let him in he'd go away. And she didn't want him to go away. It 
was as simple as that. She didn't give herself a chance to reconsider. The door 
key was in the lock; she turned it quickly and opened the door enough to let him 
slip through, but she kept the kettle ready.
The man paid no attention to the steaming water. "Turn out the light," he 
commanded, and turned his back on both Gladys and her improvised weapon. A 
thrill of alarm went through her as she saw him lock the door.
His face was shadowed by stubble and streaked with dust. The rough tweed suit, 
baggy on his thin frame, might have been good once; now the pants were spattered 
with mud and grime, and one sleeve was ripped halfway up.
Terror-stricken, Gladys watched his right hand slide inside his jacket to the 
spot below the shoulder where she knew—from the movies—a holster could hang. Her 
hand, on the kettle, tensed and drew back.
"For God's sake, woman," he said again, "turn the light out! And put that pot 
down before you hurt somebody."
Jon, oh, Jon, she prayed, I need you! She stood there, holding the kettle she 
knew she wouldn't use, and watched him back away to the far corner of the 
kitchen, out of range of door and windows.
`"Look, if you won't turn the light out, isn't there some other room where 
people can't see in so easily?" At last his hand was coming out from under the 
jacket.
Jon . . . Jon, come home!
Incongruously the man brought forth a spectacle case from which he removed a 
spotless pair of glasses, and placed them ten­derly on the bridge of his nose.
In spite of his rough urgency, his voice was modulated, his speech educated, his 
words rational.
I'm a fool, she thought. He's crazy. I'm being such a fool. But she put the 
kettle down and motioned silently to the swinging door.
 
SEVEN
 
"Mrs. Mitchell, I came to warn you . . . about your children. You better sit 
down," he interjected, "and listen carefully. I can't stay long."
It was like something out of a bad play—the man, dirty, torn, and battered, 
standing in that cheerful room. Gladys tried to remember whether Barbie ever 
had, really, mentioned his name.
"Of course," she murmured, "go on."
At first the words and phrases kept jumbling together in her mind, full of 
things she didn't understand, and, like the informa­tion sheets and the radio, 
filling her with formless fears.
After a while the fear took form. She knew what he was going to say. She felt 
herself beginning to shiver.
"I wish you'd sit down," he interrupted himself again. She shook her head 
stubbornly, but he wasn't waiting anyhow. "Possibly I am wrong," he said. "I 
pray God that I am. But I think your daughter was exposed to radiation today, 
perhaps to a dangerous extent."
He's crazy, she told herself again . . . certainly half crazed with worry and 
fatigue. He must have been out all night; that would explain the stubble and 
grime, and the wild shining eyes.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Levy." She was very cool, fire in her head and ice in her voice. 
"I'm sure you're trying to tell me something, but I guess I'm too tired to 
follow it very well. What radiations do you mean? I didn't know there was a bomb 
near here. I'm afraid I really know so little about all this . . ." She looked 
across at him, hopefully, politely.
"You're too tired!" Scorn wiped the weariness out of his voice. "My dear woman, 
don't you realize . . . ? No, of course you wouldn't. You and all the others! 
You—"
When he spoke again his eyes were still wild, but not his voice. "That doesn't 
matter; you don't have to understand—just listen. I have good reason to believe 
that the school was in a danger zone. The bomb, as you put it, must have passed 
directly overhead. Cer­tainly there was radioactive rain in this vicinity."
"But it said over and over on the radio," she objected reasonably, "that the 
government would notify us if we lived in a danger zone. Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure!" he snapped. "Why in God's name do you think I came here? I'm 
sorry, Mrs. Mitchell, but I've met this same thing everywhere tonight—people who 
didn't understand before and refuse to believe now." He took a step forward, too 
close to her. Her first quick fear gave way to a fantastic notion that he was 
about to shake a finger in her face.
"Now listen, will you? They couldn't have told you if they don't know yet 
themselves." Who? she wondered, and tried not to let her thoughts stray; she 
really ought to listen. "I just happened to be there, but I don't have all the 
facts either. I don't know how wide a range it covered . . ."
What? What covered what?
"And I don't know how penetrating it was. Not everybody in the dangerous area 
was necessarily affected. People who were indoors, for instance—I think your 
little one was—"
"Well, weren't you indoors, Mr. Levy?" The more he spoke, the less convincing he 
was.
"No! The bombs fell in the city between one-fifteen and one-thirty. It just 
happens that during the one o'clock hour I took a group of ninth-graders out to 
Belsen's—the aircraft plant, About fifteen minutes' walk from the school, We got 
back just about two, and it was starting to rain. That's when I noticed your 
little one—she's in the kindergarten group, isn't she?" He didn't wait for her 
to answer, didn't give her a chance to stop him. "They were outside playing in 
the yard when we came back, but they were hustled indoors as soon as the rain 
started. I think they were inside at the other crucial time, but you should 
check on that. At any rate I'm certain they weren't exposed to the rain, because 
I distinctly recall what an unholy fuss they made about going in. It wasn't 
actually raining in the yard, you see, just across the street. But there was fog 
around the school."
"Yes, I know all about that," Gladys stopped him,.
"You do?"
Why was he so startled? "Please go on," she said clearly. "I can't imagine that 
you came here to tell me my little girl didn't catch cold in the rain."
"Catch cold?" His face was carefully devoid of expression, his manner 
infuriatingly patient, as if she were a particularly dull small child. "Look, I 
want you to sit down now and listen carefully, once all the way through, while I 
explain it. Go on," he repeated grimly, "you better sit down."
Gladys became conscious of her hand gripping the chair in front of her. With 
complete astonishment she stared at the whitened knuckles, as if they belonged 
to someone else, saw the fingernails biting into the rough fabric of the chair.
"If you will," she bargained.
"All right." Impatiently he started to sit down on the sofa in back of him and 
became painfully aware of the mud caked on his clothes.
"Don't worry about it." But she was pleased and surprised at his hesitation.
He took a deep breath. "I was outside at a time when I believe there were bombs 
overhead," he began. "Your daughter. Barbara was with me. We were also, for a 
very short time, exposed to rain that may have been radioactive. At one of those 
times Barbara received radiations that may have been serious enough to make her 
sick. I've been—"
"Mr. Levy!" Gladys caught her breath between her teeth. "Do you know what you're 
saying?" He was too controlled; that was a kind of hysteria too. "Can you prove 
any of it?"
"God damn it, yes! Yes, I have proof—the best proof there is! I know I was 
exposed because I've tested myself. And I was about to tell you that two of the 
other children I saw tonight have already shown symptoms of radiation disease. 
Now do you understand?"
She was rooted to the chair, her legs and arms, like her throat, paralyzed with 
disaster.
Oh, Jon, come and help me!
The man's face went through a total transformation from fury to abject apology. 
"I am sorry, Mrs. Mitchell," he said. "I shouldn't have told you that way. . ."
"Don't." She found her voice at last. "No, don't touch me!" He drew back his 
hand; it had almost reached her shoulder. He's crazy! He is!
"No, I'm not crazy." His laugh was tired and bitter. She must have said it out 
loud. "You want me to go away," he said. "Well, I have to go. I've spent too 
much time here already. There are other people . . . Maybe Barbara escaped." He 
started toward the din­ing-room door. "If she hasn't shown any symptoms yet . . 
."
"Of course she hasn't!" But now that he was going, a million doubts had to be 
pushed aside. "Don't you think I'd have done something about it before now? The 
doctor was here, you know. He said there was nothing wrong with her."
"The doctor?" He stopped and looked back.
"Of course. On that squad truck they have." Then she remem­bered. "And what's 
more, he did a urinalysis, and that was all right."
"Urinalysis? You mean you got a report already?"
"Right away, while the truck was here." She felt smug. They're all right. 
They're both all right. Now he'll see they are.
"The truck? Why, the fools!" he exploded. "They're actually letting people 
believe . . . Look, Mrs. Mitchell, did they say they made an analysis in the 
truck? How long did it take?"
"Not long." She simply would not answer any more questions. You said you were 
going, she thought fiercely. Now get out of here! "They didn't say what they 
did. They just said the checkup was all right." Then she remembered. "They said 
they were taking samples to a laboratory for analysis, but they checked it, and 
it was all right." He had to believe her.
"They must have Geiger-checked it. Well, that helps. Look, are you sure Barbara 
hasn't been sick?"
"Of course I'm sure."
"Have you asked her?"
"I don't need to ask her. It wasn't anything but nerves."
He had to believe her. Hopefully she looked up at his impatient brown eyes, but 
there was no comfort there. Jon would have soothed her, would have taken the 
burden on his own broad shoul­ders. Jon's eyes were gray. Why did this man have 
brown eyes? Why didn't he help instead of making things worse?
"I hope you're right," he said. "At any rate, if I haven't con­vinced you of any 
danger by now, I never will." He started for the door again. Thank God, thank 
God, he's going. "You will do as you like, of course," he finished. "But if I 
were you I'd wake Barbara up and ask her—right now."
But she was all right when I looked at her. She was sleeping all right. Maybe 
she'd just had a touch. Maybe she was over it already. Maybe . . .
He was going. Maybe . . .
"Wait!" she cried, suddenly frantic. "Wait, please don't go." What would I do if 
she had it? "I'll wake her right now; it won't take long." She walked faster. 
"Please," she said again, and saw he was standing there, waiting.
Even with the overhead light shining in her eyes, Barbara didn't want to wake 
up. "Umm-hmm," she said emphatically, and pulled the crumpled heap of bedding 
off her legs, over her head.
Just like her father!
"Wake up, Barbie. Barbie, you've got to wake up and tell me something."
"Ummh? What?" She sat up, abruptly and startlingly awake, shedding the blankets 
and blinking. `"What is it, Mother? Has anything happened?"
"No, honey. Nothing's happened. Only there's something I have to know. Listen, 
Barbie, last night—"
"What time is it? Did Daddy come home yet?"
"A quarter past five. Listen, Barbie, last night, when you didn't feel well, did 
you . . ." She was taken aback at the awkwardness of the question. Why, it was 
insulting! "Did you throw up or anything last night?"
"Well, gosh, I just felt a little sick, that's all." Barbara flopped back on the 
bed and pulled the sheet disgustedly over her head. "You're sure that's all?"
From under the sheet she muffled, "Sure."
Gladys stood up dizzily, smoothed the sheet, straightened the cover. "I'm sorry 
I woke you, Babsy, but someone came from the school and got me all worried. You 
can go back to sleep."
"From school?" Sleepy but curious. "Who?"
"A Mr. Levy. He says he's your math teacher."
"Doc Levy? Is he still here?" Barbara sat bolt upright, ignoring the bright 
light. "Why did he want to . . . Is he on the emer­gency squad?"
"No. Should he be?" Doc Levy! Now she knew where she'd heard the name. Not from 
Barbie at all, but from Tom—inces­santly, for two years, before he went away.
"He knows everything about atom bombs," Barbara told her. "He was at Oak Ridge 
and everything." She was struggling with the zipper on her bathrobe. "Only he 
got blacklisted or something on account of refusing to do war work, and making a 
lot of speeches and being on committees, so he had to go be a teacher. It's 
supposed to be a secret. If he's not on a squad or anything, what did he come 
for, Mom?"
"He just came by himself. It was really awfully nice of him, I guess, but he 
nearly scared the wits out of me." Going down the stairs, she kept throwing 
words carelessly over her shoulder, chat­tering with relief. "He thought you'd 
been exposed to something, and he made me wake you up to find out how sick you 
were last night."
Barefoot, Barbie padded noiselessly behind her; Gladys couldn't know when one 
silent foot stopped suddenly and hovered over the stair tread, in the middle of 
a step. Nor could she hear the quick frightened intake of breath.
"It was awfully nice of him to come, but I did get scared. . . . You didn't 
really have to get up, you know. He has to leave right away. Dr. Levy . . ."
She came around the turn of the stairs, through the hall, into the living room. 
"Here's Barbara herself. You can ask her anything you want to. I'm sure you'll 
see she's all right!" She was gay in her victory.
"I'm so glad." He'd been sitting on the sofa. Now he got up, tossed aside the 
sheaf of mimeographed sheets he'd been studying. Gladys' last doubts about him 
vanished at the sincerity of his smile.
"I don't need to tell you how worried I was. I've been called an alarmist 
before," he admitted ruefully. `"Unfortunately I wasn't wrong that time. Anyhow, 
these sheets . . ." He pointed to the instructions and information Gladys had 
struggled with the night before. "I didn't see them before. Is everybody getting 
them? They seem quite complete—"
His sentence broke off sharply. Gladys turned to see what he was staring at, and 
Barbie stepped through from the hall, white-faced and shaken.
"Barbie. Barbie, baby!" Gladys didn't have to think; she knew. And there was 
nothing she could do. She took the girl's two hands and held them in her own, 
trying to reenact a miracle, to pass life and health through her own flesh into 
her daughter. But . . .
"Oh, Babsy darling, why didn't you tell me? Why?"
The hands in hers trembled violently, and for just a moment her shoulders shook 
convulsively. Then, before it went too far to stop, Barbara stiffened, 
straightened, and lifted her head.
"I didn't want to"—she had to stop and steady her voice—"to worry you. I didn't 
know it mattered." She shook off Gladys' protests and braced herself to meet the 
teacher's eyes. "Doc, is it very bad if I did throw up?"
"I don't know, Barbara." He was painstakingly honest. "It might not mean 
anything at all. There's no way to tell until you have a blood count."
"I mean, if I am sick, if I have got it . . ."
"I don't know, Barbara. There just isn't any way to know." There were pain and 
regret in his words, but no pity, no pity at all.
Barbara sat down in her father's big armchair. Her fingers stroked the worn 
armrest; her back was ramrod-stiff. "But if I am," she demanded, "what's the 
worst thing? Will I—do people die from it?"
There was nothing to mark the impact of those words but Gladys' involuntary 
gasp. Barbara's voice, like the teacher's, was painstakingly impersonal. Only 
the little pauses, the trouble finding words, betrayed either of them.
"You'd have a good chance, Barbara. More than good. It's not like Hiroshima. We 
. . . They know how to handle it now. And they seem to have things pretty well 
in hand."
"But—people do die from it, don't they?"
"Sometimes." He answered the question as bluntly, this time, as it had been put.
It's not natural! Gladys tried to interrupt. "Don't you think—"
"Just a minute. I think you ought to phone these people and tell them . . ." He 
picked up the sheet headed "Radiation Disease." "Here, you've read this." He let 
his indictment of her negligence come at her askance. "Tell them that your 
daughter's symptoms check with this description. And that you're calling as 
instructed."
She held the sheet, reading, as the night before: "Malaise . . . nausea . . . 
vomiting . . ."
"But I saw this. And I didn't know ..." Her eyes dropped to the next paragraph.
"Do not be misled if the patient appears to recover perfect health after the 
initial attack. Many cases of stomach disorder will prove to be superficial, but 
all should be reported. The serial number at the top of this sheet is your 
family's identification. Use it when you make your report. Do not delay!"
Dr. Levy moved restlessly. "You'll be able to take care of everything now, Mrs. 
Mitchell, and you'll be having these Emergency Headquarters people here. I'm not 
exactly . . . popular . . . with them."
She tried to phrase an objection to his leaving, and found herself saying 
instead, "Well, if you really have to go . . ."
Astonishingly Barbie had rushed up to him and was clinging to his arm. "Please, 
Dr. Levy," she begged, "you don't have to let her chase you away."
"Barbara!" He took his arm sternly away. "Your mother's quite correct. I do have 
to go."
"But you don't realize—Mom's been up all night and she—" Anguished, the girl 
paused, then turned around to face Gladys. "I'm sorry, Mother, but it's true!" 
She turned back to the teacher, "She just doesn't want to believe that there is 
anything wrong with me. Please don't go!"
"Naturally your mother's upset," he answered. "She wants to be alone with you 
for a while, and it will probably be good for both of you. If you're not scared 
she won't be."
Gladys felt fury burning within her and didn't know whom to be angry at. She 
turned swiftly to the telephone.
 
EIGHT
 
The operator didn't seem to want to understand her. Gladys talked urgently into 
the phone, pouring out her troubles to a half-dozen unidentified switchboards, 
until someone finally con­nected her with the clerk at the Emergency 
Headquarters labora­tory.
All the time she was aware of muted conversation, of footsteps coming and going, 
in the room behind her. She spoke into the mouthpiece, reading oft the serial 
number from the top of the sheet, repeating the exact symptoms as Barbara had 
told them to her.
"She began to feel ill about five-thirty, became acutely nauseous, thought she 
was going to vomit, but didn't. Later on, she says, she was sick—about nine 
o'clock." Why, that was . . . No wonder she didn't tell me, Gladys thought, she 
must have thought the egg-nog did it!
"Yes, they checked it on the truck. They said it was all right." And I heard her 
in the bathroom, and I never knew! "Slept well . . . feels all right this 
morning . . . Barbara Mitchell . . . B-a-r-b-a-r-a Mitchell, M-i-t-c-h-e-1-1, 
2036 . . . that's right . . . Have you any idea how long it will take? I see. . 
. . Please, if you can. . . . Thank you.
"They're going to do the analysis," she said to the room at large. "They said it 
might take several hours. They didn't seem to think it was too serious, Dr. 
Levy. They said—"
He wasn't there. Barbara alone sat in the center of the big chair, slender, 
fragile, and erect. She didn't look like a girl condemned to...
Stop it! Gladys screamed at herself.
"Where . . . ?" she asked out loud.
"He's gone." Barbara licked her lips to case the numbness out of them. "Did they 
say anything else?"
"No. They just said they'd notify our squadman and call us back if they could. 
Maybe . . ." She couldn't stand by any longer, without offering the child some 
hope. "Maybe it's a false alarm, honey. Maybe you're all right. It could have 
been the eggnog, you know. It really could. They said it was kind of late for 
you to get sick. That teacher can't be sure, you know. You feel all right, don't 
you?"
Under the flood of sympathy Barbie's dam of tears broke. Gladys soothed and 
patted, feeling sanity return with the grip of the tense young fingers. She had 
to keep going; Barbie still needed her.
"There, baby," she whispered, "you go ahead and cry. You'll feel better 
afterwards. Don't you believe for a minute that man knows everything. He's been 
wandering around like a maniac all night, and if he was really so sure he'd be 
in the hospital himself, wouldn't he? There, baby . . ."
Her voice went on in its soothing, monotonous reassurance, even after Barbie had 
pulled away.
"Hospital?" She sniffled and groped in her pocket for a handker­chief. "Why 
should he be in the hospital?"
"Didn't he tell you? That's why he was going around to all the houses. He says 
he got it while he was taking a walk with some of you in the afternoon."
Barbie's eyes, dry now and wide, were fascinated. "But how does he know?"
"He doesn't!" Gladys insisted. "He just thinks so, and he's been going around 
scaring everyone half to death."
The word seemed to linger on her lips, tasting bad, feeling wrong.
Death. It bounced around the room, hurled itself back at her. "But I mean, is he 
sure? Does he really think he has it?" 
"He thinks so."
"Oh, Mom, you shouldn't have let him go out! We should have asked him to stay 
here—"
"He wouldn't have stayed, baby. There were other people he wanted to see."
"No, there weren't." Barbara shook her head. "He said it was too late to go 
anyplace else—it was too light out. He said he was going to try and get back to 
his room. But—
"Look, Barbie," Gladys interrupted briskly, "if he was going home, then that's 
the best thing he could have done. I don't know why he didn't go to the hospital 
anyway if he thought he was sick. He didn't have to go around all night telling 
people—he could have told the squad."
"But he couldn't! He's on a list of—well, he didn't tell me much, but I know he 
couldn't go to Emergency Headquarters because they would have arrested him. 
Didn't he tell you?"
Gladys shook her head. There was something wrong with the man! It was better to 
have him out of the house.
"He tried to call Emergency Headquarters first," Barbie said, "but as soon as 
they heard his name they started stalling around, and . . . I told you about 
that blacklist he was on for making speeches and everything . . . and they 
wouldn't listen when he tried to tell them about us kids. They just said to wait 
where he was, and they sent some men out to arrest him. Well, anyway," she 
consoled herself, "I told him to come back if he needed someplace to stay. I'm 
glad I did that much."
"Why should you do anything?"
"Well, he might have saved my life, that's all!"
"Oh, darling . . ."
Barbara broke away from her mother's hand and stalked dra­matically to the 
window. She pulled back the drape and stood there, staring out into the empty 
street. Her blue-robed back faced the room with a passive defiance that Gladys 
could not penetrate.
The phone was ringing. It would wake Ginny up.
She picked up the receiver and cut off a ring in the middle. She could hold it 
like that, keep her hand firm over the earphone, never hear what they wanted to 
tell her.
She raised the receiver to her ear. "Hello." The flat word was no greeting, but 
an acknowledgment of the expected disaster. "Gladys!" Somebody was shrieking at 
her, somebody alive, personal, not the controlled inhumanity of an official 
dealing out death. A woman.
"Hello, Edie." Recognition was curious; it was like waking up. "How are you? I 
mean, Edie, have you heard anything?"
"Heard anything?" The harsh laughter hurt her ears. "How could I hear anything? 
They won't let us find out. They won't tell us anything. They've got hillbilly 
songs on the radio now!"
"What do you mean, Edie?" Nothing about Jon; nothing about the city. The 
excitement drained out of her, left her too tired to talk. "What did you call 
for?"
"Because I'm a damn fool!" Edie snapped. "Because I thought you could—" She 
broke off, stifling something that sounded like a sob. "I don't know why," she 
finished dully. "There's nothing you can do. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have . . ." 
Gladys had to strain to hear; the words seemed to crumble away before they 
reached her.
"Well, maybe I can do something. What's wrong? You've got to tell me what's 
wrong first." She felt a perverse gratitude to Edie, for being so weak, weaker 
than she was.
"There's nothing you can do."
"Well, what's the matter?"
"No. They wouldn't do anything, and there's nothing you can do. I'm sick, that's 
all, and they wouldn't believe me. I told them I was sick, and they didn't care. 
They just went away."
"But, Edie, if they said you're all right . . . ?"
"What do they care? How do they know how sick I was? I read all about it in 
those papers they left, and I was right, I tell you I was right! I was sick, 
Gladys. I never get sick, and I was so sick. They could have—Glad, they gave me 
a sedative. My God, I was sick all over the house and they gave me a pill to 
quiet my nerves."
"Did you take it?" The doctor said Edie was all right. The doctor said Barbie 
was all right. The doctor knew.
"No, I didn't take it. Go to sleep and die in your sleep, and make it easy for 
them! They just don't want to bother. My God, Gladys, my hair! I'll lose my 
hair. Do you realize it says—"
"Look, Edie, you take that pill they gave you." Gladys tried to sound 
sympathetic, but it came out cold and stern instead. "You'll be all right."
A muttering sound in the living room behind her made her sharply aware of 
Barbie's presence. Barbara could hear everything she said. Edie was talking 
again, but Gladys didn't listen to it. "You take that pill!" she said again, 
fiercely. She heard the receiver on the other end banged down, a furious 
impotent gesture of defiance. Edie would be all right. She had to be. The doctor 
said so.
"What do you want, Barbie?" She turned back to the living room, but it wasn't 
Barbie who was talking. The muttering sound came from the radio, the first news 
report of the morning.
"Reprisals are being made. There is little or no further danger of attack. Our 
radar screen is now constantly in operation and all large centers are under the 
protection of military government. Many saboteurs have been apprehended, and any 
still at liberty will no longer be able to operate under new military 
restrictions. The type of missile used by the enemy is worthless without the 
co-opera­tion of an agent at the point of attack. If all citizens co-operate 
with the emergency government, there is no further danger of enemy attack. Stay 
tuned to this station for further news in twenty min­utes. Meanwhile, some 
recorded music . . ."
Impatiently Barbie turned the radio down. "They didn't say anything at all," she 
complained angrily. "Nothing but a lot of stuff about rioting and panics. It's 
quiet enough here, heaven knows!" She went back to the window.
"Barbie." Gladys' voice tugged at her back. "Barbie, did they say anything about 
the city—anything at all about what's happening there?"
"No. Nothing new."
"What about the panics? What kind of rioting?" She didn't really want to know, 
but, whatever happened, she couldn't let the silence grow between them again.
"It's nothing important," Barbie said impatiently. "Fires and stuff, just the 
same thing they said last night. Oh," she remembered something, "if we see any 
strangers wandering around we're sup­posed to report them to Emergency 
Headquarters right away, and not let them into the house, whatever happens, 
because some of them are looting and robbing and stuff like that."
She stopped suddenly. "Dr. Levy!" she said, aghast. "They said the squadmen had 
been instructed to shoot if necessary. Oh, Mom, we shouldn't have let him go!"
Gladys held back her anger. "He'll probably come back," she offered, "if it 
turns out to be too hard to get where he wanted to go."
"He didn't have anyplace to go," Barbie insisted.
She was not going to argue about the man. Maybe after she had some coffee she 
could do something about Barbie. She went back to the kitchen and waited once 
again for the water to boil. But now the sun was beginning to stream through the 
window. The white enamel was shining and familiar, and the porch was empty. All 
outdoors was empty of any sound. There was nobody outside this morning—no one 
emptying a garbage can or trying to start a re­calcitrant car, no dogs whining 
at back doors for admittance, no babies being put out for the first morning sun.
The robin let out a soft preparatory whistle, and Gladys got up wearily and 
poured the steaming water into the coffeepot. She let it drip and went back to 
the window to stare out into the silence.
It was so quiet. Not even birds . . . No birds!
She looked out now, eagerly scouring the trees and telegraph poles with her 
eyes. Then she saw them on the ground, right in back of the house—three sparrows 
on their backs with toothpick legs turned pleading to the sky; another across 
the lawn; a few more farther away. Those that hadn't died had gone. Where?
"Daddy, where's Daddy?" The swinging doors slammed against the wall under the 
impact of flying small fists and feet. Ginny stood breathless in the middle of 
the room, her pajama pants hiked above her waist to free her legs, the top 
dangling from her other hand to the floor. "Where's Daddy? I heard him talking. 
Where is he?"
"That wasn't Daddy, darling. Daddy didn't come home yet. That was a man who came 
to tell us Daddy was all right," she impro­vised. "He said Daddy will come home 
as soon as he can."
Ginny shook her head. "No, she said firmly. "That was my daddy. He came home. I 
heard him last night, and he never came up to say goo' night. I want my 
breakfast." She backed to a chair and sat down next to the kitchen table.
Gladys poured a cup of coffee. "I know what," she said. "We'll have a special 
Sunday breakfast."
"With French toast?"
"Yes. And all the trimmings."
Ginny was thinking. "We can't have a Sunday breakfast because it's Tuesday, 
because I went to school yesterday, and I didn't go the day before."
"Well, we'll pretend it's Sunday. Barbie!" she called into the front room.
"But if we pretend it's Sunday, then I don't have to go to school." Gladys hid 
her relief behind her coffee cup—one less item to explain. "Right. Barbie!" she 
called again. "Don't you want your breakfast?"
No reply. Gladys shoved her cup regretfully away. She started for the door and 
found her younger daughter trailing, puppylike, behind her.
"Sit down, Ginny. I'll be right back."
"I want my breakfast."
"I said I'll be right back."
"I want my breakfast now."
There was nothing to do about it. Gladys scooped a can of frozen orange juice 
out of the freezer, opened it, and mixed it with absent ease, then set the glass 
in front of her pouting daughter and said sternly, "You sit right there until I 
come back. And finish that juice."
Barbie was prepared for her. "I'm not hungry," she said as soon as Gladys walked 
in.
"I don't care whether you're hungry or not. We're going to have breakfast, and a 
decent breakfast, too," Gladys told her. "If you don' t want to eat you don't 
have to, but you do have to sit there and behave yourself."
With the whole world shaking around her, Gladys was still firm in one faith—the 
effects of the smell of French toast on her chil­dren's appetites and tempers. 
All she had to do was get Barbie in there.
"Listen, Barbie," she said quietly, "Ginny heard voices down here before, and 
she thought it was Daddy. I told her it was a man who came to tell us Daddy was 
all right. You've got to help me, Barbie," she pleaded desperately. "I know how 
you must be feel­ing, but there's nothing we can do till we find out, one way or 
the other. There's no reason to get Ginny upset until we're sure. If I have to 
have trouble with her right now I just don't know what I'll do."
There was no answer still, but when she turned back to the kitchen Barbie 
followed her. And when she looked she found the girl's face fixed in a 
determined pattern of good humor. She set herself to getting breakfast with a 
concentration of energy that drove all thought of the children from her mind for 
a few minutes.
But when she sat down she discovered that Barbara was confining her facsimile of 
conversation to the little girl. On the infre­quent occasions when Gladys forced 
attention to herself she could evoke nothing but a furious glare. The silence 
outside was a con­stant oppressive lack in the background. Sooner or later Ginny 
was going to look out the window and see the birds. She couldn't put off 
explaining things to the little girl much longer. She'd have to find some way.
Against the general silence the one small noise was an uproar. The children 
began to jump up, then hesitated, remembering what had happened the night 
before. But this time Gladys was no less curious than they. All three of them 
rushed to the front room and stared out of the windows, watching the truck grind 
to a halt in front of the house.
"It's Daddy coming home!"
Gladys knew why the truck was there; so did Barbie. Across the little girl's 
head they stared at each other, while Gladys hunted dumbly for the words she 
felt she ought to find.
"But they said it would take hours . . ."
Barbie's protest was so much an echo of her own futile will to resist—with a 
choked cry, half of pity, half of relief, she threw out her arms to her 
daughter. And with a headlong rush of escape Barbara's contorted face came to 
rest on her mother's shoulder.
"It isn't my daddy—it's a lady in pants and she's got a washing machine. Mammy, 
she's got two of them and they can walk."
It was impossible to sustain the drama of the moment in the face of Ginny's 
announcement. Barbie had to look too.
"They are not washing machines, silly!" she told Ginny. "They're diving suits. 
But, Mother, why? . . . Oh!" The explanation dawned on her.
 
NINE
 
"Mother, it's Veda! Ginny! Ginny, hurry, it's Veda! They've brought her home."
She struggled with bolts and latches and flung the door open just as Gladys came 
up from behind.
Coming up the front steps, flanked by the massive suits of the squadron, was 
Veda indeed—but a strange, unfamiliar Veda. Her face was pale, her eyes swollen, 
and she was covered from head to foot in a rough, flapping suit of men's 
overalls. Her tightly braided hair had come undone on one side and dangled in 
stiff iron-gray waves on her shoulder. The overall shirt, several sizes too 
large for her, was tucked bulkily inside the sagging denim bib. On her feet she 
wore nothing but a pair of cheap straw scuffs.
Gladys pulled Barbie back from the door as the strange trio approached. But she 
forgot about Ginny, who launched herself at Veda, with a violent sidewise attack 
that seriously upset the dignity of the squadman on the left and made him lose 
his hold on Veda's arm. Gladys thought he was going to be knocked off his feet, 
and wondered hysterically if they could get up by themselves when they fell in 
those suits. But nothing catastrophic happened. Veda disentangled herself from 
the child and the men both, the door shut, and they were all standing in an 
ill-assorted circle in the small front hall. There was a jumble of talk from the 
two children, mixed with indignant voicings from Veda and an attempt at 
explanation from one of the men. Gladys couldn't understand anything. She shook 
her head impatiently and motioned toward the living room.
They trooped in together, but when Veda tried to cross to the other side of the 
room one of the men took her firmly by the arm again.
Gladys turned on him indignantly. "Would you mind explain­ing         " she 
began, and then interrupted herself. "Will you please be quiet"—she turned on 
the children sharply—"so I can hear what's going on?"
In the lull the man spoke up. "You Mrs. Mitchell?" Gladys nodded. "Sorry to bust 
in on you like this," he said, "but this woman here says she works for you and 
we have to get some information about her. Now if you'll just answer a few 
questions we won't take much time."
"I'll be happy to answer your questions"—Gladys was still in­dignant—"as soon as 
your friend takes his hands off my maid."
"She does work for you, then? I'm sorry, lady, but we can't let her go. She 
might be dangerous."
Dangerous? Veda? "I've never heard anything so ridiculous!" Gladys told him 
heatedly. "If you expect to find out anything at all from me you'll let her sit 
down decently right now." For the first time since the whole mess started she 
had found someone on whom she could righteously vent some of her wrath.
"Listen, lady"—the man who had been holding Veda's arm spoke for the first 
time—"this woman talked us into coming over here to corroborate her story. If 
you don't feel like co-oper­atin'—"
Gladys ignored him. "Now, Veda." She took the offensive. "You sit down, and if 
they bother you any more I'll report them im­mediately."
"Mrs. Mitchell." It was the first man again, and he seemed to be trying not to 
laugh. "You probably don't realize that what you're doing is obstructing the 
path of justice. This woman is a suspected saboteur."
"Suspected what?"
"That's what I said. You got a radio; you know how the bombs came over. Well, 
every one of them bombs had a radar beacon set to bring it in to its target, and 
every one of them beacons was set by an enemy agent. We have to find the people 
who did it, and find 'em fast. Now do you want to help, or don't you?"
"All right," Gladys sighed. But she still protested weakly. "Only I don't see 
why he has to hang onto her arm like that."
"First of all, what's her name?" The man overrode her objection smoothly. He 
took a notebook out of the zippered pocket in his suit and dug for a pencil.
"Veda Klopak."
"Age?"
Gladys saw a look of alarm chase across Veda's face and heard Barbic, behind 
her, snickering. Veda had been an official thirty-nine ever since she came to 
work for them. Some rapid mental figuring produced a doubtful answer. "I don't 
know for sure, but I think about fifty-six or -seven." Veda stopped shaking her 
head and looked relieved.
The squadman hadn't missed Veda's vigorous negatives or Barbara's snicker, 
either. He was smiling when he said, "That checks close enough. Address?"
"I'd have to look it up," Gladys said. "I know it's in the East Bronx, but I 
don't remember the number since the last time she moved."
"Know how long she's been there?"
"Oh yes." Gladys thought back quickly. "It was just after Christ­mas she moved 
in . . ." The year Tom broke his arm . . . that was the year before we got the 
washing machine . . . "Four years ago," she finished triumphantly.
"You don't know the present address?"
"I have it written down someplace. I don't know exactly where." Gladys was 
increasingly flustered. This wasn't a joke or a silly misunderstanding. They 
were serious!
Barbie was tugging at her sleeve, but she waved the girl aside and looked 
frantically for the telephone pad.
"Mother      --"
"Just a minute, darling ..."
"But, Mother, here—"
"Barbie, I said wait a minute. I'm busy. Where in the world did I . . . ?" The 
pad was nowhere near the telephone.
"But, Mother . . . Mom . . . are you looking for the pad?" Gladys whirled 
around. "For heaven's sake! I've been looking all over for that. Where—"
"Well, I've been trying to give it to you."
Gladys riffled through the pages, trying to hide her confusion. Everything that 
happened this morning seemed to make her feel more foolish. And now she couldn't 
find the street number in the book.
"I have the phone number here," she said finally, avoiding the amused eyes of 
the man with the notebook. "I don't know where I've put the address, but I know 
I have it someplace. I can look in my bag upstairs; sometimes I just keep things 
in there on scraps of paper, I—"
"No need to do that. The phone number's enough. We can check it against the 
address we have."
"Well, I'd be glad to run up and find it for you," she assured him. It would be 
a pleasure to get out of that room for a moment, to have a chance to make sure 
her hair was combed, and to get hold of herself again. She took a step back.
"It don't look so good, lady." The other man, the one who had been holding onto 
Veda all along, spoke up again. "You bein' so anxious to get out of this here 
room. Mebbe you just better stick around here. My buddy told you the phone 
number was good enough."
Gladys found the number in the pad again and discovered that her fingers were 
trembling. The man's hard eyes and set face, his expressionless voice, and even 
his choice of words were all straight out of a grade-B gangster picture. But he 
was real. It was all real.
"Why don't you ladies just sit down and make yourselves com­fortable?" the man 
with the notebook asked. "No need to get all bothered. All we want to do is ask 
a few questions."
"Sure, go ahead," his companion offered dryly, clearly excepting Veda, by his 
tone of voice as well as by his continued tight grasp on her arm. "Make 
yourselves comfortable. I can see this is going to take some time."
It did. Endlessly Gladys repeated vital statistics about Veda, her household, 
herself, and events over the fifteen years during which Veda had worked for her.
But they were never satisfied. Over and over they went back and forth, covering 
the same ground from different directions, shooting an occasional question at 
Barbara, and even one or two, that she could answer, at Ginny, trusting more to 
the children's lack of dissimulation than to Gladys' greater knowledge.
She told them about old Mr. Klopak, whom she still firmly be­lieved had been the 
last real carpenter alive, about how Veda had come to work for her, part time, 
when Tommy was two, and Barbie just born, and old Mr. Klopak, repairing Tommy's 
old baby furniture for them, mentioned that his daughter was out of a job. Then 
Barbie got to play-pen age just as the recession struck, and Veda worked 
elsewhere for a couple of years. When Jon began making money in the early war 
years Veda had come back to them, and in one way or another had been with them 
ever since.
After her father died she had thought about coming to live with them, but never 
could make up her mind to do it. She had her own ways, and she was set in them; 
she knew they didn't fit into Gladys' household. Finally she had found a 
boardinghouse in the Bronx where she could sleep and fix herself an early 
breakfast, and keep her own things the way she liked them to be.
"I'll tell you, ma'am," he said finally, "we found this woman under suspicious 
circumstances. The whole neighborhood where she lived got a big dose of hot 
rain—"
Barbic sat up on the edge of her chair and opened her mouth to question him, but 
he went right on without giving her a chance.
"Everybody else around there—you understand, everybody for at least five blocks 
either way—is either dead right now or pretty sick. This one never got a drop on 
her. She had herself all wrapped up and shut in that room, like she had a pretty 
good idea what was going to happen. That don't look so good—especially when you 
know that there had to be somebody around there to set that gimmick in place in 
the river."
"I don't know anything about the gimmick you're talking about," Gladys protested 
for what seemed the hundredth time. "But I've already told you that's what Veda 
always does when she's sick. I've argued with her about it for years, but she's 
been doing it ever since I've known her. Besides which"—wearily she tried to hit 
a lighter note—"she couldn't possibly be an enemy agent. She just works too 
hard. She wouldn't have time."
She won a feeble smile from the friendlier of the two men, but nothing could 
prevail over the stony mask of the other. The ques­tioning was resumed, and now 
they wanted to know in detail everything Gladys could tell them about Veda's 
personal and medical idiosyncrasies.
But in the end they were satisfied; they had to be. And even then it seemed to 
Gladys that they were reluctant to give up a suspect.
"We'll leave the woman in your custody, Missus," Flinty Eyes said finally. He 
loosened his grasp on Veda's tortured arm. She stood there, rubbing the spot 
he'd been holding, angrily silent.
"But that means she stays here. You don't let her out of this house for any 
reason whatsoever, without clearance from the Security Office," he added. "I 
can't say I'm sure about her yet, but we can't waste time on cases like this 
one. Right now we got to prove, and double-prove, every accusation we make. 
Things get a little worse, they're going to realize security is more important 
than jury trials."
"Things get worse?" Gladys gasped. "But it said on the radio—­you—the squadman 
in the truck told me—things can't get worse."
"The radio isn't telling everything," the other man put in. "But you'll be okay 
as long as you're telling the truth. Things'll be a lot better when they give 
our office some leeway—better than if it gets to the vigilante point, anyways."
"You just keep a close watch on her," his partner said. "We might be coming back 
to check. Can't say for sure."
Once more Gladys felt herself burning with a passion of indigna­tion, but this 
time she contained it. There was no purpose in flaring up now, when they were 
ready to go.
At the door the friendlier of the two paused. "You can call us through the 
Emergency Headquarters if you need us, Mrs. Mitchell. Just ask for Security." 
His smile did not include Veda.
For a long time, it seemed, they stood there, after the final closing of the 
door, mother and daughters staring at the rumpled, ruffled woman whom they had 
known so long and so well, and were now really seeing for the first time.
At last Veda broke the silence.
"Coffee's boffin'," she said, sniffing.
 
TEN
 
Gladys' hand leaped to her mouth. "I had it on to stay hot," she breathed. 
"I'll—"      
She had to stop talking. She had to blink back tears and it washard to keep her 
mouth straight. Her voice promised to quaver babyishly if she said another word.
She couldn't let the children see this; she couldn't act this way in front of 
Veda. She couldn't understand it either. Veda was back, and she wasn't alone any 
more, and here she was ready to cry because her coffee was spoiled.
She made a muffled noise that she hoped they would interpret as an apology or 
explanation, and dashed for the kitchen. She stood there, over the stove, 
staring down into the muddy remains of the steaming fresh pot of an hour ago—the 
pot she had started to make when Dr. Levy came creaking and rattling the boards 
of the back porch, and finished making when he left.
She filled the kettle once more and took the coffeepot over to the sink, letting 
hot water flow into it. She picked up the plastic robin that went on the kettle 
spout. Cheer up! she thought hysterically. Cheer up! Cheer up!
Veda came through the swinging door and brushed past her, the ridiculous 
overalls flapping as she walked. Almost at the door of the little back room, she 
turned back to the sink and deliberately turned off the hot-water faucet.
"I was rinsing that pot!" Gladys said too sharply, and immedi­ately regretted 
it. There was no sense taking out her feelings on Veda.
"Thought you might be wanting to save yer hot water." Veda's stony assurance was 
so normal it was incredible. "There's no tellin' how long you'll have it," she 
finished patiently, as if explaining matters to a small child.
"No telling . . . ? Yes, of course." Gladys looked curiously at the other woman. 
"Veda, how are things . . . outside?"
"Purty bad," she said laconically. "If you don't mind, Missus Mitchell, I'd like 
to kinder change my things, an' we kin talk afterwards."
"Oh—is there anything you need? I don't know if my things would fit . . ."
"Thank you jest the same, Missus Mitchell, but I got everything I need. Lucky 
thing I allus kept some things here."
"Well, go ahead." Gladys smiled. She surveyed the cold food and scattered dishes 
on the table. "I'll start some more breakfast. You must be hungry too."
"I could use a bite to eat." She disappeared into the back room.
It was a shock, on this strange morning, to see Veda emerge, ten minutes later, 
looking exactly as always: cotton house dress, white apron, shiny black shoes, 
gray cotton stockings, smooth hair severely pinned back in a braided bun—no 
different from a thousand other mornings.
Gladys became acutely conscious, once more, of her own di­sheveled appearance, 
remembering the unbelievable moment when the man had interpreted her desire to 
escape upstairs as part of a deep-dyed plot. And now Veda wouldn't let her 
escape. She started off with a vague murmur about washing up, and Veda reminded 
her tartly that there was a sink right in front of her.
"Who you fixin' up fer?" she demanded pointedly. "You sit right down an' have 
some of that fresh coffee. Plenty of time fer primpin' all the rest of your 
life. You look about beat right now, ' an' you need a little coffee in you 
more'n you need a comb."
Gladys lacked the will to disagree. She rinsed her face in clear cold water and 
sat down once again at the white-enameled table, letting Veda take over at the 
stove.
"I don't know how you do it," she said plaintively, watching the older woman 
move briskly around the room. "You must have had a worse night than I did."
"I dunno." She cleared off dirty plates swiftly and replaced them with clean 
settings. "Look like you been up all night, an' you must of had a hard day 
yestidday, with me not in." She set bacon to sizzling on the stove, cracked an 
egg in the white bowl. "You want more French toast, I guess? I'll mix up a 
little cinnamon sugar. The little one goes crazy for it. All I did was sleep all 
day," she went on, "right up until them men come an' dragged me out of bed, an' 
that wasn't till the middle of the night. Had myself three days' sleep before 
that happened."
"Dragged you out of bed?"
Barbie was standing at the door, holding it open, and Gladys saw Ginny's head 
peeking out around her. Both children were clearly enthralled by the picture of 
the two heavily suited men in­vading that prim boardinghouse bedroom and 
dragging her out. Gladys thought she saw the older woman's face crimson, too, 
but Veda was turned away.
"Some people are never happy without they're asking ques­tions," Veda told the 
wall. "Good way to get into trouble, too," she informed the frying pan. Finally, 
turning to Barbie, she finished, "I'll tell you everything you want to know. 
Wasn't for your mother, and you too, the Lord knows where I'd be now. But I 
ain't goin' to tell it more'n once, so you better wait till I got my breakfast 
on the table, an' then I'll tell you once and fer all." She slid the spatula 
under a piece of egg-puffed bread and flopped it over to expose a thick golden 
crust. "Once I finish up, I ain't answerin' no more questions. That clear?"
"Um-humh." Barbie knew when to mollify Veda. "Okay. Only you have to really tell 
us the whole story."
"She'll tell you," Gladys said firmly, "just exactly as much as she wants to, 
not one word more. Is that clear?" She was watching Ginny, who was standing 
there soaking it all in, wondering how much the little girl had already 
understood, how much she would understand of Veda's story, how much Veda would 
say in front of her.
While she wondered Ginny found her tongue. "Did my daddy save you from the 
accident in the city?" she demanded.
"Your daddy?" Veda turned around, surprised, then shocked. "You mean your daddy 
never come—" She caught herself, then finished the sentence. "He never come 
after me at all, he didn't. Can you imagine him savin' other people and never 
thinking about poor old Veda?
"Mr. Mitchell ain't home yet, then?" Veda chose her words carefully, and Gladys 
was grateful, but she couldn't play up. Not now, not any more. Later maybe. All 
she could do was sit there and think about the dead birds in the grass, about 
the squadmen's heavy suits and Veda's airtight room. And Jon, Jon who was in the 
city . . . still in the city.
"No," she said, "no, no, he didn't come home yet. No, he—"
"Missus Mitchell." She felt Veda's hand firm on her elbow; the coffee cup in her 
other hand was shaking. "Missus Mitchell, you must be jest about wore out. Think 
you kids'd have more sense an' consideration fer your mother . . ." She directed 
a scathing, un­warranted attack on the children, transforming their 
uncomfort­able wonder promptly to outraged defense. "Poor woman's been up all 
this time, all wore out, and never one of you had sense enough to know she'd 
need some rest. Come on now." She took Gladys' arm and steered her toward the 
door.
"But I don't want to --"
"You stop that now, Missus Mitchell. You sound jest like Ginny. You got to get 
some sleep."
"I can't . . ." Somehow they were in the living room. She couldn't go to bed. 
Something she had to find out. About Barbie. She pulled her arm loose from 
Veda's guiding grasp and headed for the couch. "I'll just rest awhile in here," 
she said as firmly as she could. "I'll be fine right here."
Veda tried to make her get up, but she wouldn't. After a while the other woman 
relented and even brought her her half-finished coffee. She had to stay up; she 
had to.
Regretfully she put the empty coffee cup down. She wanted more, but the kitchen 
was an endless number of steps away. She shrugged down in the corner of the 
sofa, inside the red wool robe, away from the invading chill in the air, away 
from loneliness and fear, inside the warm wool present from Jon.
She wanted more coffee, and she wanted a blanket, but it was too much effort to 
get up for either. She had started shivering, and now it was increasing. She 
called out, but something was wrong with her voice. She tried again and this 
time it worked, but a burst of laughter from the kitchen drowned out her 
efforts. She felt infinitely sorry for herself.
"Oh, Jon, I need you," she whispered out loud. "Jon darling, please come home. 
Come home quick. I can't stand any more." Tears welled up in her eyes, and she 
dabbed them furiously away. They were all laughing in there. Everybody else was 
all right; they had slept and rested, and she alone had lived through every 
minute of this horrible night. Barbie was all right too. She couldn't imagine, 
now, what had possessed her to let that crazy teacher in. She hoped someone 
caught him before he got into any real trouble. With her own daughter safe, she 
felt sorry for him. She hoped he wasn't really sick and would be all right.
She got up to get the blanket from the chest in the corner, and the tears still 
standing in her eyes made it hard for her to see; she stopped where she was and 
wiped them away, glancing guiltily toward the door, relieved to find nobody had 
witnessed her foolish scene.
She heard the radio droning on, turned down low. It was right in front of her. 
Once more she brushed away the tears, until she could see the dial, and made it 
a little louder, to catch the evasive words that had been tickling her ears 
since she sat down on the sofa.
They were reading off a list of names. She sank down in. Jon's big chair near 
the radio and tucked the blanket around her shoul­ders, and under her feet. 
Warmth flowed over her. The names stopped on the radio, and the announcer 
repeated what she had not quite heard before.
"We will continue to deliver personal messages of importance on this station, 
and to give out lists of survivors and casualties. Keep tuned to this station, 
and keep listening. There will be no more telephone messages to relatives of 
survivors and casualties. If you live in middle Westchester and are waiting for 
news of someone in your home, you will receive it on this station. Keep 
listening.
"Mrs. Hanson Delaney, of 104 Bracklane Street, to her son, John Delaney. Mrs. 
Delaney is safe at her sister's home on West Hope Street.
"Bob Bellowes, to his wife, Nita Bellowes. Mr. Bellowes is an emergency squadman 
and is safe and at work but unable to come home.
"Message to Mrs. Lydia Johnson. Your two daughters, Jenny and Ruth, are in the 
Emergency Hospital in this area, being treated for radiation disease symptoms.
"To Mrs. R. L. Petronelli. Your son, Peter, is in the hospital in this area, 
being treated for radiation disease.
"To Mrs. Harlan Frame, of Purchase Street. Your sister, Amy, and her daughter, 
Gladys, are in the hospital, being treated for radiation disease and shock.
"To Mrs. Emory Bar . . . We interrupt these messages for the latest list of 
survivors from this area, rescued in the city. All of the following persons have 
been checked into an emergency station and will be evacuated as soon as their 
condition is diagnosed.
"Please listen carefully. Someone you know may be among the persons found. John 
Damien, 1413 Broad Street; Alexander Emory, 105 Haimes Street; Cynthia Evy, 1214 
St. Clare Avenue; Michael Foucek, 479 North . . ."
Gladys listened curiously as the names, foreign and familiar, harsh and 
melodious, individual and undistinguishable, rolled out of the radio in a steady 
procession. From time to time a thrill of compassion or of sympathetic joy would 
move her, when the name of a friend or neighbor penetrated the gray haze in 
which she was wrapped, inside the warm blanket in the soft chair.
The butcher's son (in the city buying meat?) was reported safe at a checking-out 
station. Old Mrs. Cross, down the street, was dead of a heart attack, found in 
the street by a rescue truck. Tim Claragh, who was Peggy Turner's cousin, was 
doing rescue work in the city. "Watch out for looters and rioters. Refugees have 
gotten through part of the barricade around the city. Admit no strangers. There 
will be music for fifteen minutes. . . ."
They never said Jon's name. They never said anything.
Jon! Jon! It was like a knife, cutting the soft protective haze, cutting away 
the fog and fuzziness too. She struggled out of the suffocating blanket, reached 
over, and twirled the dial frantically.
All she could get was static. She managed to climb out of the chair and 
crouched, shivering, in front of the radio.
"Mother!" The surprise in Barbie's voice was fresh and almost amused; then 
immediately it was terrified. "Mom! What is it? What's the matter, Mom?"
"Nothing." Gladys was irritated. She must look ridiculous.
She stood up, trying to do it easily and gracefully, almost lost her balance, 
and had to grab the arm of Jon's big chair for support. She saw Barbie's face, 
drawn into a tense peak of fear.
"Mom, what is it? What did they say, what did it say on the radio now?"
"Nothing. I'm all ri—" Then the sense of the girl's question penetrated. 
"Nothing, it's nothing at all. They were reading things off, and I lost the 
station. I was trying—"
"Lost the station?" Barbie was incredulous. "But you couldn't! They—"
"Well, I'm sorry." Even to herself, Gladys sounded peevish, but she couldn't 
think how to do anything about it. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. They 
started playing music, and I tried to get another station, and then I couldn't 
find anything at all." It was all so perfectly simple.
"But you couldn't lose it," Barbie repeated too patiently, "because it's the 
only one we can get. All you can get on the others is static."
Well, I know that, all right, Gladys thought. She looked across the vast space 
to the sofa, thinking how many footsteps it would take to get there, and that 
she would have to let go of the chair arm to do it.
"What made you think . . . ?"
"I don't know," she answered shortly. Why didn't Barbie leave her alone? "I 
guess I'm just too tired to think." She couldn't remember now why she had wanted 
to keep hearing names. Somebody wasn't going to call up. She sat down again in 
the chair. "It's chilly in here, isn't it?" she asked, marveling at how her 
voice had cleared up. It was normal and distinct now.
"Mom . . . Mom, are you all right? Mom, you're not—" Barbie was terrified about 
something. Her voice sounded pulled out, tight, like a rubber band about to 
snap. "You're not . . . sick?"
"Don't be silly!" Gladys didn't want to be annoyed. She laughed, but it didn't 
sound right.
"But, Mom, it's not cold in here at all. It's warm, and . . . you seem so funny. 
Mom, you're not sick, are you?"
Someone was tugging determinedly at her arm—Veda.
"C'mon, you're goin' upstairs, and wash your face and go to bed." Resisting, her 
fingers tightened on Jon's chair, and she remembered, her fingers remembered for 
her, what her dazed mind refused to hold.
Personal information no longer by telephone. They would not call. They'd never 
call. It would be on the radio. They would tell her about Jon on the radio.
"Somebody will have to listen all the time . . ."
Veda tugged again, and Gladys stopped trying to explain or protest. She'd told 
them now; she'd remembered. Obediently, childishly, she let herself be led up 
the stairs.
"Come on now," Veda urged her. "You wash your face, and we'll get you into bed."
She floated through the bathroom door and kept on floating. She was in bed, but 
she remembered she was in the bathroom. No, in bed. Floating.
He was walking toward her and he kept coming, very slowly coming on, but he 
never got any closer; she couldn't see him clearly, although the light was very 
bright, red and bright, but she saw a shape, not his shape, and still she knew 
who it was; he was coming on all the time, walking toward her, and if she waited 
long enough, if she could keep her eyes on him, on the shape that had to be him, 
everything would be all right.
She was floating, but he was coming, Jon was coming. It was hard for him, and 
she didn't understand why, until the clouds cleared away. The red light was on 
everything, and she saw the treadmill in between shredded wisps of pink 
marshmallow-fluff clouds. He was walking on the treadmill and trying as hard as 
he could not to let it pull him backward.
 
ELEVEN
 
The cries got closer, ringing in her ear, and the treadmill let out a wailing 
screech as it disappeared from sight. Gladys sat up in bed, still holding the 
twisted damp sheet in her hand.
"There now, Missus Mitchell, you're awake all right now." Veda tugged the sheet 
gently away from her perspiring hands and smoothed it out. She started to lie 
back again, but Veda plumped out the pillows and put one in back of the other 
for a support, then fitted the breakfast tray neatly over her knees.
"Now there," she said again, and lifted the coffeepot to pour it where the 
beckoning aroma would rise right under her nose. "You drink that an' you'll feel 
fine."
Gladys picked up the coffee cup and had to put it down on the tray again to 
steady it. She tried both hands next time. The cup was hot, but it felt good.
"You could of used a little more sleep, but that telephone never stopped 
ringin', and I heard you thrashin' around up here. Can't hardly seem that kind 
of sleep would do you much good."
The telephone kept ringing. Then part of the dream wasn't a dream. Jon . . . 
that part wasn't a dream either. Barbie!
"Who called?" She remembered too much now, she could tell just where the dream 
began and ended.
"Yer friend, Missus Crowell. She's been callin' all day. Seems mighty worried—"
"Who else?" She had no mind for Edie Crowell's worries now. 
"Wasn't nobody else."
"Not even the laboratory? Didn't they call up? About Barbie?"
"Nope. Ain't nobody called about Barbie."
"What time is it?"
"Must be close on four o'clock. It was more'n half past three when I was in the 
kitchen."
So late! She didn't feel as if she'd slept that long.
"Did the truck come?"
Veda looked puzzled.
"Didn't they come yet?" Gladys asked again. "The squad truck, with the doctor?"
"Oh, them! With that Mr. Turner from across the way? They come . . . let's see . 
. . aroun' noontime. Ginny was takin' a nap. She was so cranky, with all the 
goings on this mornin', I fixed her lunch early—she didn't hardly eat a thing at 
that—an' it was right after I got her into bed that Mr. Turner come in."
"Did they have any news—about Barbie? Did they tell you anything?"
"Couldn't rightly say, Missus. The doctor, he talked to Barbie some, and Mr. 
Turner, he jest wanted to talk to you and there wasn't nobody else good enough."
"They didn't say anything about the analysis?"
Veda just looked blank. I never told her, Gladys realized. All that time, when 
she was so tired, she had been trying to remember something, something she had 
to tell Veda. She had remembered something, but it wasn't the right thing. I 
never told her about Barbie!
"Didn't Barbie tell you?"
"Mom!" A shout of joy vibrated through the house, and Barbara came pounding up 
the stairs and skidded to a halt just inside the door. "Mom, it was on the 
radio. Just now! About Tom!"
Gladys sat up so suddenly she almost spilled her coffee. "What?"
"He's all right!" Barbie had caught her breath. "He's in the Army. It didn't say 
where, but it gave a serial number. I wrote it down." She waved a scrap of paper 
triumphantly under her mother's nose. "Oh, Mom, he's all right!"
"Thank God!" It wasn't just something to say, a symbol of relief. It was a 
deeply religious thanksgiving. She put the coffee down on the bed table and let 
Barbie wrap her in an exuberant embrace.
"Mummmmmmmy—y." Barbie disentangled herself and dropped the scrap of paper on 
the blanket. "Here, you keep this. I'll go take care of Ginny. I got so excited, 
I forgot she was sleeping." She was gone almost as swiftly as she had come.
"Is Ginny just getting up? When did she go to sleep?" Her mouth put the 
question, but her ears hardly heard the reply, because of the whirling thoughts 
in her mind.
"She was all wore out. Jest couldn't keep up with ever'thing goin' on."
Thank God, thank God! He's safe! Gladys answered Veda with a smile, but inside 
she prayed. Tom's safe; now Barbie. Please, God. Please . . . She couldn't 
remember praying for years and years, not really praying. She went to church and 
said the words, but this feeling, this—believing . . . Tom was all right. God 
could hear her prayers. Barbie, and . . . She stopped the thought, half formed. 
Maybe it was silly, but she thought God had enough to do, watching out for the 
children; she would have to worry out the part about Jon by herself. Prayers and 
thanks and fears swirled around in her mind, pushing Jon out, with only an 
instant's terrified half memory of seeing him disappear, once before, into 
shapeless, formless terror, on a road that moved forever away.
Veda was saying something. She wiped her hands on the sticky sheet and made 
herself think of Tom, nothing else. Thank God, thank God. She smiled brilliantly 
at Veda. Everybody'll be all right.
"Excuse me, Missus Mitchell, I don't mean to ask questions . . . but all this 
time you been so worried about Tom wanting to go in the Army. An' now he's gone 
an' done it, you're practically crying from joy."
"But he's alive, Veda! Of course I don't want him in the Army. He's all right, 
don't you understand?" Gladys stared at the other woman incredulously. It was so 
silly to have to explain. "He's all right," she repeated. "He didn't get hurt!"
Veda's mouth opened, but no word came out. "You mean," she said finally, "it's . 
. . all over? It's every place?"
"You didn't know?"
"All I knew was here in New York. You mean there was bombs all over? In all the 
cities?"
Rapidly Gladys filled in all she had heard the day before, most of it news to 
Veda, who had known only of the disasters in the city.
"Didn't Barbara tell you anything?" Gladys demanded.
`"Didn't have much chance for talking," Veda explained. "Barbie jest hung onto 
that radio all day, except when she was tellin' stories to Ginny in the morning, 
and a little while in the afternoon when the doctor come." Veda smiled. "She 
sure enough told me ever' time they got some new rules out for what we had to 
do, but I guess she wore out her voice jest tellin' me that. She was kind of mad 
at me—I wouldn't tell nothin' about what happened to me, not till you got up. 
Seemed like you was kind of worried about that before you went to sleep." She 
smiled again. "So I jest told the kids I wasn't goin' to tell that story more'n 
once, and it'd have to wait till you got up. Guess she was kind of gettin' even. 
Anyways, I was too busy to do much talkin'." She explained that she had spent 
the day trying to do everything she could to prepare for emergencies. She had 
washed all the dirty linens, except those on Gladys' bed, and boiled as much 
water as she could get into the available jars.
Her voice went on, reciting a narrative of the day's activities, but Gladys was 
only half listening. Barbie had never even told Veda about herself! She 
interrupted Veda's report to explain about Barbie. "And the laboratory never 
called?" she asked.
"Ain't nobody called but Missus Crowell."
"Did she want anything special? She kept calling last night. First she wanted to 
come over, and then she was afraid to."
"Says she's sick," Veda answered laconically. "I kind of thought I might run 
over and take a look at her, but I ain't had time up till now. You think . . . 
?"
"Sick?" Gladys demanded. "What kind of sick? What's the matter with her?"
"Couldn't make out. Didn't know she was such a particular friend"—Veda clearly 
did not approve of Edie Crowell—"or I'd of found out more'n I did."
"She's not such a particular friend." Gladys pushed the tray away and reached 
for her robe. "I told you she kept calling up yesterday and . . ." She faltered. 
And what? If she has it, that doesn't mean Barbie does. "And I feel kind of 
responsible if she is sick," she finished weakly. "I kept telling her she was 
imagining it all; I kept telling her she didn't have it. What's the matter with 
her?"
"Told you, I couldn't make out, she kept talkin' so much. Nothin' serious, I 
don't think, but soon's you get up, mebbe I'll jest run over there an' see fer 
myself."
"Is it all right to go out?"
"Long as you stay near yer own house. They got some kind of curfew goin', 
though. Nobody allowed out after eight o'clock. Barbie kin tell you better. She 
heard it on the radio. When she told me, I thought we could mebbe lay in some 
supplies, and I went down to Monnassey's, but they got a big sign printed up, 
`No Business.' Said it was under the pertection of the Emergency Headquarters."
Gladys shrugged into her robe, feeling again the familiar comfort of the soft 
wool. It was silly, having it mean so much to her, but in some way it had come 
almost to replace Jon in her mind. She pulled it tight around her waist and 
knotted the belt. She was fully awake now; there were things she had to think 
about.
"How can we get food?" she asked briskly. "There must be some way."
"The sign didn't say. Seems like Mr. Turner would know, but he jest couldn't be 
bothered talkin' to me."
"Did he say when they were coming back? Why didn't you wake me up?"
"You needed your sleep," Veda insisted.
"You don't think he had anything important to tell me, do you?" Gladys 
controlled her irritation with Veda. Veda was probably right. She had needed the 
sleep.
"No'm, I don't," Veda said sharply. It was too respectful. Gladys waited, 
knowing there was more coming.
"Tell you, Missus Mitchell, this ain't none of my business, an' I know I oughter 
likely as not keep my mouth shut, but . . . I don't like that Mr. Turner. I jest 
plain don't like the way he was askin' fer you, or the way he couldn't talk to 
nobody else. Never did think much, though I ain't one to gossip, the way he 
treats that nice wife of his. I hear plenty," she added as Gladys, sur­prised, 
started to protest, "that ain't talked about except in the kitchen, an' I ain't 
passed it all on to you neither. Like I said, it's none o' my business, but it 
wouldn't hurt you to keep an eye on him."
"Veda," Gladys protested, "I don't know what kind of talk you've heard—" It was 
surprising enough to have her admit she had ever listened to idle gossip; in 
Veda's book, loose talk and aimless questioning were cardinal sins. "But I don't 
think you should say things like that about Mr. Turner. He's been very nice 
and—"
"That's jest what I'm talkin' about."
"He's been very nice," Gladys repeated firmly, "and you have to remember that 
those other men might have told him . . . might have said something to him . . . 
well . . ." Why did I ever get into this? "Well, they could have said something 
about you being under suspicion." She saw hurt bewilderment on Veda's face. 
"After all," she added hastily, "just because you and I know that you didn't do 
anything, that doesn't mean they believe it. And what's more," she beat a hasty 
retreat to the original subject, "I suppose it's all those trips of his you were 
thinking of. Well, they weren't as mysterious as they seemed. He was—"
"No'm," Veda broke in again. "Mebbe I listened to some talk I shouldn't of, but 
I got some sense. What I'm talkin' about ain't what happened when he wasn't 
there—"
"Mommy!"
A flying wedge of five-year-old burst through the door and clambered into her 
arms, dripping large wet kisses all the way.
"Mommy . . ." Ginny voiced her grievance promptly. "They didn't let me go out 
all day!"
"Didn't they? I know what." Gladys freed herself from the smothering embrace. "I 
know something you can do—something you like."
"What is it, Mommy?" Ginny tagged after her to the closet. "What can I do? Can I 
go outside, Mommy? I'm tired of stories."
"Oh, something much better than that," Gladys teased. "Something that's much 
more fun."
"What is it? Please tell me. Please, Mommy, please."
"Well . . ." There it was, last year's dinner gown; and the black sandals that 
were beginning to be too worn. She reached for a box on the shelf and found a 
filmy silk scarf with only two or three little holes in it. Another box produced 
an elegant sequined bag, shiny with silver and purple. And sequins to pick up 
all over the house, too!
"Well . . ." she temporized, not letting Ginny look past her. There—the big hat 
with the long pink feather.
"There." She turned and dumped the glamorous pile at Ginny's feet. "That's 
what!"
Ginny was, briefly, speechless. But she recovered before Gladys could get out 
into the bathroom, in time to ask, "Can I put on lipstick too? And powder?"
"And," Gladys finished for her, nodding, "perfume too—the little blue bottle, 
and don't use more than half of it!" Going into the bathroom, she wondered if 
the last bit of humor might have been too subtle, and almost went back. Oh, it 
doesn't matter! she decided recklessly.
Rinsing her face, Veda's worried words came back to her, and she chuckled at 
herself in the mirror, enjoying the picture of Gladys Mitchell, settled mother 
of three, being wickedly pursued by Jim Turner—beefy face, bedrock convictions 
and all. Veda really thinks things like that happen! She tried to imagine 
herself cowering before an amorous airtight suit. "No, no, a thousand times . . 
."
The muffled ringing of the phone downstairs interrupted her private melodrama. 
She pushed the door open and saw Veda, loaded down with dirty linens, presumably 
from her own bed, going by on her way to the stairs.
"That woman again!" she tossed over her shoulder to Gladys. "I'll jest bet it's 
that woman again. . . ." She disappeared down the staircase, still muttering.
Gladys took the time to dry her face and run a comb through her hair, glad now 
that she had finally had it cut short. She glanced quickly in the mirror, 
surprised to find that her face was still the same as it had been when she 
started down to answer Veda's phone call just—thirty-six hours ago. A day and a 
half . . . two days and a night since Jon had kissed her good-by.
She was downstairs while Veda was still waiting for a con­nection to be made.
"It's some switchboard operator." She handed over the phone happily enough. "She 
said, `Wait a minnit,' and then nothin' happened at all."
"Hello?" Gladys spoke sharply into unresponsive silence; but the phone wasn't 
dead. "Don't you know who it was? What kind of operator was it?"
Veda only shook her head.
"Hello, is this 1439 Maple Avenue?"
"Yes." Gladys hastily uncovered the mouthpiece. "Yes, who is this, please?"
"Emergency Headquarters lab," the young man's voice said concisely. "We got a 
report here on an analysis from your house. You want to take the report?"
"Yes, please." Gladys pulled open the little drawer in the table, rummaged for a 
pencil, and found the back of an envelope to write on. "Go ahead."
"We performed an analysis on Sample No. 2036C, on request of Mrs. Gladys 
Mitchell, and of James Turner, squadman for the area," he reeled off 
monotonously. "Sample was of fifteen-year­-old girl, briefly exposed to 
radioactive rain, reported ill . . ." Briefly exposed to radioactive rain . . . 
radioactive . . . active rain . . . radioactive rain . . . The words kept 
ringing in her ears. ". . . quantity of alpha emitters present in the sample, 
probably residual plutonium, apparently inhaled or swallowed. Insufficient 
evidence—"
"Excuse me." Gladys struggled for breath to form the words. "Could you repeat 
that, please? please, I'm sorry, but I didn't get all      
"Okay. Try and get it this time." He didn't mind showing his irritation. 
"Analysis showed a small quantity of alpha emitters present in the sample, 
probably residual . . ."
Small quantity! She allowed herself the space of the words she'd already heard 
to savor that, knowing it probably didn't matter, that a little was likely as 
bad as a lot, but holding on, while she could, to the idea that Barbie might, 
after all, be all right.
". . . ficient evidence of lethal or dangerous dose. No hospitali­zation 
required." She had to hold onto the table for support, dropping the pencil from 
her free hand, as her tensed body went limp with relief. She almost missed the 
rest. "Blood count will be neces­sary for final diagnosis. Please request the 
medical assistant on your squad truck to take blood counts as indicated, and 
submit to lab."
"But . . . I don't understand." This last threat was meaningless, absurd. He'd 
just said Barbie was all right. "What are the blood counts for? Why "
"You got all that information handed out to you in mimeographed sheets," he told 
her acridly. "Don't any of you take the trouble to read 'em?"
"I'm sorry," she appeased; he had to answer one more question. "I should have 
seen that, I guess, but could you just tell me, please, whether this means that 
she's . . . sick . . . or not?"
"It means I don't know. It looks like not; but she still could be. If you don't 
understand what it says on that sheet you've got, the doctor will explain it to 
you when he comes around. I can't give courses in radiation disease over the 
telephone. I wouldn't even have called, except that your squadman specially 
asked me to. He'll explain everything to you."
The phone clicked emphatically at the other end.
"It's okay, Mom." Barbie's voice, so close by, startled her out of all relation 
to its timid tones. "I read up all about it, and Dr. Spinelli—that young doctor 
in the truck," she reminded Gladys anxiously, "explained it all to me; probably 
we won't know anything till tomorrow—" She stopped, alarmed by the horrified
look on her mother's face.
"You read . . . ?" Gladys began, then realized the more urgent part of what her 
daughter had said. "What did Dr. Spinelli explain to you?"
"About radiation sickness." Defiance tinged the hesitation in her voice; she had 
known Gladys wouldn't like this. "When he took the blood count he told me just 
what I should—"
"Took the blood count?" Gladys demanded. "But they just called now to tell me he 
should take it. What made him . . . ?"
"I told him, that's why," Barbara retorted. "I told him all about being sick 
last night, and how I didn't tell you when I should have, and how you called 
Emergency Headquarters when you found out, but we hadn't heard anything, and I 
couldn't find the information sheets they kept talking about on the radio, and I 
asked him how come we didn't have any, and he said he was sure we did, but 
anyhow, he gave me another one about radiation disease, and told me just what 
would happen to me if I was sick, what they'd do at the hospital and 
everything." She stopped, out of breath, and watched for her mother's reaction.
Gladys stood still, silent. She remembered seeing the sheets on the sofa in 
those hectic sleepy moments in the morning, and hiding them. She remembered how 
they had frightened her when she read them. If Barbie had read . . . "hair may 
fall out . . . itching, burning, skin discomforts . . ." That's what it said on 
that sheet. ". . . hemorrhages . . . boils, blisters . . ."
Maybe Barbie thought she knew a lot more than she really did; the doctor 
couldn't have told her too much. In any case it was ridiculous to get angry now.
"Well!" She searched for, and found, a small smile. "So you're an expert on 
radiation disease, are you?" She managed to turn it from sarcasm to a friendly 
joke in mid-sentence. "Come and tell me about it while I get something to eat."
She could smell bacon on the stove in the kitchen, and found her anger and 
bewilderment both melting under the sudden attack of ravenous hunger.
She almost made it, but not quite. The pounding on the front door was both loud 
and urgent.
Gladys turned, took one step forward. But they can't! They can't be here 
already!
That was foolish. It didn't even sound like the way the squadman knocked. It 
could be—it could be good!
The pounding didn't stop even at the noise of the bolt shooting out, not until 
the door was actually opened. Even then the woman at the door had her hand 
raised to knock again, and almost fell against Gladys before she grabbed the 
doorpost and managed to stop the swing of her own momentum.
"Tried to call," she said. "Tried and tried. Couldn't call, so I came." A 
caricature of a smile said clearly, Wasn't that clever of me?
She withdrew her hand from the doorpost and steadied herself on high-heeled gray 
satin mules. "May I come in?" she enunciated elegantly.
"Edie! My God!" Gladys stared, uncomprehending, at the mud on the little satin 
slippers, at the dusty train of flowing gray chiffon gown, at the stains that 
chased down the front. "For God's sake, come in!" Automatically, now, she locked 
and bolted the door before she turned around to find Edie wavering unsteadily, 
right behind her in the hall. In the living room Barbie and Veda both stood 
watching.
Edie stayed where she was, waiting—for what Gladys didn't know; but she seized 
the opportunity.
"Edie!" She slipped in between the visitor and her family, and breathed one 
quick horrified question. "Are you . . . sick? Is it the disease?"
"Of course it is!" Edie answered shrilly.
She's got to keep quiet! Gladys took Edie's arm, tried to lead her toward the 
stairs, away from the living room. Don't let her say anything else, not yet! 
She'd find some way to explain it to Barbie.
"I told you I was. I told you and told you, and I told them, and nobody would 
believe me." Still that elegant painstaking enuncia­tion of each syllable. 
"Nobody!" She sat down abruptly on the bot­tom step, almost tripping on the hem 
of the long gown as she turned. "Nobody!" Then she covered her face with her 
hands and proceeded to cry, in stagy, articulated bursts of sound. It was the 
first time Gladys had ever heard anybody really cry, "Boo-hoo."
At just that moment a strange vision appeared on the stairs over Edie's head. 
Small feet in wobbling high-heeled shoes came first, reaching uncertainly for 
placement on the treads; voluminous wine velvet folds of skirt swayed 
precariously above the bare ankles, and finally small, clenched fists came into 
sight, struggling to hold the bunched velvet fabric high above the shaky 
footing. Eventually Ginny was completely visible, all the way to the tipmost 
peak of the plumed hat.
She was so preoccupied with the problem of the descent that she almost tripped 
over the woman on the stairs. But as soon as she became aware of the obstruction 
she forgot all about her fabu­lous finery. Dropping one whole fistful of velvet, 
she pointed an inquiring index finger and opened her mouth wide.
"Who?"
Gladys turned appealingly to Veda, who had made no move throughout the scene, 
but stood grimly sniffing and disapproving. Now, apparently determined to 
misunderstand, she did nothing about the children. Instead she took a step 
forward.
"You leave that one to me, Missus Mitchell," she said almost menacingly. "I know 
what to do fer the likes of her."
Gladys turned to the child on the stairs. "Will you stop staring your eyes out?" 
she demanded. "It's none of your business. Barbie!" Inspiration hit her. "Run 
downstairs and get some clean linens. I want to put Mrs. Crowell to bed. And 
take Ginny with you," she added as the older girl started off reluctantly.
"Veda." Gladys turned back to the maid angrily. "For heaven's sake, she's—"
"She's nothin' but stupid drunk," Veda finished for her.
 
TWELVE
 
"Mommy . . . will Miss Crole die?" Ginny perched on a favorite chair by the 
kitchen table, munching a cracker and waving her feathered hat in front of the 
window.
"Why, baby, don't be silly!" Gladys dumped the contents of a can of soup into a 
pot and measured out a canful of boiled water from a pitcher on the table. I've 
got to stop jumping every time one of them says anything. I ought to be used to 
it by now. She put the pot down on the stove, sniffing. The reek of alcohol 
still seemed to cling to her nose, but through it there was a faint odor of gas.
"But, Mommy, will she be dead—like the birdies?"
"Like the . . . ?" Oh! She had forgotten, forgotten all about that. "No," she 
said sensibly. "Of course not. She just isn't feeling well. She'll be all 
right."
"Will they take her away to the hospital?"
"No, I don't think so. I don't think she's really very sick."
"Did she throw up?" Ginny climbed down and moved closer to her mother. "She 
smelled funny, like she threw up."
The stove wouldn't light either. That accounted for the smell; the pilot was 
out. Gladys reached for a match, struck it, and had trouble getting the flame to 
light. She kept hunting for the right answer to Ginny's questions and struggling 
with the stove at the same time.
"Did she throw up like Barbie?"
Gladys forgot all about the stove. "What do you mean, like Barbie?" She put down 
the blackened match and reached for the little girl's face, turned it up so 
their eyes met. "What do you know about Barbie being sick?"
"She throwed up—threw up," the little girl corrected herself hastily. "In the 
middle of the night." Any time after dark was the middle of the night to Ginny. 
"I had to go to the bathroom, to make Number One," she added, explicit as 
always, "and she wouldn't let me come in, and I said I'd holler, because I never 
wet my pants any more, do I? I knowed you didn't want me to wet my pants, and I 
told Barbie I'd holler so she let me in." It was all coming out fast now, in a 
virtuous rush of confession. "And I looked and looked to see what made such a 
funny smell, it was like part of the smell on Miss Crole. Is she going to the 
hospital and die like the birdies?"
"Of course not." She couldn't stop to consider niceties of the answer now. "Why 
didn't you call me when you woke up? Why didn't you tell me Barbie was sick? How 
do you know she was?"
"She didn't clean up good. I looked and looked and then I saw some on the floor, 
and she made me cross my heart an' hope to die, but I could tell you now, 
because she told herself, didn't she, Mommy? Mommy, how do you know Miss Crole 
isn't going to be dead?"
"I don't know it," Gladys had to admit. "I don't know anything like that, but I 
don't see any reason why she should be. She isn't even very sick." Thoughtfully 
Gladys turned back to the stove. The soup still sat, lumpy and solid, in the 
lukewarm water; underneath the pot the flame was weak and blue. She reached to 
turn the burner up and found it was already turned all the way. That didn't make 
sense. She turned it off and tried lighting another one. Somewhere she could 
remember a gas stove that acted that way. Of course, the one in the Quonset hut, 
where they used bottled gas. Whenever the pressure got low . . .
"Mommy."
"Just a minute, baby." Worried now, she tried the other burners. They were all 
the same. She lit the pilot again, watched to see that it stayed lit, and turned 
on the weak flame under the soup again. It would just take a little longer, that 
was all. But why should the pressure be so low?
`"Mommy, please . . ."
She recognized urgency, but she could still smell gas from the pilot. Should she 
open a window? Maybe just for a little while. If people could go out now it must 
be all right.
"Mommy, you won't answer me!"
"Of course I will, dear." She patted the small head abstractedly and pushed the 
window casement out a little. "What is it?" The pilot flame sputtered in the 
small breeze.
"Mommy, will Barbie be dead?"
"Will what?" Instinctively she bent down and wrapped her arms around her baby. 
"You silly, silly girl." The child was shaking, now that the question was out at 
last. "Who's been putting ideas like that in my girl's head?"
"Nobody," she said. "I thought it for myself. Mommy, are you sure, Mommy? Even 
if they take her away to the hospital?"
"Who said she was going to the hospital?" Gladys was furious. She tried not to 
show her anger, aware that the child would take it as directed against herself. 
But she had to know.
"Nobody," Ginny insisted. "Nobody said so, only I know. If you throw up you have 
to go away to the hospital. They were all talk­ing about it, all the people, the 
funny men and Barbie and Veda, they was all talking about it."
"When?" She could straighten out Ginny's ideas later. Right now she had to find 
out who'd been talking to the child.
"Well, I couldn't sleep," Ginny said defensively, "'cause they made so much 
noise. It wasn't my fault if I couldn't go to sleep." In a minute she'd start 
crying.
"No, baby," Gladys said wearily, "it wasn't your fault. Was it nap time?"
The child nodded dumbly.
"And you were listening? You were up on the stairs?"
She shook her head. "No, I wasn't. I just had to go to the bathroom, I had to 
make Number Two!" It was triumphant.
"It must have taken you a long time to get there," Gladys com­mented dryly. 
Well, that was that, and nothing anyone could do about it. But they'd all have 
to be more careful what they said and where they said it. She let Ginny go and 
stood up again. The room still smelled of gas, but she'd have to close the 
window or the tiny flame would never stay on. There ought to be some way to 
discon­nect the pilot. She sighed and closed the window. The soup was just 
beginning to steam a little bit, not yet simmering. She stirred it 
automatically, her mind on Ginny, who sat now, contentedly chewing on her 
cracker. How much did the child understand? Or misunderstand?
Steady, solid footsteps approaching. The swinging door opened to let Veda in, 
her arms piled with towels, a basin, and soiled linens.
"Finished changin' all the beds while I was at it." She headed for the cellar 
door. "Thought I might's well get these washed while we still got water."
That's what's doing it, Gladys thought, that kind of talk. But she couldn't say 
anything then, not with Ginny right in the room.
"Got yer flame on?" Veda maneuvered the basin onto the table and stood still, 
sniffing. "Mighty smell o' gas in here."
Don't you think I can smell? Gladys dropped the spoon into the soup and had to 
get the tongs to fish it out. "I know it!" She tried not to snap. It was silly 
to be so upset. "The pilot was out," she explained, stirring furiously. Veda 
shrugged and declined to quarrel. She started for the door.
"Is Mrs. Crowell feeling better now?" Gladys asked meaningfully.
"She's one sick lady." Veda refused to understand or co-operate. "There'll be 
questions." Gladys inclined her head ever so slightly in the direction of her 
daughter.
"And I've got answers!" Gladys lifted one eyebrow inquiringly. "Never saw the 
time yet the truth wasn't good enough," Veda said sharply.
Gladys was fuming inwardly, but there was nothing she could say, not in front of 
Ginny. Veda stood still, waiting for a reply. When she got none she sniffed 
audibly and started once again for the cellar door. With both hands full, she 
had to struggle to open it. Gladys made no offer to help, but stayed at the 
stove, monotonously stirring her soup.
Then the door came flying open, and she forgot the whole ridicu­lous quarrel.
She had presence of mind enough to turn off the flame on the stove first, before 
a spark could catch. Then, even while she was thinking, realizing that the gas 
escaping from the pilot light couldn't possibly have smelled so much, she 
shrilled at her daughter.
"Ginny! Get out of here! Upstairs quick! Tell Barbie!" She pulled at the catch 
on the casement, flinging both windows wide open.
Ginny didn't stop to ask questions. Only four or five times in her memory had 
her mother screamed at her that way. She ran.
Gladys turned from the window to see Veda pulling open the door to the porch, a 
trail of dirty linen marking her rush from the cellar door. She got to the 
window over the table, the one that always stuck. Without waiting to find if it 
would open this time, she banged the frame heavily, with a pot picked up on the 
way. It rattled satisfactorily loose, and she heaved it violently upward.
Together they headed for the swinging door. Gladys was almost through the dining 
room to the front, where the living-room door could be closed tight against the 
foul-smelling poison, when she saw Veda stop and go to one of the dining-room 
windows.
I wouldn't have thought of that! She went back to the other one herself. She 
remembered she had been angry with Veda about something, but the memory itself 
didn't last long enough for her to do or say anything about it.
They slammed the living-room door behind them, and it became possible to think 
about what had happened.
"Mom!" Barbie called from upstairs. "What happened? What's the matter?" Her 
voice was small and scared. Behind it they could hear Ginny whimpering quietly.
"Gas," Gladys called up. "The cellar's full of gas."
"Should we come down?" Ginny had stopped crying. The expla­nation would carry no 
meaning to her, Gladys realized, but Barbie understood.
"You might as well come down," she decided. "We've got the door shut. You'll be 
just as safe here." The radio was making too much noise. She went over to turn 
it down.
"Don't," Barbie called from the foot of the stairs. "Don't turn it off, Mother."
"Well, we're not listening to it. I can't think with all that noise."
"They're reading the names again," Barbara insisted. "If you just leave it on 
low we'll hear it, if they say any name we know. I was reading before, and I 
heard it every time they said anything that mattered."
"Well . . ." She let it go; there was no time to argue. Now they had to do 
something, quickly. Why, the house could explode! The whole house!
She almost dropped the receiver, trying to pick the phone up too quickly. She 
had to wait forever for a dial tone, but this time she didn't try to dial. She 
whirled around the red 0 for the operator, and waited again while it rang five, 
six, eight, nine times, before a tired voice answered.
She didn't have to think what to do: Jon had told her over and over. "I want the 
Fire Department," she said.
"Lady," the operator said with a bright interest that overcame her weariness, 
"are you nuts?"
"Am I . . . ? No!" Gladys said indignantly. "I want the Fire--"
"Mother—Mom." Barbie was shaking her head vigorously. "Mom, there isn't any Fire 
Department. They're all in the cit—"
"I'm sorry. Give me Emergency Headquarters," Gladys told the operator. Jon had 
told her, over and over, what to do if anything like that ever happened, so she 
wouldn't have to stop and think, so she could act right away. And now she hadn't 
stopped to think. In a curious way she was almost angry at Jon.
"Hello!" It was the switchboard again, and she couldn't think whom to ask for, 
so she explained her trouble to the bored young man who answered.
"Just a minute, lady."
She got another connection, an older, deeper masculine voice, and repeated her 
story.
"Address?" he asked brusquely.
Thank God! They're actually going to do something! She told it to him and 
listened to paper rustling in the silence that followed. "No trouble in that 
neighborhood, lady," he said at last.
"But there's trouble right here!" she exploded. "I'm right in the house, and I 
know there's—"
"Yeah, I know, you just told me. But we can't send a repair truck out for just 
one house. I mean the mains are okay." 
"That's nice to know! What am I supposed to do?"
"Wait till your squad truck comes. They'll help you if they can." 
"But the house could explode! We—anything could happen!" 
"You said you opened up the windows, didn't you? The house won't explode. Just 
watch out for fire and you'll be okay. Did you turn off your electric 
equipment?"
"No, I didn't. I opened all the windows I could, and shut off the gas from the 
rest of the house, before we all passed out, that's what I did. Maybe you don't 
understand. I've got a cellar full of gas. Am I just supposed to stay here, with 
my children, and just let it keep leaking?"
"You could try and fix it," he suggested. "Or you could go stay with a neighbor. 
Don't take it out on me, lady. There's nothing I can do. Your squadman'll have 
to fix it." It was decisive.
"Thank you!" Gladys said bitterly, and hung up.
"What did he say, Mom?"
"Nothing. He said we should fix it. Or go to the neighbors'." 
"Why don't we?" Barbie liked the idea. "We could all go over to the 
Crowells'—and take Mrs. Crowell along. We could all stay there till we got 
somebody to fix it."
"Well . . . I don't know." Gladys tried to think.
"Then, if anything happened"—Barbie was increasingly ex­cited—"you know, if the 
house blew up or something, we'd all be okay."
"No! We'll try fixing it first. If that doesn't work we'll have to get out. But 
I'm not leaving this house till I know I have to." Her mind was made up now. If 
the house blew up! And even if it didn't, everything would be ruined by gas.
"I'm going down and see what I can do," she announced. "I'll get the windows 
open, anyhow. And the cellar door. That should clear it out enough so I can look 
around."
"Daddy was always saying something about the valve," Barbie suggested. "And we 
could break the windows, couldn't we? From outside? That's what the Fire 
Department does. That's why they have those axes. Then you wouldn't have to go 
down till—"
"I don't know that's such a good idea," Veda broke in. "They been warning us all 
day on the radio about these crazy folks run­ning around, an' the curfew and 
all. We wouldn't be able to lock up ..."
Gladys didn't give anybody, including herself, any more time to think about it. 
Whatever was done had to be done fast.
She ran up the stairs to her room, shed the red wool robe, and went out to the 
hall closet for the slacks she had piled there the night before.
She found a work shirt of Jon's, much too big; but, buttoned up, and tucked into 
the slacks, it covered her all over. In the bathroom she soaked a big towel in 
cold water. That's what they do, isn't it? She tried to remember, to think of 
stories, movies, newsreels where people had to fight gas. All she could remember 
was wet towels over your face.
 
THIRTEEN
 
Of course there wouldn't be anything to see. She kept telling herself that. She 
held the sopping towel close against her face. Through it the air had a laundry 
smell and nothing else. And the haze she had expected wasn't there.
She went straight across and through the furnace room to the outside cellar 
door. At the nearest window Veda's legs were clearly visible out in the grass. 
There was nothing to it, she kept reminding herself. Just push back the bolt, 
and after that the rest is simple.
It was an ordinary slanted double door at the top of a small flight of stairs. 
She strained at the bolt overhead until the muscles in her arm ached, clear to 
the shoulder, but she couldn't budge it. She tried to remember whether it had 
been opened since they had painted. But whitewash didn't make things stick, did 
it? She didn't know.
She needed both hands, she found. Maybe she could release one by tying the towel 
around her face. She stopped pulling at the stubborn bolt and fumbled behind her 
head with the bulky ends of the heavy towel. It wouldn't knot, and cold drops 
began trickling down her spine. Veda rapped on the window, bending down to give 
her a worried, questioning look, but she shook her head.
The whole thing was ridiculous. Even through the towel she'd smell gas if it was 
so bad she really needed the towel. She wriggled to dislodge a clammy rivulet 
playing waterfall down her spine, and impulsively ripped the towel from her 
face, tossed it on the win­dow sill, and used both hands to pull back hard on 
the bolt.
She must have been holding her breath at first, because she didn't notice 
anything right away; but, using all her strength on the door, she took a deep 
breath and got it all at once.
Choking and gasping, she grabbed for the towel again and bunched it up against 
her face till she couldn't breathe at all. Veda was rapping at the window again. 
She shook her head, which made her feel dizzy. She stopped and concentrated on 
getting the towel straightened out. This time she paid no attention to the chill 
trickles under her collar. She knotted the towel firmly behind her head, 
covering her whole face up to her eyes.
Her head began to clear. The dizziness was going away, but the faint sour odor 
remained; it seemed to be right in the towel now. Grimly she reached up again. 
Why wouldn't it open? They'd never had any trouble with it before. Some light 
would help, but she didn't dare turn one on. "Don't use your electric 
equipment," the man had said.
She ran her fingers all around the bolt, trying to make them see for her.
There was, of course, a safety catch. She felt her face flush warmly under the 
damp towel. She turned the small knob on the bolt, out of the locked position. 
When she pulled on it this time she almost fell over backward, it opened so 
easily.
The towel seemed to be soaked in gas instead of water. She pushed the double 
doors open and stumbled up the stairs.
She sat down on the grass in the sun and didn't ever want to get up again. But 
the job wasn't finished yet.
"Are you all done? Did you fix it already?" Barbie danced around her with 
questions.
She shrugged the girl away and started up to the bathroom. Then she thought 
better of it and explained to Barbie what she wanted: a fresh towel, soaked 
through, but only in the middle.
". . . and leave the ends dry, so I can tie it."
Barbie got back almost too soon. Gladys' back and shoulders ached all over, and 
she was still drawing in great gulps of air.
She didn't want to go down there again; she didn't want to. She had to force 
herself to go down the stairs, one step at a time, without thinking about 
anything but the necessity for getting to the bottom.
She went to the first window along the wall and carefully turned the latch 
first. It stuck, just a little, but it wasn't too hard to do. Then suddenly it 
was all very easy again. Just one window at a time, take it easy, don't get 
panicky.
It was done. She went up and dropped into a chair to rest while she waited for 
the air to clear. She hadn't done much, but it seemed as if she'd been down 
there for hours. She got a fresh towel and the biggest wrench she could find in 
Jon's toolbox.
He had said something about a valve. Which valve? She didn't see anything that 
looked like a valve. The meter was smooth-surfaced. Whatever was supposed to 
turn the gas on and off must be inside, but how did you get to it? She 
remembered seeing the man do it once—or was that the electric meter? That one 
opened up; she could see the little door on it. She hit the front of the meter 
box with the wrench. Nothing happened, except that she dented the smooth metal 
front. She was surprised that she could hit so hard.
The towel was beginning to smell of gas.
Up above the meter the pipe turned, and at the elbow a thick screw jutted out. 
It wasn't a valve; she knew what a valve looked like. But maybe it did 
something. She reached up and tried to turn it with her fingers, but it was set 
firmly in place. Maybe she could knock it loose with the wrench.
It couldn't do any harm anyway. She hit it once, a glancing blow, and thought it 
moved a little. She hit at it again. It had moved—just enough to show it could. 
But hitting wasn't the right way.
She got a box to stand on and looked at it more closely. It stuck out of the 
pipe about an inch, and wasn't more than a half inch through, probably less. The 
part in the pipe was smoothly round, except for the thread of the screw, and she 
could just see the edge of that, where it met the pipe. But the end near her 
wasn't round; it was squared off, and she remembered that was the kind of thing 
they used a tire wrench on. She tried the wrench she had, but it was too big; it 
wouldn't grasp the screw at all.
She'd have to go back upstairs and find something else. The towel was soaked 
with gas now.
She couldn't come back again; she just couldn't.
On top of the oil burner she found an ordinary small pliers and grabbed it up. 
She was beginning to be dizzy again. She should have gone back upstairs for a 
new towel.
She got the jaws of the pliers around the square end of the screw, but every 
time she tried to turn it, it slipped off. Only she had felt it move; she knew 
she had. It must be what Jon had meant by a valve.
She held the jaws onto the screw with her fingers and pulled down hard with her 
other hand. It moved. Just a little.
She hung on, straining down. The smell kept getting stronger, and she had to get 
out of there. With every bit of strength she had left she pulled down on the 
pliers handles.
This time, when it gave, she was expecting the reaction, but she had been 
pulling too hard. She couldn't stop herself, and for a moment her arms waved 
wildly, then she was on the floor, and the towel had slipped out of place.
She heard Barbie calling from upstairs, and Veda from outside. The box had made 
a lot of noise. She couldn't answer them; the towel was off her mouth, but she 
was afraid to open it. She got her arms out from under her and yanked the towel 
back over her face. It didn't seem to do any good at all any more. Gas was in 
her nostrils and her throat. Strangely enough, she wasn't dizzy any more, but 
her eyes were tearing and they smarted. She set the box back in place. She 
seemed to be moving very slowly, but everything was getting done, quicker than 
she expected, too. She didn't quite understand it, but she supposed it was all 
right. She knew she had to turn that screw some more. It had been in one way, 
now she had to get it all the way the other way.
She had to stop and remember which way she had turned it. This time it responded 
easily. She kept turning until the whole length of the round part had 
disappeared inside the hole in the pipe. When she couldn't make it go in any 
more at all she got down off the box and went upstairs. She felt very calm in 
spite of the awful smell. She was surprised to find she was sobbing.
 
FOURTEEN
 
She was still dizzy. She sipped once more at the whisky, but it tasted awful. 
Ginny was crying monotonously on Veda's lap. Barbie squatted in front of the 
radio. Gladys lay still on the sofa, wanting to get off and remove the dirty 
slacks, wonder­ing if there would be grease stains on the pale green upholstery.
She tried to lift her head, but it made her feel woozy again. The radio was 
forcing itself on her consciousness. She didn't want to hear it.
"Do you know where the hot plate is?" she asked Veda. "I don't remember seeing 
it around."
"That little one from the Silex is right in the kitchen cabinet." Veda kept on 
rocking Ginny, answering Gladys without changing the tone of voice she used to 
soothe the little girl.
"I mean the big one, the two-burner."
"Ain't seen that one in a long time."
"Daddy took it to the office once," Barbie contributed over her shoulder. "Did 
he bring it back?"
"Don't know as he did," Veda said thoughtfully. "We got the electric broiler, 
though, could work like a hot plate upside down." 
"The waffle iron?" Barbie threw in.
How can she listen to two things at the same time? Gladys was having trouble 
focusing her attention on one conversation.
"There's a Sterno stove in Mr. Mitchell's camping kit," she told Veda.
"I dunno. We might need the Sterno stove worse later on." 
"For heaven's sake, Veda!" Gladys protested. "How much worse can it be?"
"Waffles." The word had penetrated slowly into Ginny's sleep-sodden head. "I 
want waffles for supper."
Veda looked questioning, and Gladys shrugged.
"Might's well," the maid said. "Waffles on the iron, an' coffee in the Silex, 
an' we ain't got no problems at all."
"Are we really gonna have waffles?" Ginny sat bolt upright. "Right now?"
"As soon as we can get in the kitchen," Gladys promised.
"I'll go see." Barbie jumped up restlessly, but she didn't have to do any more 
than open the door. The smell made her slam it shut again.
Ginny surveyed her suspiciously. "I want waffles now."
"Well, you can't get them now, so quit being a baby about it." Barbie was 
feeling intoxicated with adventure and a whiff of gas. Ginny, feeling only 
sleepy and hungry, promptly burst into a fresh flow of tears.
"Come here, baby." Gladys found she could sit up now, and she stretched her 
arms. Still crying, Ginny made her way across the room to her mother, stumbling 
on the hem of the velvet gown she still wore. Safe on Gladys' lap, she defied 
the world.
"Am not a baby!"
Barbie opened her mouth and closed it as promptly when she saw Gladys' emphatic 
headshake. Her challenge having gone un­answered, Ginny gathered courage for 
another sally. "I'm hungry," she said firmly. "Want my waffles."
"Shush." Gladys patted the defiant shoulder absently, ignoring the repeated 
demand.
"I want my—"
"Oh, shush up, Ginny." Barbara, still listening with one ear to the radio, 
turned it up so they could all hear.
". . . special police are constantly patrolling the area. There is no danger, 
except through carelessness. Keep your doors and win­dows locked and admit no 
unauthorized strangers to your homes after curfew hour. These precautions are 
concerned only with pro­tection from acts of larceny and violence. There is no 
foundation in fact for any rumors you may have heard to the effect that these 
gangs of lawbreakers are made up of contaminated refugees from within the city 
limits. It is virtually impossible for anyone to leave the city area now, except 
by way of the decontamination stations.
"Evacuees from the city are not entering the Westchester resi­dential area. They 
are being sent directly to evacuation camps up-state, on special trains already 
in operation.
"This station will continue to announce the names of persons released from the 
city through decontamination centers. . . ."
Veda snorted with rich contempt but refrained from any com­ment. Gladys was 
grateful. Whatever Veda had seen in the city, Gladys didn't want it discussed 
just then.
"Mommy, what's commamminashun?"
"Contamination," she corrected automatically. "It's—well, it's being hurt. The 
people who were hurt by the accident in the city are contaminated—"
"Mother!" Barbie was shocked. "That's no—"
"Barbara! I am perfectly capable of answering Ginny's ques­tions. You pay 
attention to the radio, and let me—"
"Listen!" Barbara had already returned her attention to the radio.
". . . still need homes for a number of children whose parents are in the city, 
or whose homes have been broken up as an indirect result of the attack. Adequate 
supplies for the care of the children will be issued to you. If you have an 
extra bed in your house, and any adult capable of providing supervision for a 
small child, please get in touch with Emergency Welfare Headquarters now. Pick 
up the telephone and ask for Emergency Welfare. The operator will connect you.
"We have just received a new list of evacuated persons from the Washington 
Heights Headquarters. The following persons . . ." "Mom—Mother, we've got to 
take some of them."
"Take some children, take some children!" Ginny chanted gleefully.
"We got room, anyhow," Veda pointed out. "Can't say I'd want to depend on them 
food supplies they're promising—but we could make do with what we got."
"We've got plenty!" Barbara insisted. "We can manage. You said yourself," she 
appealed to Gladys, "that it couldn't very well get any worse. We'll be able to 
get food, even if they don't bring it along."
"That's enough," Gladys said flatly. "I'll have to think about it.
"Children, children, gonna take some children," Ginny chanted. 
"See?" Gladys demanded. "We'll talk about it later."
"But, Mother—"
"I said later!" She saw the bright red color suffuse her daughter's face and 
added quickly, "Do you want to take a look now, Barbie, and see how the kitchen 
is?"
Wordlessly the girl got up.
"You set still, Missus Mitchell." Veda got up stiffly. "I'll bring the makin's 
right in here. Save a lot of fuss and trouble." She nod­ded toward the little 
girl, curled up on her mother's lap, hypnotiz­ing herself with a barely audible 
chant, "Children, children, gonna take the children . . ."
Gladys smiled thankfully and let Veda follow Barbara out to the kitchen.
The radio chattered on. Names and addresses, this one evacu­ated, that one 
hospitalized, another safe at a friend's home. Three dead in the city, one 
rescued, a whole family found alive under a burned building. The names went 
endlessly on, and they meant nothing. Ginny's chant turned into a quiet sleepy 
murmuring. It was beginning to get dark outside. Gladys wondered what time it 
was, and thought of turning on a light, but the gloaming was too restful. She 
wouldn't listen, she wouldn't . . .
"Mrs. Tod Graham, and son, Tod Graham, Jr., three years old, of 1482 Orchard 
Boulevard, found trapped in burning building in midtown Manhattan . . ."
Mrs. Tod Graham! Annie!
`"Mrs. Graham is being treated for shock and burns at the hos­pital base in 
Washington Heights. Tod, Jr., is being treated for radiation and minor injuries 
. . ."
But they were home. I saw Tod in the garden. With difficulty she brought that 
morning back to her mind, remembered Annie's chagrin at not being invited to 
that luncheon, the luncheon Gladys herself hadn't gone to. Annie had said she 
always had lunch in town on Mondays, anyhow, with her husband.
". . . now repeat a list of the identified casualties in the city today. Please 
listen carefully. There may be no way of notifying the friends and relatives of 
these persons except by radio announce­ments. Dead: John Anderson, Main Street, 
White Plains; Hilda Allderdick, 42 Green Lane, Henley; Anthony Ameranto, 2205 
Hartley . . ."
Now she couldn't stop listening. Every name, every syllable, penetrated her 
senses. She didn't feel Ginny's weight on her lap; she didn't know whether it 
was dark or light in the room. She just listened.
". . . friends and relatives may not be notified . . . today's casualties . . ." 
Annie Graham . . . hospital base . . . Jon!
She was only dimly aware of it when Veda and Barbara came back in, arms loaded 
with food and equipment.
". . Alden Gramercy, Hope Street, Tappan . . ."
Veda snapped on the big lamp on the reading table.
". . . R. Jardiniere, Marley Avenue, Plainstown . . . "
They got through the list. Somehow, finally, they finished read­ing the roll 
call of the slaughtered.
". . . hospitalized for today. For the sake of speed we will read only the names 
and not the addresses of these persons: Avery Ab­bott, James Abbott, Kenneth 
Abbott . . ."
She realized she could stop listening. It was alphabetical. She didn't have to 
listen any more until the M's.
"Barbie, you forgot the syrup." Veda looked up from the bowl where she was 
mixing waffle flour and milk. Barbara ran out to the kitchen and came back with 
the syrup, already opened.
"Smells okay," she announced.
"Better leave me have a taste before we use it," Veda offered. Barbie immersed a 
finger delicately in the sticky stuff.
"I said me, not you. Now give that here."
"It's fine," Barbara insisted, licking off her little finger with evi­dent 
relish.
"You give that here," Veda said angrily. "Got no more sense than that little 
one. Done everything you wanted all your life, an' now we got real trouble you 
can't stop. Well, believe you me, you'll be learning to do what yer' told the 
next few days. Like to see you act that way jest once with that young doctor 't 
was here stick­ing needles in you."
"Veda!" Barbara's face blanched at the reminder, and Gladys got angrily to her 
feet, easing Ginny, now asleep, onto the couch.
"Lissen, Missus Mitchell." The maid stopped stirring and turned to her 
purposefully. "I think we could use some plain talkin' around here. You keep 
tryin' to make out nothin's the matter, when we all know there's plenty that's 
the matter. Every which way I turn somebody's trying to keep something back from 
the next person. And some of the lies I heard on that radio! They got no 
business—"
"What lies, Veda?" Barbie broke in excitedly. "What did they say on the radio 
that—"
"Keep quiet, Barbara. Don't interrupt. I don't know what you think you heard on 
the radio that wasn't so, Veda, but I'm sure the people up there know more about 
what's going on than you do."
"Mebbe so—an' mebbe there's plenty they ain't tellin'. I keep tryin' to do like 
you want—an' don't think," she added stiffly, "that I ain't grateful fer you 
helpin' me out when them men came draggin' me in here. I ain't fergot that, nor 
I won't. But it jest ain't in my nature to keep coverin' things up that ought to 
be aired out."
"Well, I'd be grateful," Gladys retorted, "if you'd leave it to me to decide 
what needs airing and what doesn't. Barbie," she added as she saw the girl 
prepare to speak again, "Veda was perfectly right about your being too careless, 
and about how important it is for you to do what you're told right now. There's 
probably nothing to worry about any more, but until Daddy comes home I'd rather 
be a little extra careful. When he gets here he'll know what we should do."
"You goin' to keep right on—" Veda clamped her mouth on the words and vented her 
feelings on the waffle batter. Barbie went sulkily over to the radio and 
squatted down again in front of it.
". . Andreas Popoulisk, June Quest, B. K. Quiller, Lionel Quist . . ."
They've passed it, she thought. They went right by M, and I wasn't listening.
She cleared her throat. "Barbie," she called quietly, "Barbie." The face that 
turned to her was still sullen. "What do you want?"
"Please keep your voice down. I want to know . . . were you listening? I mean, 
when they read the names."
The girl motioned impatiently toward the radio.
"I know, they're reading them now, but . . ." Why wouldn't she understand? "When 
they read the M's, was . . . Daddy's name there?" Barbara shook her head. "No 
what? You weren't listening or the name wasn't there?"
"I was listening," Barbara said briefly, and turned her attention back to the 
radio.
Gladys forced herself to stay calm. There was no sense in letting the quarrel 
enlarge itself. She walked back across the room, to where Veda had established 
the temporary kitchen on the hall table.
"What can I do?" she asked, trying to sound as if nothing had happened.
"Everything's done." Veda pointed to the indicator on the waffle iron. "One of 
'em'll be ready for Ginny in a minute."
Gladys went back again across the room and roused the little girl. "Waffles!" 
she announced as soon as Ginny had one eye open. That brought the other one wide 
open right away.
"Come on, we'll get washed up" She led the little girl up the stairs, past the 
enticing odor that was beginning to bubble out of the top of the waffle iron. 
When they got down again Veda was pouring fresh batter, and Barbie was already 
settled with a plate and cup.
"Waffles?" Ginny called from halfway down.
"And cocoa too." Veda answered her.
"That was a good idea." Gladys smiled at the other woman.
"Thought I'd try an' save the milk. That hot chocolate you got, it's got 
powdered milk already in. Seems to me like we could keep what fresh we got for 
the mornin'."
They got Ginny settled next to her sister, with a syrup-laden waffle and a cup 
of steaming cocoa.
"Now that's hot," Veda warned. "Don't you try an' drink it too fast." She went 
back to the waffle iron and brought out a crisp new one. "There's fer you, 
Missus Mitchell."
"You take it," Gladys urged her. "I'll wait for the next one." 
"Now you ain't had a thing to eat since you woke up," Veda protested. "You take 
this one. I'll have another one ready in a jiffy."
"We'll split it," Gladys decided, and cut it down the middle as she spoke. She 
moved one half to an empty plate and found a cup of coffee waiting for her. Veda 
poured a second cup for herself.
"Good thing you got used to drinking it black when you was on your diet," Veda 
said, almost with a smile. "We got to hang onto our milk now."
And suddenly it was all right. The quarreling and confusion were over. She sat 
down next to the children, and Veda came to join them a moment later, with a 
fresh waffle to divide among them.
"I'll watch the next one." Barbie had already finished her first and refused any 
part of the reinforcements. She felt the change in the atmosphere too. Passing 
in back of Gladys, on her way to the improvised kitchen in the hall, she stooped 
suddenly to hug her mother, for no reason at all. Then she turned on another 
light. There was music on the radio again. Ginny looked up and smiled a sticky, 
syrup-encased smile at the world in general.
"This is fun, Mommy," she announced. "Why doesn't Daddy come home?"
 
the rescue
 
"I'm lost," he said. "I've got to get home." They couldn't hear him; they 
wouldn't listen. It was like a dream, trying to say something and never getting 
it out.
It was a dream. He remembered, in the dream, that he'd had them before, times 
when he had to talk about it or bust, and there was nobody to talk to. Nobody 
wanted to talk about it. Nobody wanted to think about it. Then he'd go to bed 
and dream. Great pink clouds and searing fires exploding. He'd wake up in a 
sweat and reach out to touch her. He'd feel her breathing evenly under his hand, 
and see the shadow of the trees outside, and everything would be all right.
"Just tell me how to get home," he said in the dream. "I'm all right. I'm lost, 
that's all. Listen, bud, how do I get home from here?"
They kept dragging him along, pulling him when he didn't walk. They wore suits 
like divers, but more like asbestos than rubber, and they had helmets closed 
over their faces. They couldn't answer him; they couldn't talk through the 
helmets. Maybe they couldn't hear him either.
They pushed him into a big truck and shut the door behind him. There were a lot 
of other men inside, standing up, and sitting on the floor. Some were lying 
down, stretched out on the floor. One of them looked dead, maybe only 
unconscious. Some of the men were talking, and some were swearing. A lot of them 
had burns or cuts. There was blood on everything, and a bad smell. Somebody was 
crying.
A little light came through the truck from a pane of glass set in front, near 
the driver's cab. He edged his way through the crowd to the pane of glass and 
began tapping on it. A man on the seat turned around and shook a fist at him, 
but he kept tapping, pa­tiently, till the man turned around again.
"I've got to get home," he said then. "Let me out. I have to go home."
 
FIFTEEN
 
It was already dark when Gladys left Ginny asleep upstairs. She came down to 
find Barbie lying flat on her stomach in front of the radio, intent on the pages 
of a heavy volume she had found in Tom's room. From time to time she flipped a 
page with one languid finger, moving no other muscle except her bare calf, which 
waved with pendulum regularity in the air. She abandoned the book long enough to 
greet her mother with the news that the fifteen-minute curfew warning had just 
been announced.
"I guess we better get the door and windows closed in the cellar," Gladys 
decided. "I hope it's all right down there now."
Veda came in, drying her hands on her apron. "Kitchen's okay," she said. "I was 
washing up, an' I shet up ever'thing in there. Got the door down to the cellar 
open, an' it smells like it'd be all right to go down."
"Well, I guess I might as well get it over with."
After that she could go up and change. She wondered why she hadn't thought of it 
before she came down, and decided it was just as well. She hadn't looked in a 
mirror since she'd got out of bed; out of long habit she raised her hand to her 
hair, trying to smooth it into place, but it was too tangled; it felt gritty and 
nasty under her fingers.
"I could go down, Missus Mitchell," Veda offered. "Don't matter if I get a bit 
dusty, this bein' a work dress."
"Don't be silly. I'm all dirty anyway."
She left Veda at the head of the cellar steps and groped for the light switch. 
He never did fix it! she thought, and went cautiously down the stairs, planting 
each foot in the precise center of the narrow tread, sniffing at every step for 
traces of gas.
She put foot at last on solid cement flooring and flipped another switch, 
flooding the whitewashed laundry room with light. That wasn't very smart, she 
thought. Suppose there was still some gas . . .
But she didn't smell anything, and nothing had happened when she used the light. 
It must be all right.
The door that led through to the meter, in the furnace room, was closed. She was 
sure she'd left it open. The latch was rusty, and she had to struggle with it. 
They never used that door. I'd remem­ber if I'd closed it, she thought.
She stopped fighting the latch and stood still a minute to drive the tenseness 
from her muscles. She tried to think back to the last time she left the cellar, 
but all she could remember was the won­derful moment when the outside door 
opened and she stumbled up the stairs to breathe sweet air again. The rest was a 
blur.
Suppose she had closed it then? It was almost worse that way. The door was 
tight; it would keep out the gas. If she hadn't really got it turned off before, 
if it was still leaking, then when she opened the door, there'd be that 
sickening smell again.
Oh, Jon! Jon wasn't there. He was in the city, and he couldn't help her. In the 
city! It was a shock to realize she could think that much now, think it in so 
many words, without trying to deny it.
She put her hand firmly on the latch and pushed down. Something made a scuttling 
noise, and instinctively she stepped back.
I told him there were mice down here, she thought angrily, and forgot to be 
afraid. She tried once more and ignored the noise when it came again. Maybe it 
was something the latch did. Anyhow, it was silly to be scared by a fleeing 
mouse. She shoved the door open before she had a chance to become frightened 
again.
Bracing herself against the doorframe, she reached her arm around to the light 
switch.
Scraping, scuttling noise, and something fell loudly. No mouse did that!
"Who's there?" she called, knowing it was the wrong thing to do, standing there 
in the lighted doorway.
"Me—it's just me, Mrs. Mitchell."
A man's voice . . . a stranger . . . but he knew her name! With the light at her 
back, she couldn't see more than a few feet in front of her. From every object 
in the room, small or large, a deepening shadow stretched to inky gloom in the 
far corners. Over all, her own shadow bulked. She tried to find him by his 
voice, but muted echoes spread the sound too much.
A dark shape detached itself from the looming black furnace and turned gradually 
into the figure of a man. She wanted to scream, to run, but, without knowing 
why, she knew she had to stay quiet.
He was close now, and she couldn't see his face. There was nothing familiar 
about him.
"Who are you?" The panic-sharp whisper bounced back at her from the echoing 
walls.
"Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Mitchell, it's just me—Garson Levy."
Of course! The voice had awakened recognition, even before she could fit a name 
to it.
"What are you doing here? How did you—" That was silly. It was perfectly obvious 
how he had got in. "I was just coming down to lock everything up," she finished.
"I'm terribly sorry." Gladys was startled to see her own distress honestly 
mirrored on his face. "I didn't mean to frighten you. I shouldn't have broken in 
this way, but I had to get in someplace during the curfew patrol."
"I better get things closed up here before someone else gets the same idea," 
Gladys said dryly. She walked over to the nearest window and slammed it down.
Silently he went to the next one and closed it himself. When the door was closed 
and bolted and all the windows locked, he turned to her again.
"I can leave now if you prefer, Mrs. Mitchell," he said stiffly. "I'm afraid I 
rather took advantage of Barbara's offer. But I hope you understand that I 
didn't expect to stay here."
"Barbara's offer?" she broke in.
"Yes, to come ba—oh, I see. Of course I thought you knew. I am sorry." He 
hesitated. "I can go right away, but if you don't mind too much, I'd like to 
wait until the patrol is over. It's just another twenty minutes or so—and for 
your sake as well as mine it's better if I'm not caught leaving here."
"Well, why on earth did you come out again?" Gladys asked irritably. "If you 
keep wandering around when you're not supposed to you're bound to get caught 
sooner or later."
"I didn't have much choice. My landlady was under strict orders to notify the 
Security Office when I came in. She gave me a bed in her own apartment instead, 
and got some clothes from my room, but she could hardly keep me there."
"You mean you don't have anyplace to stay?"
"I'm afraid not," he admitted.
It was hard to stay angry at him. If he hadn't come to warn them about Barbie . 
. .
If he hadn't come the urinalysis would have told them anyhow—a little later. 
Perhaps too late.
She studied the man in front of her. Nothing extraordinary about him. Nothing, 
that is, except the fact that he was in her cellar. He didn't look like a 
madman, or a hero either. He looked like a scholarly middle-aged man who never 
remembered to have his suit pressed.
He ran his hand nervously through the thick gray waves of his hair and she saw 
why he always had a slightly wild look.
"What are you going to do when you leave here?" She tried to be stern. "Where 
are you going to go?"
He shrugged. "Try to find a place to stay . . . try to get some papers . . . try 
to get into the hospital." He dismissed the subject. "Have you heard anything 
about Barbara yet?"
"They're taking a blood test," she told him briefly. "They called up about the 
analysis and said she was exposed, but they didn't seem to know whether she's 
sick yet. Why shouldn't you be able to get into the hospital?"
"A matter of identity. When they found out who I was they decided they'd rather 
have me in jail. I'm dangerous," he added bitterly. "Because I kept saying this 
was going to happen. Worse yet, I tried to prevent it. That makes me a public 
enemy."
"Well, surely they won't refuse to take care of you!"
"Maybe not," he agreed. "But, frankly, I don't care to make the experiment. From 
my earlier experiences, I think they're shooting first and asking questions 
afterwards."
Gladys remembered the men who had brought Veda in that morning. The one with the 
notebook might ask questions. The other one—there was no way to tell what the 
other one would do.
Suddenly she wanted to help him. But she couldn't keep him in the house.
"Are you . . . hungry?" she asked inadequately. "If there's anything at all I 
can do for you before you go . . . ?" She was ashamed, but she couldn't help it.
Surprisingly, he smiled. "That's very kind of you, Mrs. Mitchell, but I had 
something to eat just before I left . . . home."
"Well, if there's anything at all ..." Anything, anything, she promised him 
silently. Anything except staying here.
"There's really nothing." He glanced at his watch. "I can leave in a few minutes 
now. Tell me about Barbara."
"They have to wait and make two tests before they can tell."
Levy nodded. "Did they say anything else about the urinalysis?"
"They said there was some alpha emitter present," she quoted carefully, "but it 
didn't seem to be a sufficient quantity to make her sick." A question came to 
her mind. "But if it takes two blood counts, how could you tell right away? Is 
there some other way?"
"I don't know for sure how sick I am," he explained. "But I could tell I'd been 
exposed to heavy radiation because I know what my normal blood count is. And I 
also know I haven't been exposed recently to any other diseases or infections 
that would cause a drop in the white-cell count—flu or a strop infection, for 
instance. The doctor doesn't            --"
"Missus Mitchell!" The call, shrill and imperative, came from far away. Veda was 
in the living room, Gladys thought, and then heard the approaching footsteps. 
"Missus Mitchell!"
"Get back there." She pointed to the far corner of the furnace room, where she 
had found him. "Hurry, please. Where she can't see you."
She turned and ran for the stairs. Hot and breathless, she met Veda at the 
kitchen door.
"What is it?"
"That Mr. Turner jest come in, an' the doctor with him. Mr. Turner's about ready 
to take a fit, he's that hot on talkin' to you."
What am I going to do? Veda in the kitchen, Edith Crowell sleeping upstairs, and 
now the squadmen in the living room—with a hunted man hiding in the basement!
"Somethin' wrong, Missus Mitchell? You run up here like the devil was after you, 
an' now you can't catch yer breath to walk in there."
"Oh . . . one of the windows," she improvised. "I couldn't get it closed, and I 
got mad at it." She smiled. "Then I got scared when. I heard you call. You 
sounded so urgent. I didn't know what—" She had to think of something to do; she 
had to think fast.
"It ain't me that's so urgent," Veda retorted. "Only I don't think that Mr. 
Turner'll last the day if he don't see you soon. You better go on in. I'll fix 
the window."
"I guess I better." But she didn't move. She stood solidly where she was, 
blocking the doorway and the stairs.
"Barbie!" she called wildly. She couldn't think of anything better; this would 
have to do. Barbie wanted to help the man. Here was her chance. "Barbara!"
"Mom, it's the squad truck," the answer floated back. "Mr. Turner and Dr. 
Spinelli. They're waiting for you."
"I'll be right out. Come here a minute, will you?" Veda was watching her with a 
puzzled frown. "Barbie can fix the window," she explained hastily. "I don't want 
her around when I talk to the doctor." That's true enough, Lord knows.
She ignored Veda's silent stare of disapproval. One thing at a time.
"Barbie, there's a window down there I couldn't shut. Will you see what you can 
do?"
"But, Mom, I told you—they're here, and they want another blood sample."
"I'll go see Mr. Turner." Gladys overrode her protests. "That window's got to be 
closed."
"But I have to give Pete some more blood—I mean Dr. Spinelli." The slip tended 
to spoil the patiently tolerant quality of her explanation, but it didn't stop 
her. "Veda can—"
"Pete can wait a minute. You go fix that window," Gladys said firmly. "I want to 
talk to your Dr. Spinelli too."
"Oh, Mom, I wish you'd stop worrying so much." Barbara was sure she understood 
now. "He doesn't know anything yet. He would have told me if he did." There was 
a tinge of pride in her assurance, just enough to bring Gladys' earlier 
irritation at the doctor back into focus.
He would, would he? I'm going to have a few words with that young man, she 
promised herself. "I'll worry just as much as I want to," she told her daughter 
blithely. In spite of all its dangers, there was a certain relish in the 
situation.
"As a matter of fact that's not what I was worried about. Per­haps you'll 
understand when you're older." A few minutes older, I mean. "Can't you manage 
the window by yourself?" She was being deliberately provoking, making it 
essential for the girl to do the job herself. But she had to give some sort of 
warning too. How, in front of Veda?
"Be careful," she called as Barbic started angrily down the stairs. "I think 
there are"—the word popped into her mouth of its own accord—"mice down there."
 
SIXTEEN
 
"Hello." The two men waited for her in the living room, ominous in their heavy 
suits, their faces shadowed by the raised visors of their helmets. "I was just 
downstairs, closing the cellar windows."
She couldn't keep her hands quiet. Nervously she straightened lamps and ash 
trays, patted cushions into place.
Neither of them said anything. Even Jim Turner's hail-fellow was missing.
What's wrong? She stopped bustling and turned to face them. Fear gave way to 
amusement and then to acute self-consciousness, as she realized why they were 
staring. I never did go up and change! She yearned for a mirror and was glad she 
couldn't see one. Aggressively she turned to the doctor.
"I don't suppose you have any news yet about my daughter?" She was pleased to 
hear her voice stay steady, not too intense, not too worried.
"Not really," he said. "If she were sick enough for the first count to show 
anything the analysis would have looked worse than it did. I want to take 
another sample now. We should have a definite answer for you tomorrow."
"Well then . . ." It wasn't so easy to keep her voice steady this time. "The 
first sample wasn't too encouraging?"
"In a sense it was," he hedged. "But I'd rather not raise your hopes—or hers 
either—until we know more. I hope Barbara's not getting panicky. I explained it 
all to her this morning, and I think she understands."
"Well, as long as she understands . . ."
He didn't miss the edge in her voice. "I hope she didn't get too worried by what 
I told her," he said unhappily. "She seemed to take it all right, didn't get 
flustered by the needle or anything, and then she began asking questions. You 
weren't around"—he was floundering now—"and the lady who was there—I think 
Barbie called her Veda—" Barbie! Barbie and Pete. Gladys raised mental eyebrows 
and lost her grip on the mood of irritation.
He felt the change and gathered assurance. "She said you were sleeping and she 
thought you shouldn't be awakened. I didn't want to wait to take the sample, and 
I just explained as much as I thought Barbara could understand."
Turner was getting impatient. "That's okay, Doc," he said, and turned to Gladys. 
"I told him to go ahead, soon as the kid told us her story." The subject was 
closed now; he made that clear. She had lost the initiative as soon as she 
stopped being angry, and the squadman was taking over.
"Where'd the kid go to?" he asked. "We got to be running along in a minute. Just 
finished curfew patrol, and we have to check in at headquarters. I figured it 
would speed things up some for you if we took another sample back to the lab on 
our way."
"Barbie's just finishing up in the cellar," Gladys said quickly. "I'll get her 
right away."
"Don't you bother. Doc'll find her," Turner insisted. "I want to talk to you a 
minute. They wouldn't wake you up when I was here before. You stay up all 
night?"
"No—that is, yes." She edged toward the door, staying in front of Spinelli.
"Oh, Doctor, I wanted to tell you—"
"Yes?"
"I'm worried about Ginny," she blurted out. "Veda said she didn't eat any lunch, 
and she seems so listless—it's probably just nerves—being shut in and no one to 
play with, but . . . I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting jittery now?"
"It doesn't hurt to be a little extra careful. I could take a blood count now," 
he said doubtfully, "but there's no sense bothering her unless we have something 
definite to go on. Suppose I check with the lab on her urinalysis?" he 
suggested. "Then we'll know whether there's anything to worry about."
"Thank you. I'll go get Barbie now," she said breathlessly. "I'll be right 
back."
"Ain't that just like a woman!" Turner's laugh boomed good-naturedly. "Up all 
night, slept all day, and now I bet she's wor­ried how her kitchen looks. You 
sit down an' take it easy, Miz Mitchell." He took her arm and led her to a 
chair.
"Go on, Doc." He threw the words over his shoulder impatiently. "You can find 
the kid, can't you?" He settled Gladys in the chair and turned to face the 
younger man. "You'll be using the kitchen to take that sample, won't you?" he 
asked meaningfully. The doctor nodded, but still hesitated, standing irresolute 
in the dining-room door.
Gladys had a sudden horrified memory of the moment that morning when the 
Security man thought she had some nefarious reason for wanting to go upstairs. 
Was that why Jim Turner made her stay here now? Were they suspicious? Had anyone 
seen that man come in?
"Barbie!" she called.
There was no answer. And under the pressure of Turner's will the doctor started 
slowly through the door. She had to warn Barbara.
"Veda!" It was a risk, but less than the other. "Veda, will you tell Barbie the 
doctor wants her?"
It was all she could do. She had to pay attention to Turner now. "How come your 
cellar windows were open?" he asked. Was it interest or suspicion? There was no 
way to tell.
Belatedly she explained about the gas and about what she had done. "I don't know 
if that was the best thing to do," she wound up, "but maybe you could take a 
look at it later on? Next time you come. I know you're in a hurry now."
"I guess we could take time to look at it right now," the big man decided.
"It could wait," she said doubtfully, trying to sound as if she didn't care. Why 
did everything have to lead to the cellar?
"I'm not so busy I can't do that much for a neighbor," he said, waving aside her 
protests. "I'll just take a look. Might be you shouldn't stay here. And I don't 
know if I'll have a chance to get back tonight. I was wondering," he chuckled, 
eying her greasy slacks again as she stood up, "what you got yourself up in that 
rig for. You look like you could be Barbie's sister instead of her ma."
"I'll have to wear it more often." She produced a smile and raised her arm again 
in the futile habitual gesture, patting and pushing with her fingers at the 
tangled waves of her hair. Turner stood still, staring at her, and she didn't 
know why she was blushing.
She couldn't see, as the big squadman did, how the motion of her arm accentuated 
the curve of her body inside Jon's big work shirt; or how the loose shirt, 
tucked tightly into her slacks, flared out above the waist; she didn't know how 
the rough clothes and rolled-up sleeves, the grease stain on her leg, the 
smudges on her arms, created an absurd and delightful effect of femininity on 
mas­querade—or how the uninvited color, flooding up under her clear skin, 
heightened the contrast of her clothing.
She saw only the dust on her hands after she had touched her hair, and felt the 
steady eyes of her neighbor's husband staring at her. And she knew it was not 
suspicion that made him so anxious to help.
She took a step forward, for the first time with assurance. She could hear 
Barbie and the doctor in the kitchen. Surely any danger was past. Barbie must 
have gotten the man out.
Turner stepped forward as she did, brushing close to her, too close, before 
either of them could check the momentum of the stride. Even as he stopped and 
balanced himself, waiting for her to go ahead, something far below the conscious 
level of her mind leaped up in frenzy.
Jon, oh, Jon! Come home!
With heavy footsteps following at her heels, she went into the kitchen, forced 
the cry of need from her mind. She had known Jim Turner for years, and there 
were more real things to worry about right now. Veda had started it, Veda with 
her silly talk in the bedroom, when she was only half awake. A man had brushed 
against her—not, she told herself, purposely. He had stopped as soon as he 
could. That was that. Forget it.
But the self-assurance she had gained in the moment at the doorway didn't leave 
her. Going through the kitchen, she ques­tioned Barbie casually.
"It's okay, Mom, I got it fixed."
Gladys went on to the stairs with no show of hesitation. She was again acutely 
aware of Turner's bulk right behind her, and just before the light flashed on, 
she had an instant's fright as to what it might reveal. But both fears passed, 
and after only the hastiest eye-sweeping, she led the way into the furnace room.
The squadman sniffed the air and went over to study the meter. "How'd you know 
what to do?" he asked. "I couldn't hardly do it better myself."
"You mean I did the right thing?" Approval tasted very sweet after the day's 
frustrations. "I was just guessing," she told him. "Well, you guessed good. You 
got nothing to worry about." "But what about getting it turned on again? Would 
it be safe?" "That depends. Did you find out where the leak is?"
"No." She couldn't see how it would matter, but she told him about the pilot 
light on the stove.
"Out, was it?" He pulled at his lip thoughtfully. "I'll tell you," he said 
finally. "They haven't got it on the radio yet, because they don't want to get 
people worried, but there ain't going to be any gas pretty soon. As long as you 
got it turned off, you might just as well leave it that way."
"No gas? But what happened?"
"The way I heard it, they had an explosion in one of the mains, that cut off 
the—"
"Explosion!" she broke in. "I didn't know anything was hit near here. When did 
it happen?"
"Now don't go getting worried," he said hastily. "No bombs up here in our neck 
of the woods. It was some kind of accident they had, that's all. The real 
trouble is manpower. They just can't make repairs and keep the gas going. 
Pressure's pretty low already. How're you fixed for something to cook on? I 
could get you—"
"We have a hot plate we've been using," she told him quickly. "We can manage 
with that all right. But our hot-water heater is gas too," she remembered.
"Well now," he sympathized, "that could make it kind of tough on you, but one 
thing, it won't be for long. That's what I wanted to see you about. It's 
classified stuff, really, but I know you can keep your mouth shut. Thing is, 
we're making plans right now for evacuation—cleaning out this whole section."
"There were bombs!" she breathed.
"Now, Gladys, I told you there weren't. It's supplies and manpower where the 
trouble is. Food's too hard to bring in. And we can't use the men we got to fix 
gas mains and things like that, when we need every one of them to work in the 
city. Matter of fact, phone service might be out, too, pretty soon."
She shook her head doubtfully, and remembered that Dr. Levy had said something 
about bombs directly overhead. What connec­tion was there?
"Now don't you worry about it," he said, misreading her troubled expression. 
"Things won't get too bad. It looks like the move'll start Thursday—Friday at 
the latest. There's plenty of food till then. An' I can see to it," he promised, 
"that you folks get onto the first train out."
"But . . ." She stopped. But I don't want to go. That would be a silly thing to 
say. It wasn't a matter of what she wanted.
"I can get you settled up at the camp too," he added. "We're taking over the 
Navy base up at Sampson. Beautiful country up there. I think I can work it for 
you to get into the staff quarters. Find something to put you in charge of, and 
that would give you a priority for the train scats too. That way, you won't be 
too crowded, and you won't have to wait around down here if things get had."
"But—" she began again. "That's very kind of you, but there's really no need to 
take all that trouble. We'll manage."
"A man ought to at least look out for his friends!" Turner broke in indignantly. 
"It's no trouble anyhow. All I have to do is put in your name for some kind of 
supervisor's job, and the resell take care of itself."
"But there's nothing I can do," she protested. "I don't have any kind of 
training."
"You just leave that part of it up to me." He smiled and winked. "I'll figure 
something out."
I won't go. I won't. She almost said it out loud.
"Now, you understand," he reminded her, "you got to keep this to yourself. Even 
the boys on the truck don't know about it yet. We'll put out a warning on the 
radio pretty soon, but even then you better not say I told you. This is strictly 
confidential. Meanwhile," he went on, "you're better off not to bother with the 
gas or anything."
She couldn't listen any more. She thought she'd smother if she didn't get out of 
there, but he kept talking, rambling on about preparations and baggage limits, 
offering warnings and reassur­ances, to which she replied with forced 
monosyllables.
I won't go. I won't!
"Wouldn't hurt to get these windows boarded up, either," he was saying. He had 
gone over to look at the locks. "That maid of yours could do it for you. You got 
some lumber?"
She nodded, and he came back and looked down to see, for the first time, the 
horror in her face.
"Now, Gladys," he urged, "you got to be sensible. It's only a couple more days, 
and there's probably no danger at all. But if you board up the windows, then 
you're sure. No sense asking for trouble."
"You mean those gangs they've been talking about?"
"Well, what'd you think I meant?"
She shook her head. Everything was too confusing.
"Now you come on upstairs," he said. "There's nothing to get so scared about. 
Come on."
She nodded gratefully. That was what she wanted, to get out of the cellar, up to 
where the other people were, to where she could breathe again. When he reached 
out his hand to pat her shoulder reassuringly she turned swiftly, before he 
could feel the shudder his touch evoked. She ran all the way upstairs.
 
SEVENTEEN
 
Veda was in the kitchen, cleaning up, but Gladys didn't stop there. The heavy 
footsteps were too close behind her, and she swept through to the living room 
where Barbie and the doctor were waiting. Blessedly the footsteps paused in 
their pur­suit. She dropped into the big armchair and pressed her fingers hard 
against the rubbed nap of the upholstery. She was safe.
Muted conversation from the kitchen. She smiled a little, think­ing he must be 
telling Veda about those windows, wanting to make sure it got done without 
frightening her any more. Then he came in, and through the hasty good-bys she 
used weariness as a defense, stayed in her chair, and let them go without a 
word.
Then Veda came in, stared at her curiously, and called Barbie out to the 
kitchen. She heard again the snatches of a quiet conver­sation, and then her 
daughter's careless feet on the cellar stairs. Then for a few long minutes there 
was absolute peace, and nothing to think about, time for her tortured mind to 
rest.
Too soon, Barbie was back again, dancing around the room with a suppressed 
excitement Gladys couldn't understand. Pete, she remembered. Barbie and Pete. 
Maybe it wasn't so funny. Maybe she should take it more seriously.
"Mom!" Barbie saw her eyes were open now. "Mom, I'm going down the cellar to fix 
the windows. Do you want to come down?" 
"I can't, darling. I'm too tired."
"But, Mom, I'm going down the cellar!"
"Well, you've been there before!" She didn't want to sound cross. She smiled. 
"Very recently." It was something they shared. "I'm worn out, Babsy. You go 
down." She closed her eyes again, but Barbara didn't go.
Instead the girl came over and took both her hands, pulling a little, playfully.
"Please come down with me, Mom. You don't have to do anything."
Gladys opened her eyes in astonishment. Why should it mean so much?
"Please, Mom, it's . . ." She lowered her voice to almost a whisper. "It's Doc!" 
she said.
For a moment it didn't make sense, then Barbie added, "Doc Levy!"
Gladys was instantly fully awake. "What about him?" she demanded.
"He wants to talk to you."
"Where is he?"
"In the cellar, of course," Barbie said impatiently.
"Did he come back? When?"
"Come back?" The girl was bewildered. "He never went anywhere."
"But when I sent you down—before they first came—didn't you warn him?" That was 
impossible too. "He wasn't there when I went down with Mr. Turner," she 
finished.
"Oh, wasn't he?" Barbara was clearly delighted with the effect she was 
producing. "Of course I warned him," she teased, and added more soberly, "That's 
what he wanted to do—go away. But he didn't even know where he was going, and 
the truck was right in front of the house, so  
"You mean he's still down there?"
`"Sure!" Barbic totally misunderstood her mother's horrified in­tonation. "Now 
will you come down?"
"I certainly will!" Grimly Gladys followed her daughter through the dining room 
and into the kitchen. When she got down to the bottom of the cellar steps the 
air was already crackling with ques­tions and confusion.
"But you told me you didn't have any place to—"
"Just a minute, Barbara," the teacher interposed. He turned to Gladys. "I'm 
sorry, Mrs. Mitchell. I'm afraid I didn't make things quite clear enough to 
Barbara. I shouldn't have come in at all, I suppose, but I really thought it 
would be all right    "
"Well, it was all right," Barbie insisted.
"It just happened to be," he said wearily. "Or rather, your mother made it so. 
But she can't keep on hiding me from Mr. Turner indefinitely. This time he was 
in a hurry. Next time he might not be."
"Well, next time you won't be in the cellar."
"Barbara, will you stop arguing? Dr. Levy knows what he wants to do."
The girl stared at her incredulously. "Well, don't you want him to—"
"You heard what your mother said, Barbara!" His tone was sharp. Gladys saw hurt 
succeed surprise on her daughter's face. "I'm sorry I chose such a bad time for 
my—visit, Mrs. Mitchell," he went on. "I didn't mean to endanger you, or even to 
cause a family upset." He was, oddly, being suavely polite, here in the 
basement, with his clothes dirty, a hammer dangling from his hand —and the 
police after him.
"I really meant to leave as soon as the patrol was over, but Barbara convinced 
me it was unwise to go out while the truck was parked in front of the house. 
Then when she came down again . . ." He smiled a little sheepishly and waved the 
hammer in his hand to indicate the one boarded-up window. "Maybe I just took the 
first excuse I could find to stay a while longer, but—"
"Mother, he did everything," Barbie insisted. "All I did was hand him nails. I 
tried to do it myself, but everything kept going wrong."
The man's apologetic smile broke into a grin that gave his broad face, under the 
thatch of gray hair, a look of impish merriment. "I'm afraid Barbara's quite 
right," he said. "I couldn't stand watching the way she held that hammer, and I 
started out just to show her how. Then it seemed the least I could do, to pay 
for my keep, as it were, was to stay and finish the job. But"—he was serious 
again—"when I realized you didn't know I was still here I sent her up to get 
you."
Well, what am I supposed to say now? Gladys wondered. How could he take it all 
so casually, make jokes, and find cause for laughter? His own life was forfeit, 
and he was endangering theirs every minute he stayed. Get out of my house! her 
mind screamed at him, but she couldn't say it out loud.
"I see," she managed. "That was very thoughtful of you."
"Well, what are you going to do, Mother?" Barbara demanded coldly. "Are you 
going to make him go away after all he—"
"I think," he smiled ruefully, ignoring the girl, "I'd better go now. But there 
was another reason I wanted to talk to you, Mrs. Mitchell. I took a grand tour 
of your gas pipes while Barbara was upstairs, and I think I found your trouble. 
I don't know if you'll want to bother with it now, but it's just possible you 
could get it going again."
"Why, that would be wonderful! Is it safe, you think?"
"If I've diagnosed it right, it is." He walked over to the hot-water heater. "I 
have a hunch all your trouble was in here. Of course it could be in the pipes," 
he added, "but I just don't think so."
"What could the heater have to do with it?" Gladys wanted to know.
"I think that's where the gas was escaping from. It occurred to me when you 
mentioned the pilot light went out. From what Mr. Turner said—"
"You heard all that?" Gladys interrupted. "Where were you?"
"Oh, I never told you!" Barbara seized the opening. "I ought to make you guess!" 
Delightedly she stretched out the moment. "You'd never think of it. He was in 
the clothes drier!"
"And a very dry, clean drier, too," he put in. "I'm afraid I did overhear most 
of your conversation—or rather," he smiled, "Mr. Turner's."
Gladys flushed, remembering the nature of Turner's conversa­tion. But Dr. Levy 
went on without giving her a chance to be embarrassed.
"From what he said about trouble in the mains, and from the way you described 
your trouble with the stove upstairs, I think that when the pilot light went 
out, upstairs, the one down here in the heater must have done the same. Only the 
big flame in the heater was on at the time, and that stayed open. It shouldn't," 
he added. "These gadgets are supposed to be foolproof. But something didn't work 
when it should have, and as soon as the gas came through again it began pouring 
out of the burner. If I'm right, then it's perfectly safe to turn the gas on 
again, just so the heater's off first."
He walked over to the meter and examined Gladys' handiwork.
"Will it go on again?" she asked. "Frankly, I don't know just what I did to it."
"You did the right thing anyhow. And a thorough job, too," he told her. "What 
did you use to turn it off?"
"There was a pliers." She looked around, trying to remember what she'd done with 
it.
He was back at the heater, fooling with handles and knobs.
"That should do it," he said finally. "This thing's off tight now. You can turn 
on the gas any time. All you have to do is screw that valve out—the one you 
closed before—but you better check up carefully after you turn it on, and make 
sure I'm right. If you come down every half hour or so you'll be able to notice 
the smell long before there's any danger, just in case there really is a leak 
somewhere."
"I don't know . . ." Gladys hesitated. "I'd—isn't there any other way to tell?"
"No safe way," he said, "unless you're sure you know what you're doing. You'd 
have to crawl all over the place to follow the pipes."
"Well," she said doubtfully, "we'll see. But thank you, anyhow. It was very kind 
of you."
"Of course," Barbara said coldly, "it wouldn't occur to you that Doc—oh, never 
mind," she finished helplessly.
Gladys looked wearily from her daughter to the teacher. The man ran his hand 
through his hair, brushed off the dusty sleeves of his jacket, and straightened 
his tie.
"I—" It was his turn now to be embarrassed. "In spite of my perhaps ill-placed 
humor before, Mrs. Mitchell, I hope you realize I wasn't really looking for 
an—excuse. I've stayed too long already."
"You've been . . . very kind," Gladys repeated inadequately. There must be 
something she could say or do, something that would help. "I'm afraid," she said 
weakly, "I haven't exactly—well, I certainly haven't thanked you for all you've 
done."
"Please, Mrs. Mitchell," he said uncomfortably, "that's not nec­essary. Believe 
me, I realize just how difficult it's been."
"The only difficult thing anybody's done," Barbara said bitterly, "was your 
coming here last night to warn us."
Gladys felt miserably ashamed of her own fears. She was tired and mixed up, torn 
between pity for the man and terror of having him in the house. And things would 
only be more complicated if she admitted to herself that she was beginning to 
like him. What Barbara wanted wasn't really so unreasonable. What if he did stay 
a little longer? Turner certainly wouldn't be back again soon. In the end it was 
her weariness that won.
"It might be a good idea if you took a look outside, Barbara," Dr. Levy said. 
"I'd hate to add any more to my sins by involving you people now."
Wordlessly the girl started for the stairs, but Gladys put out a hand to stop 
her.
"Dr. Levy." She turned to the man and gave him a pleading look, begging him to 
understand just what she meant. "I want you to know," she began cautiously, 
"that I really do appreciate all you've done. I'm awfully tired, and I'm not 
sure I'm being very clear, but if—well, if you would like to stay awhile, I'm 
sure it would be a big help to us. I . . ." She tried to make it easier. "I know 
I could never manage the gas myself," she added.
She was grateful when Barbara took it upon herself to override his protests, 
leaving her to escape to the comfort of Jon's big chair upstairs. She could rest 
now, without quarrels or exertions. She didn't have to think about windows or 
gas; she didn't have to argue with Barbie.
There was music on the radio again. She closed her eyes, trying to bring Jon 
back into the room, as she had tried the night before. But he wouldn't come; she 
couldn't imagine him there at all. He was gone.
In the last war there had been a day when, suddenly, she couldn't remember what 
he looked like. She had stared at his pic­ture and the face on it had been a 
stranger's. But that was after months of separation. This was just . . . not 
even . . . two days.
Veda came in, and Gladys opened her eyes in greeting, then closed them again 
when she saw nothing was required of her. Veda picked out a magazine and sat 
down on the sofa. She must be tired too.
Everything was extraordinarily peaceful. Music on the radio, down low, pages 
turning once in a while, Ginny asleep upstairs.
Edie Crowell is asleep up there too. Ginny asleep. Barbie, board­ing up windows 
. . . a stranger hiding in the cellar . . . She wouldn't think of those things. 
A man fixing the gas, she corrected herself. Turner couldn't fix it, she 
thought, but Jim Turner was one more person she didn't want to think about.
She wouldn't answer the phone either. She'd just let it ring. But it made too 
much noise.
"Missus Mitchell!" She was supposed to get up now. Veda had answered it.
"I don't want to talk to anybody."
"Yes, you do. You come talk now."
It was something good. It was good news! She ran to the phone and took it from 
Veda's extended hand.
"Yes?"
"This is Peter Spinelli, Mrs. Mitchell. I had a minute before we left 
headquarters, so I thought I'd let you know. Barbie's all right."
 
EIGHTEEN
 
"But how could they know so soon?" Barbie left a thoroughly embraced Veda 
brushing off cellar dust and spun back to her mother. "I thought it took hours!"
"He said it didn't take long to make the count—just waiting for them to get 
around to it. But Dr. Peter Spinelli, for some unknown reason, wanted to find 
out about Miss Barbara Mitchell right away, so he went right in and did it 
himself."
She did not add that Squadman James Turner had been so con­cerned about Mrs. 
Gladys Mitchell that he had procured the diffi­cult lab pass that made the quick 
test possible. Watching Barbie's glee, she dismissed the disquieting obligation. 
Time enough to think of that later. She felt as if she had just awakened from a 
long, long sleep—far more refreshed than when she had actually got out of bed, 
five hours earlier.
"Hey, I've got to finish those windows! It's getting late." Barbara stopped 
prancing. "Come with me, Mom. Keep me company." 
"All right," Gladys agreed.
"Missus Mitchell." Veda restored her magazine to its precise spot in the rack. 
"If there's nothin' special you want me for, I think mebbe I'll get to bed now." 
She covered a yawn. "Looks like there ain't no call fer me to set up no more."
"Do you mean to say you were staying up just on account of me?" Gladys asked 
indignantly. "You shouldn't have."
"Yer' feelin' pretty chipper now," Veda stopped her, "but you didn't look so hot 
a ways back. Anyways, Mr. Turner, he give me strict orders to look out fer you. 
I jest didn't dare do nothin' else."
The remark brought a general laugh, but made Gladys acutely aware of another 
worry she had deferred. Something would have to be done about Jim Turner.
The music on the radio ended with a noisy flourish, and a man's voice announced 
the ten o'clock news. For the first time since the speeches the afternoon 
before, Gladys found she really wanted to hear a broadcast all the way through.
"Let's go downstairs after the news is over," she suggested. The two of them 
settled down together in front of the radio, and Barbie accepted the decision 
willingly.
To Gladys' surprise, most of the news was encouraging. No fur­ther attempts at 
bombing attacks had been made. Retaliation was already in effect. Then the 
startling, unexpected information that all action against the enemy was by means 
of remote-control aircraft; land forces would be used only for mopping up.
Tom was safe! Whatever they had him doing at address un­known, he was not 
landing in enemy territory or fighting the dread sort of man-to-man battle 
they'd had in the last war.
There were reports of communication hookups to all parts of the country, of 
trains and rails repaired for evacuation purposes, of supplies being brought 
into big-city areas.
The national news was followed by a series of brief reports on local matters. 
There was something about the explosion in the gas main that Turner had 
mentioned; and there was also a report about the preparation of the Navy base 
for use as an evacuation camp. There were new hospitals opened up, railroad 
lines put in use, telephone services repaired.
The broadcast ended with a repetition of the request for tempo­rary homes for 
homeless children.
Impulsively Gladys got up and went to the phone. When she came back, after the 
now familiar struggle with operators and switchboards, she felt obscurely 
pleased, even while she reckoned up the new difficulties the decision would 
bring upon her. But now that she knew Barbie was all right the whole thing 
seemed much easier. It might, in fact, give Barbara something to do when boredom 
and confinement began to tell on them all. And certainly it would be wonderful 
for Ginny. All in all, it might save more trouble than it made.
They started reading off the long lists of victims and survivors found in the 
city, and Gladys let her thoughts drift away. The news all sounded so good, she 
reflected, things seemed to be im­proving every hour. Then it occurred to her 
that nothing had been said about the imminent failure of the gas supply or about 
the pos­sible discontinuance of telephone service. The news of the evacua­tion 
camp's preparation did not include any mention of the pro­jected mass 
evacuation. It wasn't all quite as good as it sounded after all; maybe the other 
part, the big news about the whole coun­try, was weeded out the same way.
"Mother?" Gladys raised her eyes from the tufted carpet and looked at Barbie 
inquiringly.
"I just wanted to tell you, I think it was awfully nice of you to change your 
mind about those kids—and about Doc Levy."
"I didn't exactly change my mind about him," Gladys told her. "It bothers me, 
just having him in the house. Maybe I'd feel better if I knew what it was that 
he did that makes him have to hide, but —well, I just don't like the whole 
thing!"
"But you said          --"
"I know what I said. I said that if he wanted to stay awhile it would be a big 
help to us. It was perfectly true, and I don't see what else I could have said 
at that point. I know he's done a lot for us, but frankly I'll be a lot happier 
when he's gone."
"You mean you're still going to make him go? You're not going to let him stay 
here?"
"Suppose you tell me where we'd keep him—if not in the clothes drier? And how 
we'd keep Ginny from finding out? Or Veda?"
"He could stay up in the attic," Barbie insisted. "You know how Tom and I used 
to play up there when we were kids? There's plenty of room for a man to hide 
behind those boards, too, if he had to."
When we were kids! Staring at her daughter in mingled shock and amusement, 
Gladys almost missed the rest of what Barbie said.
"Anyhow," the girl finished, "I don't see why they shouldn't know."
"Barbie, you know Ginny would never be able to keep quiet about it. Even if we 
could make her understand it was a secret she couldn't keep it. And now," she 
added as inspiration struck her, "with those children coming—well, it's just 
impossible."
"And what about Veda?" The question did not come from Barbie.
Fully dressed, and not looking the least bit sleepy, Veda was firmly planted in 
the dining-room door, arms folded on her chest, eyes flashing.
"How long . . . ?" Gladys started.
"Not long enough," she said. "I don't yet know his name or what he's doing down 
there."
"Have you seen him?"
"Yes, I seen him. Crawlin' all over the floor down there like an animal. This 
one," she said, pointing a long arm accusingly at Barbie, "tryin' to tell me she 
fixed that gas up her own self. You're right smart at keepin' things to 
yerself," she accused Gladys. "But if Miss Snippity here wants to know your 
secrets, my advice is, don't tell her. She can't keep 'em."
One baleful glare stopped Barbara's retort before it got fairly started. "Now, 
lissen, Missus Mitchell, I ain't forgettin' you did me a favor this mornin'. But 
I've had to do some fancy remindin' myself the last couple of hours. Mebbe you 
think what them fellers said about me is true, an' so I'll put up with anything. 
Well, it ain't true. I never did a thing in my life I'd be afraid to admit out 
loud, an' up till right now I thought the same about you. But if it's got so 
you'd set your own daughter to lyin'—"
"Veda!" Gladys protested. "I know perfectly well you haven't done anything 
wrong. And neither have I. You ought to realize that."
"Well, I'm right glad to hear you say so. But just don't you mind, I want to 
have my say out this once. If you folks kin make up yer minds to let me know 
what's goin' on around here, and if it don't seem wrong to me, that's one thing. 
But if you can't see fit to tell me what that man is doin' here I don't see 
nothin' for it but to get out even if it means I got to call up the Security men 
an'—"
"Veda!" Barbara, appalled, forgot to be cowed. "You wouldn't tell them! You 
wouldn't tell about Dr. Levy?"
"No'm." Veda directed her answer to Gladys, seeing the same question in her 
eyes. "No'm, I wouldn't. I told you I ain't forgot about this mornin' and ain't 
like to. Only I jest can't stay here unless we get things straightened up. I'm 
sorry, Missus Mitchell, but it ain't jest that man. I tried to talk to you 
before and didn't get nowhere. But it ain't in me to keep on—"
"Of course you're going to stay, Veda." Gladys had finally recovered her 
self-possession. "You know we wouldn't let you go. Now sit down, will you, and 
give me a chance to tell you about it?"
Reluctantly the maid crossed the room and sat down. She listened, stiffly at 
first, while Gladys went over the whole story, some parts of which Barbara, too, 
was hearing for the first time. In the course of the tale Veda's indignation 
died away, but by the time it was done she was afire once more.
"You mean to set there an' tell me you let that man stay down in thit cellar all 
this time," she demanded fiercely, "and him sick, too?" She got up and headed 
briskly for the kitchen.
After that Gladys felt she had lost all ability to be surprised. If she were 
still capable of it, nothing could have been stranger than the immediate warmth 
of the friendship between Veda and Garson Levy.
The woman, almost uneducated, opinionated, practical, and warmly emotional; the 
man, well informed, scientific, precise of speech and mannerism, a little too 
erudite, almost pedantic—it seemed there could hardly be two people with less in 
common.
Gladys sat and marveled, while the teacher weeded out his vocabulary, choosing 
words Veda would be sure to understand, taking care not to offend her, drawing 
her out. He wanted to know everything that had happened to her, what she'd seen 
and heard in the city and in the decontamination center.
It took a long time for the whole story to come out. Some of it they heard while 
Levy tested the kitchen range, and some while Veda filled all the remaining 
empty containers with boiling water. The teacher kept her talking while he 
devised airtight seals for jars and pitchers that had no tops, and longer still 
while they all sat drinking coffee and cocoa in the living room.
Veda told them how she had turned away the first people who tried to rouse 
her—two of the roomers who had taken it upon themselves to get everyone out of 
the house. She even told, with a deprecatory smile, how she stood cowering in a 
corner of the room, wrapped in her bathrobe, angrily convinced that her fellow 
tenants were drunk and violent in the middle of the afternoon.
She had steadfastly refused to open the door, and apparently the neighbors' 
interest in her welfare had not extended to knocking it down. She went back to 
bed with a firm resolution to have a long talk with the landlady, and went 
promptly back to sleep. The steady downpour of radioactive rain all that 
afternoon did not dis­turb her. It was after two o'clock in the morning when an 
official rescue crew came through the building, broke down the door, and dragged 
her out of bed and out of the house, with barely time to get her bathrobe on.
The rain was over by then and the street was bright with fires, raging in 
defiance of the lingering wetness. She didn't see much outside, however, because 
she was led directly from the house door to a big closed truck only a few feet 
away.
She shared the interior of the truck for more than an hour with the few other 
female survivors rescued in that neighborhood. She was the second one in, and 
when the truck started rolling steadily westward there were nine 
altogether—three cripples, one idiot, two drunks, two senile old ladies, and 
herself. As near as she could make out, everyone who was conscious and capable, 
as well as most of those who weren't, had fled the poisoned streets long ago.
The nine of them were unloaded in front of a big stone building that might have 
been a college, a library, or a museum, and taken through a little side entrance 
to a series of small rooms where they were subjected to indignities which Veda 
passed over without detail. These Gladys shrewdly guessed to be connected with a 
change of clothing and an assembly-line medical examination.
They had then been led through a series of rooms where un­familiar machines, big 
and little, quiet and noisy, were aimed at her.
Levy explained that these must have been the testing devices for radiations and 
fission products. He seemed impressed at the num­ber and size Veda reported, but 
Gladys was inclined to discount some of it. She was familiar with Veda's 
impressionability where machinery was concerned.
In any case she had been separated from her truck companions immediately 
afterward. Something was said about a hospital, so she assumed that was where 
the others were taken. She herself, it seemed, was in excellent 
health—considerably better than she had ever thought. She was taken to another 
large building, located within the same roped-off area of several city blocks. 
This one was easily identifiable as a public school.
The entire place, Dr. Levy said, was undoubtedly the Washington Heights 
Decontamination Center.
In the school she was taken to a brightly lit room where several men questioned 
her, over and over again, about her reasons for sealing her room. In endless 
embarrassed succession she repeated the same answers to the same questions, 
until eventually one of them decided on the trip to the Mitchells' to check on 
her story.
It was almost midnight by the time Veda finished. Then, when Levy found out how 
long she'd been without sleep, he did something Gladys would have sworn to be 
impossible, and persuaded her to go off to bed, leaving the dishes for him to 
do.
Barbara was half asleep, too, but reluctant to leave a gathering where she had 
acquired such a wealth of information. Gladys let her stay up for the twelve 
o'clock news, then sent the girl off to bed. She herself went up to the attic to 
fix a cot for Dr. Levy. There was no longer any question that he had become a 
semipermanent guest.
When she had finished she called down to let him know it was ready, but she 
didn't go back to the living room.
For all his redeeming traits, she still found the teacher hard to talk to. 
Perhaps it was because, even now, she felt so strongly the indefinite menace 
that his presence in the house implied, perhaps because everything connected 
with him continued to be so un­realistically melodramatic. She wanted to know 
more about him—a great deal more—but she could not bring herself to go down and 
question him.
She opened up the hall closet again and began working through a pile she had 
started the night before, reflecting uncomfortably on the fact that while he was 
drawing out Veda's story Levy had told little or nothing of his own.
She dug down among the old work clothes and camping things, refusing to think 
about the extra baggage she would be allowed if she took Jim Turner's offer. She 
was going to have to do something about that.
Ruefully she wondered which man was more of a problem. Then, underneath Tom's 
old tennis racket, she found Jon's Camper's Manual and opened it curiously.
 
NINETEEN
 
The crash caught her in the middle of the chapter on first aid. She dropped the 
book and flew downstairs before she could think about it and get too frightened 
to go down at all. It was not loud enough to be an explosion; it was too loud to 
be furniture or a lamp. There was a battering sound to it and, mixed with it, 
the tinkling shatter of glass. Everything was all right in the living room, but 
Dr. Levy was nowhere in sight.
Gladys went back to the kitchen and pushed open the swinging door into darkness.
"Close it!" That was Dr. Levy. "For God's sake, shut the door. Don't let the 
light in." He was shouting in a whisper, if that were possible. He seemed to be 
across the room, down near the floor, and moving around. It felt as if she stood 
in the lighted doorway forever, but she realized that she must have acted 
quickly to close it when she heard his grunted "Good."
"Get down," he ordered, still whispering, and she obeyed. On the other side of 
the room the door to Veda's bedroom creaked cautiously open, but no light showed 
through.
"It's all right, Veda," Gladys called. "We're out here." Another thundering 
crash at the kitchen door and the little glass that was left in the panes fell 
tinkling to the floor. It's all right . . . what made her say a thing like that?
"What's the matter? What's happening?" Veda's voice was a hoarse whisper.
"Come over here," Levy told Gladys. He was moving around again. "And keep low. 
Stay down as close to the floor as you can." Something hit the door again, and 
the whole room shook.
Veda came up next to Gladys. "Is it that gang they was talking about on the 
radio?"
Gladys nodded, then realized it was too dark for Veda to sec her. "Yes."
She felt something being put into her hand. `"Give it to Veda," Levy said. 
Dutifully she passed on the heavy iron skillet. He kept handing her things. 
Another skillet, a carving knife, the iron and, ludicrously, a rolling 
pin—anything he could lay his hands on that could possibly be a weapon.
"Pile them up in front of you."
Gladys did as she was told, simply because she knew nothing better to do.
"I'm going over behind the door on the other side," Levy whis­pered. He was 
kneeling down right in back of them, so they could both hear. "You stay here 
together and when the door comes down throw the lighter things first, as fast as 
you can, and as much as you can. If there aren't many of them the confusion 
might be enough to stop them. If that doesn't work, use the heavier things, but 
you haven't got many of those, so don't waste them. If you do have to use them, 
aim to hit."
He started crawling across the floor, rattling some unknown kitchen utensils 
behind him. A few feet away he stopped.
"Just try not to hit me," he pleaded, and continued his slow progress across the 
floor.
It had been a long time since the last crash. Were they recon­sidering the plan 
of attack? Or going away? Or gathering strength for the final blow?
"Dr. Levy!" It was absolutely quiet outside, and even her whis­per sounded loud.
"Yes?"
"What do we do with the knives?"
"Nothing more than you can help," he said tersely. "If they get in, you may need 
them."
He had barely finished making his way to his self-appointed station on the far 
side of the door when the crash came, louder and more violent than any before. 
It hit the door and continued hitting it, until the frame, boards and all, 
shook, shivered, and fell.
Gladys' rolling pin flew from her hand toward the first shape that loomed in the 
doorway. By a miracle of bad aim, it went straight by him to bring forth a yell 
of pain from someone right in back. A moment later Levy brought a heavy skillet 
down on the foot of the man in front, putting him out of the battle completely.
Later on Gladys remembered those two opening incidents clearly, but the rest was 
a chaos of flying fists and kitchenware, from which only an occasional incident 
stood out. The first flurry of flying objects from Gladys and Veda caused a 
hesitation in the ranks that made it clear the intruders had not expected 
resistance. But they rallied quickly and surged into the room. One of them had a 
flashlight.
"Oh, it's just a couple of dames," he shouted, and the others rushed through. 
The swath of light had completely missed Levy, crouching beside the door. The 
teacher stood up, raised his arms over his head, reached forward, and brought 
down the pot in his hands—upside down. He snatched the light easily, while its 
former owner struggled out of the tight-fitting helmet he had acquired. Gladys 
was aware of herself springing up from the floor with a skillet in one hand and 
a carving fork in the other; afterward, also, she remembered Veda breathing 
heavily, jumping forward and, later, shouting. She knew that she hit out blindly 
in front of her, over and over again. And she knew that after a while the noise 
and movement stopped, and the intruders were gone—all but one.
Someone turned the light on then, and she was standing in the middle of what had 
been a clean, orderly kitchen, looking down at a motionless body on the floor in 
front of her, memorizing it.
Dr. Levy was moving the kitchen table in front of the broken door. Veda held the 
door in place until the table was set to brace it.
The man had blond hair, beginning to go bald at the temples. He was very thin 
and his suit had been light gray when it was clean.
Levy said something about wood and went off down the cellar stairs.
There was a clean cut on the man's forehead, not a very big one. Just a little 
bit of blood trickling off into the blond hair. It didn't seem like enough to 
kill a . . .
"Missus Mitchell, stop that now, Missus Mitchell! It ain't goin' to do no good, 
havin' you stand over him like that. You go on and sit down."
The words broke the spell. "I don't have to sit down," Gladys said. "What are 
you doing?" Then she looked. "Fixing the door?"
`"Doc Levy went after some wood so we kin nail it shut. Seems to me we ought to 
shut up all the windows on this floor, same as in the cellar."
Gladys nodded and bent down to pick up a pot, feeling herself unpleasantly close 
to the body she didn't want to think about. Not looking to that side at all, she 
crossed the room and began picking up scattered utensils near the door. 
Everything was lightly spattered with blood and mud and sprinkled with splinters 
of wood and bits of plaster. She straightened up and let Veda take the arm­ful 
of utensils from her, her eyes searching for the spot the plaster had come from. 
She found it finally, clear across the room, near Veda's door, where someone had 
aimed wild with a food chopper.
She walked over and picked up the chopper, trying to remember whether it had 
been hers, wondering if she had reached such a pitch of excitement that she 
could have thrown it unawares. The worst thing was being unable to remember. She 
didn't know what she had done in those minutes. She didn't know whether she had 
used a knife. She raised her fingers to the hole in the wall, exploring its 
contours curiously, feeling what the chopper would have done if it had hit the 
man.
The teacher came back, loaded down with pieces of board, a ham­mer, and nails. 
He dumped everything on the kitchen table in front of the door and went back 
again to survey the man on the floor.
"We'll have to do something about him."
Gladys and Veda looked to each other and to the two men.
"We can't just leave him there," Gladys stated foolishly. "The children will be 
coming down in the morning."
"Well, we could start by bringing him to," Levy proposed. "Do you have any 
ammonia in the house?"
"Bring him to?"
"You mean he's not . . . ?"
Both women spoke at once with a swift return of vitality. It was Levy's turn now 
to look from one face to another, uncompre­hending.
"I mean," he said when he finally understood, "that he's quite enough alive so 
that you'd better have something ready to tie him up with before you get the 
ammonia."
Veda produced a quantity of rope from a hidden hoard, and Levy put aside the 
problem of nailing up the door while he secured the knots around the unconscious 
body. When he was certain the man was safely tied he picked up the hammer and 
nails and started for the door again. He climbed up on the table and got the 
board into position while Veda fished out the bottle of ammonia from the back of 
the cleaning closet. Gladys went over to hold the board in place for him, but he 
changed his mind just as he was about to start.
"Wait a minute," he called to Veda, who was already bending over the prostrate 
form. "You can put that down," he told Gladys. She lowered the board onto the 
fiat surface of the table, and watched, puzzled, as he bent over the blond man 
and moved the ropes so that the hands no longer covered the suit pockets. Neatly 
he turned the pockets inside out, one after another, turning up a grand 
miscellany of items from brass knuckles to half a sandwich.
Speechless, Gladys continued to watch as he stood up, tri­umphantly holding a 
battered wallet, and went systematically through the contents of the billfold.
Veda was anything but speechless. "Now, listen here, Doc," she said indignantly, 
"you kin go too far. There's some things a man shouldn't do."
Levy smiled more than ever like an imp and, ignoring the money in the wallet, 
slid a small white card out of a cellophane pocket.
"Veda," he said sternly, "you're too suspicious. You should have more faith in 
human nature."
She didn't want to be joked with. "I know what's right," she said stubbornly, 
"and I know what's wrong, and what you're doin' ain't right."
"What do you think, Mrs. Mitchell?" The teacher turned to her. "Are you voting 
against me too?"
"Why, I don't know." She watched him fold the wallet closed, still holding the 
little white card in his other hand, and at last she realized what it was. "No," 
she smiled, "but you might introduce us."
"I see by the little card," he said, "that my name is Albert Carney. I live at 
5813 Grand Concourse, in the Bronx. I have served two years of compulsory 
military training and am a member of the Reserve Army Corps."
That was when Veda stopped looking stonily disapproving and understood what he 
was doing.
"And furthermore," he finished, reading the draft card, "I have had a very sad 
life."
"I'll bite," Gladys smiled. "Why have you had a sad life, Mr. Bones?"
"Bones?" he asked. "Bones, indeed! In my heydey I used to be referred to as 
skin-and! The reason why I have had such a sad life is that I am only"—he had to 
check the card again—"only thirty-two years old, and most prematurely gray."
In the reaction to the strain, all three of them went off in shouts of raucous 
laughter. They laughed till it hurt, till all the strain and tension were gone 
out of them. Then they set to work boarding up the door, meanwhile considering 
what to do with their victim.
Gladys didn't want to keep him in the house, for the children to find in the 
morning. Veda objected strenuously to the risks in­volved in reviving and 
releasing him. They thought of just putting him out on the porch, out of sight, 
and calling Emergency Headquarters to pick him up, but it was a heartless 
procedure, and one by one they found excuses not to do it.
"Seems to me, with Doc here in the house, we're a sight better off not askin' 
any extra cops inside," Veda added.
"We could untie him," Levy proposed, "and put him outside. Then when he comes 
to, he'll be free."
The last thing Gladys remembered of that incredible night was Levy-Carney 
leaning out of the dining-room window, cautiously lowering an unconscious man 
into the soft earth of the flower bed below.
 
TWENTY
 
". . . simplified system of distribution. Your neigh­borhood food stores are now 
open, under the supervision of emergency squadmen. Supplies arc being 
distributed to the stores by emergency squad trucks. No money is necessary to 
receive . . ."
The announcer's voice rushed up the stairs to greet her with the day's new 
problems—the third day of the third war of her life. Gladys didn't want 
problems. She wanted breakfast. Even more, she wanted to go back to bed.
". . . birth certificates if possible. Driver's licenses or Social Security 
cards will also be acceptable. But remember, you must have absolute proof of the 
number of persons in your household."
Edie Crowell sat on the living-room sofa, desultorily turning the pages of a 
magazine. She was wrapped unbecomingly in Gladys' old pink nylon robe. When she 
looked up to nod, her face was unnaturally pallid. Her general appearance 
finished the job the radio announcer had started, and removed the last vestige 
of relaxation left over from the long night's sleep.
"Good morning," Gladys said quickly, and turned to the radio as an excuse to 
postpone further conversation.
". . . may be some delay, but there is enough for all. Remember, others are also 
waiting for supplies. This concludes our eleven o'clock news broadcast. We will 
continue to . . ."
"Hello!" Edie stood up, stretching, and dispersing some of the gloom settled 
around her. "I thought you were never going to get up!" She smiled and looked 
more like herself.
Memory came into focus, and the events of the day before lined themselves up for 
Gladys' inspection. A wave of relief swept her as she realized that Edith had, 
incredibly, slept through all the excitement of the night.
"I slept so late yesterday, I couldn't get to sleep last night," Gladys lied 
happily. "You must have been up early. What's been happening around here?"
"Nothing," Edith laughed. "Nothing at all. It's the most peaceful morning I've 
had in ages! I haven't seen a living soul since breakfast. If I had anything to 
put on I'd have gone home, but I understand my dress isn't exactly . . ." She 
let it drift off.
"It's not in very good shape," Gladys admitted, "but Veda could have got you 
something of mine. I don't know why  "
"I'm afraid your Veda doesn't exactly approve of me." Edith began to look better 
as animation returned to her. "I was given to understand it would be perfectly 
all right for me to wear your robe home"—she plucked at the worn pink material 
humorously—"pro­vided I did it quickly. I decided to be a difficult guest 
instead, and wait around till you got up, in hopes of a better offer."
"Oh, of course. Anything you want. I'm sorry about Veda. I hope she 
wasn't—unpleasant?" But Gladys couldn't help smiling; she was too familiar with 
Veda's uncompromising attitude toward alcohol.
"She wasn't." It was a relief to see Edie's answering smile. "She was just . . . 
uninterested. So I kept out of her way, and she left me alone. Anyhow, I think I 
agree with her. When this mess is over I'm going to join the anti-liquor league. 
Or at least a temperance society. I had enough of it yesterday to last the rest 
of my life!"
At least she'd mentioned it first. "Don't be silly," Gladys said weakly, and was 
saved from having to think of anything else to say.
"That you out there, Missus Mitchell?" Veda emerged from the dining room. "You 
comin' in to eat now? Ought to get yer breakfast before lunchtime." She smiled, 
pointedly ignoring the other woman.
"Have you eaten yet?" Gladys hesitated, looking from one to the other.
"Hours ago," Edith told her.
"You're sure? You won't join me?"
Veda shifted her weight impatiently. "I got the coffee heatin'," she told no one 
in particular. "Mebbe I better go turn it off." She turned on her heel and 
marched off.
"Well, if you're sure?" Gladys apologized to her guest. "I am awfully hungry." 
The swinging door wafted the smell of bacon from the kitchen. "I'll get you 
something to wear as soon as I'm done. Veda seems to have everything all ready," 
she fumbled.
"That's perfectly all right. You go ahead. I don't want to put you out."
Why can't I send her up to get it for herself? Somehow that was impossible. 
Irritated at Edie and at herself, Gladys started for the door.
"Oh, by the way, Glad." The other woman's voice called her back. "I'm sorry—I 
don't want to keep you. But I was wondering if you had any cigarettes around? I 
know you don't smoke much, but your husband does, doesn't he?"
"They're in the drawer," Gladys broke in.
It was hopeless. No matter how firmly she made up her mind, she couldn't keep 
from playing hostess for Edie. To her intense chagrin, Gladys found herself 
recrossing the room, opening the drawer in Jon's desk, and bringing forth a 
fresh pack of cigarettes. She hunted for matches and found them pushed away in 
the back.
"Thank you. I'm sorry to be such a nuisance, but you don't have to worry about 
me now. I've been sitting around all morning, dreaming about a cigarette, but I 
didn't see any, and I didn't want to go hunting through your things. That's half 
the reason why I wanted to get home." She held up the full pack, smiling. "This 
is making me feel positively luxurious."
In the kitchen Gladys found her place already set. She sat down at the white 
table and felt the sun streaming in the window over her shoulder.
"Where are the kids?" she asked.
"Up the attic. I could call them," Veda offered, "only I thought mebbe you'd 
want to eat yer meal in peace, without them to bother."
"You couldn't have had a better thought," Gladys agreed. She had planned to send 
Barbie for the dress, but it could wait. Right now she was hungry. When had she 
last eaten a decent meal? Not Tuesday. Monday, supper was spoiled; she'd had a 
sandwich for lunch. That was a long time.
It didn't matter if Edie Crowell spent a few more minutes in the house. Just 
concentrate on the table, the sun, the smell of the bacon, and the tall glass of 
orange juice that was waiting for her. Time enough for problems later.
She picked up the juice and took a long drink. It was canned. Veda smiled at the 
face she made.
"None of the frozen left," she explained. "Ain't done a big marketing since last 
week. That's jest as good for you," she added. "You drink it up."
"I don't want to," Gladys pouted, in imitation of her youngest daughter. "Will 
you stop taking such good care of me, Veda? Ever since I got a little gas into 
my system yesterday you've been acting as if I was likely to fall apart."
"Well, you sound more like yerself now," Veda admitted. "I was thinkin', if you 
kin manage all right with lunch for the kids, it would mebbe be a smart idea fer 
me to get down to Monnassey's, right away, an' try to get up at the front of the 
line."
"I think I can probably muddle through," Gladys smiled at her. "But don't stay 
away too long," she warned. "I could easily melt."
She finished the juice and worked her way happily through pancakes and bacon, 
while Veda got ready to go. By the time she got to her coffee Gladys was 
beginning to feel prepared to face some of her problems.
"Is Mr.—Carney upstairs?" she asked.
"No, he went out a couple hours ago. Said he'd likely be back around three. Said 
he had to get some things fer himself an' pick up some parts for the kerosene 
stove."
Gladys looked up, startled. "What on earth is he going to do with that?"
"He got a plan figured out to rig up that kerosene stove under­neath the 
hot-water burner where the gas went out. Says he kin fix it so's we'll have 
runnin' hot water again. He's a right handy man around a house, Missus 
Mitchell," Veda said with satisfaction. "Never would've thought it of a teacher 
like that."
Dr. Levy, Gladys reflected, was getting to be a household prop. She wished she 
could resolve her mixed feelings about the man. Mr. Fix-it . . . in a fix!
"Did she see him?" Gladys nodded toward the living room. Veda shook her head. 
"He told Barbie to watch out fer when she went in her room, an' then went out."
"And Ginny? Did she see him?"
"Couldn't help that. That's why I thought mebbe it was jest as good if she 
stayed up the attic till yer friend goes home. I told 'er he was a friend o' 
mine, jest in case."
Gladys looked doubtful. "We'll have to try and think of something to keep her 
from talking about him."
"Don't really matter too much," Veda pointed out. "If he kin go out, he kin come 
here. Jest so she don't know he's sleepin' here."
"That's true." Gladys sipped thoughtfully at her coffee.
"I'm about ready to go now, Missus Mitchell. I got lunch all fixed on the stove 
there. All you got to do is warm it up. I think they said on the radio I got to 
take some kind of identification with me. You know where I kin find something?"
Gladys got up and started for the living room."I didn't mean fer you to get up."
"Well, I am up. Will you stop babying me, Veda?" It didn't seem funny any more.
Barbie was in the living room, talking to Edith Crowell and looking superbly 
secretive. I'll have to speak to her about that, Gladys thought, and remembered 
about the dress.
"Barbie, could you take Mrs. Crowell up to my room and help her pick out 
something to wear?" Veda could feel bad or disap­prove or just ignore it. "Take 
whatever you want, Edie. We can offer you a complete assortment. Barbara knows 
where everything is."
Veda said pointedly, "Mehbe Barbie would know where—"
Where what?" Barbara turned back from the stairs.
"I came in to get the birth certificates," Gladys explained shortly.
"I'm sure I can find them."
"For heaven's sake, Mother, don't you ever remember where you put anything? 
They're in the bottom drawer in Daddy's desk. That's where they always were."
There was no use hoping Barbie was wrong. Gladys had long ago stopped trying to 
compete with her daughter's memory. Rebel­liously she went to the drawer and 
found all the family birth cer­tificates in a neat pile, probably put away by 
Jon, not, as Barbie said, by herself. She was sure she would have tucked them in 
a cookbook, or in a vanity drawer, for easier reference.
She bolted the door after Veda and went back to her rapidly cooling coffee. 
Ginny came running down a few minutes later, de­manding to know why no one had 
told her her mother was up. She seemed in better spirits than she had been the 
day before, and certainly her appetite had returned. Not until she had stuffed 
down the last mouthful of dessert did she stop to ask the burning question.
"When are the children coming?"
"Soon, I think." She'd completely forgotten about that. They had told her twelve 
o'clock on the phone, but it was after twelve already. Better not to be too 
definite about it with Ginny.
"How soon?"
"They'll probably be here when you wake up from your nap," Gladys told her.
"I don't want a nap."
"Of course you do. You want to be wide awake to play with the children, don't 
you?"
"No, I don't." Ginny shook her head vigorously. "I'll be asleep when they come."
"Maybe I'll wake you up."
"Maybe, if what?"
"Maybe, if you go to sleep right away." It was half promise, half threat. In any 
case it was adequate inducement. Meekly Ginny let herself be led upstairs, 
washed and de-shoed, and put to bed.
And then there was nothing to do. It was astonishing how a house that had always 
kept two women busy now seemed to take care of itself. She thought of getting 
lunch for the others, but Bar­bara came down and fixed a sandwich for herself, 
and Gladys didn't know whether Edith would want to eat before she left. She had 
another cup of coffee while Barbara ate her quick lunch, and the dishes were 
being cleaned when they heard the gauntlet-muffled knock of authority on the 
front door.
Gladys left Barbie in the kitchen and flew to open it.
But instead of the appealing small faces she had expected, she found only the 
impersonal surface of Jim Turner's squad suit. By the time he came in, and the 
doctor behind him, she had covered her disappointment, and greeted them 
cheerfully.
"I didn't have a chance to thank you last night, but I'm sure you know how much 
it meant to us to get the news so soon." She turned to Spinelli. "I'm afraid I 
didn't thank you properly either. I was so excited and I wanted to tell Barbie."
"There's nothing to thank me for. I wanted to find out too. By the way, I 
brought you some more good news. We got the check on Ginny's urinalysis 
today—nothing in that one at all. It's per­fectly all right. Yours hasn't come 
through yet, but I don't see how there could be anything wrong there."
Gladys laughed. "I suppose I'm not supposed to thank you now either. I know," 
she forestalled him, " `I didn't do anything.' Well, I have to thank somebody, 
and it might as well be you."
Jim Turner took a step forward impatiently. "Well now, that's all cleared up, 
how are you making out with your other troubles? Didn't have any more trouble 
with the gas, did you? I could take a better look at it now, if it's still 
leaking. Would have come back last night if I could, but they kept me busy up at 
headquarters almost all evening. Can't get anything done up there without six 
conferences first."
He sounded very important. Gladys asked demurely, "Don't you ever get any rest? 
They keep you so busy."
"Well, we've got a big job to do," he responded happily. "There'll be plenty of 
time to take it easy afterward. There's something big in the air right now," he 
added meaningfully. Gladys refused to let him catch her eye. "You'll be hearing 
about it pretty soon on your radio, I guess, but the only thing released so far 
is, the regular squad routes are breaking up. Now that it's okay to go out, 
you're supposed to file some kind of notice at your neigh­borhood food store, if 
you have any troubles. Then the squadman comes around later on to check up."
"Oh, then you won't be making regular visits any more?" She tried to sound 
unhappy about it.
"Now, Gladys," he reassured her promptly, "I'm not so busy I can't stop by here 
once in a while. I told you I'd look out for you, didn't I?"
Barbara was directing frantic questioning looks at the young doctor. Gladys, 
watching her, almost missed her cue to murmur an appropriate, "Thank you," and 
missed entirely Turner's sudden look of astonishment.
"Well, I'll be God damned!" she heard him say. "Pardon me, ma'am, but we been 
looking for that lady all over town since last night." He was staring over 
Gladys' head and into the hall. "How long've you been here?" he demanded.
Gladys turned to see Edie Crowell looking spruce, if startled. Combed and 
washed, dressed in Gladys' new spring suit and Barbie's freshly cleaned brown 
and white pumps, she seemed prepared to face down any quantity of Jim Turners.
"She came over yesterday," Gladys explained quickly. "She didn't want to stay 
all alone in that big house, so I asked her over here." She laughed inwardly as 
Edith nodded a stiff assent.
"You mean to say she was here all the time last night and you never said a 
word?"
"Let's see, I don't know whether she came before you did or not . . . yes, I 
guess she must have. You came after curfew, didn't you? I guess I just didn't 
think about it. I had so much on my mind."
"I went to bed early," Edith added. "I didn't have a wink of sleep the night 
before."
"Well, we were just about ready to bust your door down this time, Miz Crowell. 
You could've let us know."
"I wasn't aware that I had to keep you informed."
"You mean you never heard anything? I told them to put it on the radio. Now, Miz 
Crowell"—he turned suddenly exceedingly solicitous—"just don't you get all 
wrought up."
"I'm sure we don't have to worry about how Mrs. Crowell takes the news." The 
interruption by the young doctor was startling. Gladys realized it was the first 
time, since she had seen the two together, that young Spinelli had taken the 
initiative from the older man.
"Of course you really knew it all along, Mrs. Crowell," he added. "It's a good 
thing you persuaded me to take that blood count. We realized you were right as 
soon as we checked it."
Gladys forgot to be surprised by the news, she was so flabber­gasted by the 
combination of blatant flattery and forthright bru­tality in the doctor's brief 
speech.
Jim Turner was shocked and disapproving, both. "Now, Miz Crowell," he picked up 
where he had been interrupted, "there's no need to get all wrought up."
"I am not the least bit likely"—this time Edith didn't let him finish—"to 
become, as you put it, wrought up." She turned to Gladys with just a hint of her 
old arrogance. "I told you all along," she accused. "But you didn't believe me; 
none of you believed me."
"You don't have to worry about a thing," the squadman re­peated doggedly, and 
Gladys thought, I have never seen anyone less worried in my life! "They'll take 
fine care of you up at the hospital. Won't they, Doc?" Turner appealed to the 
younger man.
"They tell me our hospital is one of the best equipped in the country for this 
kind of thing," Spinelli told her.
"I'm perfectly well aware that the hospital is well equipped, young man." Edith 
was completely herself again. "I've certainly done my share to make it so, and I 
assume that since everyone in authority seemed to know this was going to 
happen"—she turned to the big squadman with a look that made clear her opinion 
of him and of the authority he represented—"some of the funds raised for the 
hospital were used to purchase the necessary equipment."
It didn't make sense. Monday night Edie Crowell had had screaming mimis on the 
telephone because she was afraid of just this thing. Yesterday she had walked 
into the house dead drunk and ready to pass out because she wasn't able to face 
the worry. Even this morning, before she got the news, she had been a little 
sub­dued. Now that she knew for sure, she was entirely restored.
"If there's nothing else you have to tell me," Edith addressed Jim Turner 
coldly, "perhaps I'd better go on home and get ready to go. When do you suppose 
they'll be ready to take me to the hospital?"
"Well, if you're in such a hurry to get in there"—he was very obviously 
annoyed—"we can take you along to headquarters in the truck right now. They'll 
send you along with the next load."
"Do they ship us by freight or parcel post, Mr. Turner?" Her voice was 
venomously saccharine. "I should tell you, by the way, that I intend to see to 
it the proper people are notified of the dangerous delay I suffered." She turned 
to the young doctor and went smoothly on. "I want you to know that I am aware it 
was not your fault."
Without waiting for a reply from either of the men, she turned her attention to 
Gladys. "I wish I knew some way to thank you properly. I do realize that I must 
have inconvenienced all of you, and"—impulsively she took Gladys' hand—"I think 
I ought to thank Veda before I go, too. In her own way, she was good to me 
also."
"She's not back yet." Gladys was still too dazed to attempt any more complicated 
reply.
She followed Edith to the door, bolted it behind her, and returned to the living 
room.
"Well, I'll be God damned! Excuse me, ma'am." That was Turner, of course. "I 
just can't figure that woman out." He shook his head in heavy bewilderment. 
"Listen, before I forget. Did you say something about your maid not being back 
yet? Did you let her go out?"
"Why, yes, she went down to the store when we heard the an­nouncement on the 
radio." Out of the corner of her eye Gladys saw the doctor incline his head ever 
so slightly toward the far corner of the room. Barbie began drifting slowly over 
there.
"Well now, you know you shouldn't have done that, Gladys. I can understand it's 
hard for you to believe she could've done anything, but you got to remember 
she's still under suspicion. You know they told you she wasn't allowed out 
without a clearance from Security."
"How did you know about that?"
"That's my job around here. I'm responsible for the safety of this whole 
neighborhood. It's only natural I'd get reports on anybody under suspicion. 
Matter of fact, if it was anyone else I'd feel like I had to take some action 
right now, but being it's you," he smiled beneficently, "I'll just pretend I 
never heard a thing. Only you got to remember after this, she can't go anywheres 
out of the house without a clearance. You can get it from the Security Office, 
or from me, either one."
The whole thing was fantastic. "Well then, why don't you give me a clearance 
now? That would take care of the whole nonsensical business."
"I can't do that." He looked horrified. "You got to understand, she needs a 
special written pass to go out anyplace. Right now she could get picked up any 
minute by a Security officer. Now, I'm sure you're going to be more careful 
about that." He looked around and found that Barbara and the young doctor were 
clear across the room, out of earshot. Lowering his voice, he went on, "You 
remem­ber what I told you yesterday? About the evacuation?"
"Yes." She nodded. `"I've thought a lot about it, Mr. Turner, but I haven't made 
up my mind—"
"Just call me Jim," he said. "No need to be formal now. We've been neighbors all 
these years. It's high time we got to know each other a little. Now, what I 
wanted to tell you . . . I've got everything just about lined up. Turned out to 
be easier than I figured, because I'm gonna be in charge of that train myself    
       
"But, Mr. Turner," she broke in, aware of the other two drift­ing back toward 
them. She had to make him understand quickly.
"I told you you should call me Jim."
It was useless. He just wouldn't listen, and now Barbie and the doctor were 
right next to them.
"You bear in mind what I told you," Turner admonished cheerfully, "and don't 
start worrying again. Just let me take care of everything."
"Mother."
Gladys looked questioningly at her daughter, but Turner said, "You tell your ma 
after we go, Barbie. We got to get moving now if we're gonna get Miz Crowell 
back to headquarters in time for the next truck."
"I only wanted to ask," Barbara said stiffly, "whether you knew anything about 
those children."
"Oh, that's right." Gladys turned back to the man. "We called up last night and 
offered to take two of those homeless children they've been talking about on the 
radio. They were supposed to come at noon, and we were wondering if anything was 
wrong."
"Oh, now, I don't think that's such a good idea, Gladys. They sent me in a form 
to check off whether your house was okay. Of course I know it would be nice for 
the kids here, but you got to remember what I told you before. It wouldn't make 
things any easier to have a couple of extra kids here."
"Maybe not," she said firmly, "but I do want to have them. Did you—check off the 
form yet?"
"Haven't really had a minute to do it so far today," he admitted.
"That must be what held it up, then," Gladys persisted. "Do you think you'd have 
a chance to take care of it when you get back to headquarters? I would like to 
have them here for supper, so I can get them settled."
"I'll fix it up the best way I can," he promised. "Come on, Doc." He turned a 
good-natured smile on Spinelli. "Say good-by to the girl. We got to go."
Barbara's angry blush was clearly visible, but the young doctor was unperturbed. 
He walked back the few steps' distance to Bar­bara, took her hand, and said, 
"Good-by, girl. We got to go."
Delightedly Gladys watched him pat Barbara's shoulder in sober imitation of 
Turner's reassuring gesture. He seemed to have some perspective on the whole 
crazy business that she wished she could share. She was still smiling when she 
closed the door after him.
"I don't like that man!"
"Why, Babsy, what's the—"
"He's got you doing it too!" Barbara burst out miserably, her voice trembling on 
the brink of a sob. "First he treats me like a baby, and then he has to make a 
nasty crack—"
"Oh, him!" Gladys put her hand on Barbara's shoulder. "I was thinking about Dr. 
Spinelli. He certainly handled Edie Crowell. I didn't know he had it in him. He 
seemed so—diffident." She laughed. "Maybe that's how he handles me."
There was no more fortunate choice of subject where Barbie was concerned. She 
forgot her resentment immediately in contempla­tion of the young doctor's many 
virtues. "Wasn't that terrific, the way he figured her out? It all sounded crazy 
at first—I couldn't understand how she could take it that way. It was easy 
enough to understand afterwards, but Pete had it all figured out beforehand."
"Well," Gladys smiled, "it's really not too difficult to figure out that Edith 
Crowell likes to have her own way. But I should think it would take a certain 
amount of courage to take advantage of the fact the way he did. `Of course, you 
knew it all along, Mrs. Crow-ell!' That's my idea of bravery under fire. You 
better watch out for that young man, Barbara," she teased. "If he could talk 
Edie into thinking radiation sickness was her very own idea, I hate to think of 
the effect he must have on the younger generation of females."
"Oh, don't be silly, Mother. He's old!" she disclaimed him com­pletely. Barbara 
was obviously delighted at the thought that Peter Spinelli might sometime try to 
talk her into anything at all. "Any­how"—she cast loyalty to the winds—"I don't 
think it was just what he said that made Mrs. Crowell change so much. I was 
think­ing about that when she was telling Mr. Turner off, and I remember how I 
felt—before."
Gladys looked at her curiously. The girl was dead serious now.
"It seems to me," she went on, "that it wouldn't be nearly as bad to know you 
had it as to worry about whether you did or not. It's like—well, like the jokes 
they always make about going to the dentist. When you get there and something's 
being done, it's not nearly as bad as when you're thinking about it before you 
go. I think," she finished with an air of ultimate discovery, "the worst thing 
in the whole world is not knowing—about something impor­tant, I mean—or, well, 
I'm getting all mixed up, but you know what I mean, don't you?"
"You sound just like your father," Gladys laughed. "I mean your father with two 
drinks in him at a cocktail party. He gets very serious about the state of the 
world. Once he made a half-hour speech on the subject of ignorance."
"Well, I hope Daddy likes it when you laugh at him," Barbara cried, and ran from 
the room. But at the foot of the stairs she turned back to aim a bombshell at 
her mother. "I suppose you're not interested either that Pete told me she's 
probably going to die!"
 
TWENTY-ONE
 
She knew where it had happened. She knew where Edie had been at the critical 
time.
If Veda hadn't been sick . . .
If Barbie hadn't insisted on the laundry . . .
If Edie hadn't refused to understand the difficulty . . . If I had gone to the 
luncheon . . . !
It was silly to think about it. She hadn't gone, and there were other, far more 
pressing problems. Jim Turner and Garson Levy, Barbie, Veda, Edie Crowell, the 
Security officers, and the evacua­tion. And those children. Ginny was going to 
be impossible if the children didn't come.
If Jon were here . . . That was silly too. All the ifs were silly. Jon wasn't 
there. For more than two days Jon hadn't been there. The other time, the other 
war, it was different. Then she wrote him cheerful, encouraging letters, telling 
him all the little troubles that came up each day, the little things he 
customarily solved, that she had to learn to cope with. But these were not 
little problems now, nor were they the kind that anyone customarily solved.
What would Jon do?
That was the old formula, the way it had worked in the last war. She'd ask 
herself and get the answer. Now there was no answer. If Jon never came back ...
Another if!
She had longed for a few minutes of solitude, for time to think. Now it was a 
relief when she heard Ginny, waking, call her upstairs. She ran up, afraid 
Barbie might get there first. Then she would have nothing to do again.
Ginny was grumpy. "You said they'd be here when I woke up. You said they would."
"Well, darling, I can't help it if they're late."
"Yes, you can, too." Ginny was definitely being unreasonable. 
"Come on," Gladys said as gaily as she could. "We'll put your shoes on and go 
downstairs and see what there is to play with." 
"Well, I don't want to play by myself. There isn't anything to play with."
"I'll play with you. Where's your other foot? Did it get lost?" She tried an old 
game, casting her eyes around the room, searching for the other foot, which had 
supposedly vanished.
"Can't find it," Ginny announced. "It isn't anyplace. I'll have to hop all day."
"That would be a terrible, terrible tragedy, wouldn't it? I'll tell you what 
we'll do. I'll just pretend to put the shoe on and when you find the foot the 
shoe will be on it already."
Ginny didn't co-operate, but she did submit, and the shoe was laced on the 
missing foot.
"I don't want to play with you either," she decided. "You're no fun. Why didn't 
the children come yet?"
"I don't know." But she was afraid she did. "Maybe they found their own homes 
again," she said hopefully. "Wouldn't that he nice?"
"No, it wouldn't."
Gladys gave up. "Let's go down and have some cocoa," she sug­gested brightly.
"Don't want cocoa. I want the children. I don't want them to find their own 
homes. I want them to come here."
Downstairs the front door banged.
"Come on, we'll go see what Veda brought home." Ginny fol­lowed her silently, 
not wanting to admit any interest in Veda's activities or in anything at all 
except the coming of the other chil­dren. But when they came in sight of the 
hall she objected vio­lently.
`"You said it was Veda."
"Well, I thought it was Veda," Gladys said wearily. "Hello, Mr. Carney. I didn't 
think you'd get back so soon."
"It was simpler than I expected. There are a lot of people outside with bundles 
from the stores, so my bundle wasn't terribly con­spicuous." He pulled up an 
ancient shopping bag from the hall table and displayed it proudly. "Doesn't it 
look convincing?" He started up the stairs.
"Didn't you bring me anything?" Ginny was incredulous.
"What sort of cad do you take me for?" he asked, outraged. "Of course I brought 
you something. But you can't have it yet. If you come up to my very private room 
in about half an hour I shall make a formal presentation."
"You mean you'll give it to me?"
"You understand me perfectly," he told her, "but remember, you have to wait half 
an hour."
Out in the kitchen Ginny studied the toy clock soberly, and finally made up her 
mind to ask for help.
"Will you tell me when a half an hour is?" she demanded sus­piciously. "Will you 
tell me right?"
"Of course I'll tell you right. What's got into you?"
"Well, you didn't tell me right about the children."
Again! "Do you want cocoa or juice?"
"Don't want anything." Then, after a moment's reflection, "Co­coa."
The stove didn't light. For just an instant Gladys had a nightmare sensation 
that all this had happened before. Then her mind separated the sequence of 
events in an orderly manner. This was simply the gas failure Turner had 
predicted.
She tried the other burners to make sure and, with the memory of the last time 
still entirely too clear, couldn't resist opening the cellar door just a crack.
There was no smell of gas. It was all right. She got out the hot plate again and 
fixed the cocoa for Ginny.
"Well, why don't they call up if they're late? You told Barbie people should 
always call up if they're going to be late." 
"Maybe they're someplace where they can't call."
"You mean they really and truly don't have any homes? They're not anyplace at 
all except outside?"
"That's not exactly what I mean. They're staying at a place like a school, but 
if they were on their way here they couldn't call up. Anyhow, nobody's supposed 
to use the phone except if they really have to."
"Why not?"
"Well, because—because it said on the radio that we shouldn't." 
"Why?"
This could go on forever if she let it. "Just because," she said firmly. "I 
don't know why. It just said we shouldn't, so we don't."
For fifteen minutes after, that she managed by dint of concen­trated effort to 
keep Ginny from mentioning the children again. Then at last it was time to send 
her upstairs.
Barbara came down with her when she returned to display the promised present—a 
big, brightly painted toy car which looked oddly familiar to Gladys.
"Mr. Carney bought it home for me," Ginny announced proudly. "It really runs. 
Look." She began winding busily.
"Brought, darling, not bought."
She kept trying to remember why the car looked so familiar. Then it came back to 
her, and she waited to see what would hap-pen when Ginny tried to make it go. To 
her surprise the car worked perfectly—but she could have sworn it was the same 
one that had been given to Tom at Christmas the first year they moved in there. 
He was—she stopped to think—ten years old at the time, and his first act after 
sending it on a trial spin around the room was to find a quiet corner where he 
could take it apart. Jon had firmly refused to fix it for him, informing him 
that when he took things apart it was smarter to be sure beforehand that he knew 
how to put them together again. The car had gone up to the attic, and by the 
time Tom knew how to fix it he was no longer interested in toy cars. Gladys 
wondered whether the car had already been fixed when Dr. Levy answered Ginny's 
question on the stairs.
"Did you show it to Pallo yet?"
"I forgot!"
That was Barbie, trying to get rid of Ginny. What next? Gladys wondered. She was 
determined not to have any more bickering with the girl.
" 'Scuse me, Mommy, I'll come back. Only I forgot to show Pallo my car, and 
he'll feel bad."
"Mother!" Barbie could hardly wait till the little girl was gone before she 
burst out with her news. "You ought to see the things he brought back! He's got 
a Geiger counter, a little one that they used to make for prospectors, and       
  
"Isn't that interesting!" No quarrel, thank goodness. Maybe she could get an 
answer to the question in her mind. "Barbie, do you know when Dr. Levy fixed 
that car? Was it after he told Ginny he had something? Or did he have it 
already?"
"I don't know. I guess maybe he was fooling around with it while I was looking 
at his stuff. He's got everything, Mother! He said he packed it all up at the 
school before he left on Monday. And he's got a gadget . . . Oh, he wants some 
boiling water. That's what he sent me down for."
She got a pot from the closet and filled it. "You know, he's got everything he 
needs to—"
"You better use the hot plate," Gladys told her. "The stove isn't working any 
more. I guess the gas really is all gone now."
"Mother, I wish you wouldn't keep interrupting me. I've been trying to tell you 
about all the things he brought, and you just won't listen!"
"All right," Gladys said wearily. "You just pretend I didn't in­terrupt you, and 
go ahead and use the stove instead."
"I didn't mean that. Anyhow, you could have waited just a min­ute." She plugged 
in the electric plate and put the water on. "I don't understand you, Mother. 
Aren't you even interested?"
"Of course I'm interested, darling. But I've got so many things to think about 
right now—and you know I don't know anything about Geiger counters and all that 
technical part of it. Now look." She did want to make friends with Barbie again. 
"Suppose you fix his cup of tea, or whatever you're making, and take it up, and 
then when you come down you can tell me all about it. We can—"
"His cup of tea! I'm boiling this water for—Oh, never mind! You don't 
understand. You don't know much about these technical things," she parroted.
"Barbie, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings."
"You didn't hurt my feelings."
"I—" She didn't know what else to say. She fell silent, and the silence lasted 
till Barbie went upstairs with the boiling water.
After that the girl just kept out of sight. She didn't even come down when Veda 
returned, laden with provisions, news, and wor­ries.
"Never saw such a time!" She went through to the kitchen to get rid of her 
bundles and Gladys went with her.
"People thought it was hard to get food in the last war," Veda said. "But there 
never was anything like this before. I had to stand in line near three hours 
before I got inside that store and then I tried to tell about them kids that are 
coming, but that squadman wouldn't listen to nobody. He said I had proof fer 
five people, and five people was all I was goin' to get food for. Never even 
thought to ask was all five home. He took a look to see all the names was 
different, an' told Mr. Monnassey to give me fer five."
"You didn't have to tell him your name?" Gladys asked.
"No'm, I never did." She put down her bundles and found a seat on one of the 
white-painted kitchen chairs. "I'll get that stuff put away in a minute," she 
promised. "Jest want to catch my breath. That was real heavy carryin' home."
"You sit still," Gladys told her. "I'll put it away." She began unloading 
shopping bags, talking at the same time, telling Veda about all that had 
happened while she was gone. She skimmed over Turner's references to Veda as 
lightly as possible.
"The whole thing's a lot of nonsense," she insisted, "but I guess for the time 
being I better make any outside trips. Meanwhile we'll get this clearance he was 
talking about." Then she went into the story about Edie Crowell and drew it out 
for its fullest effect.
"But don't forget," she wound up, "that if I'd listened to you I'd be just as 
bad off as Mrs. Crowell right now."
"And what do you think you mean by that?" Veda demanded. " `Now don't you worry 
about the washin', Missus Mitchell,' " Gladys mimicked. " `I kin take care of 
that fine tomo—"
Veda laughed with embarrassment. "I kin remember something else, too, proves you 
were tryin' jest as hard to get me sick." "What did I do?"
"I kin remember clear as day, hearin' you say, `Don't you suffo­cate yourself in 
that room of yours, Veda.' Mebbe I saved your life an' mebbe not—but I sure took 
care o' my own."
They were both laughing when Ginny came back with her car to show off to Veda.
Gladys finished putting things away while the toy was being admired.
"I don't see what you're worried about," she told Veda. "Seems to me you've got 
all the food we can eat in a week."
"I jest wish I knew fer sure would they bring some along with them kids," Veda 
said. "I don't see how we'll make out if they don't."
It was a tactical error. Ginny, reminded, wanted to know once more why the 
children didn't call up if they were late.
"They're supposed to call," she insisted stubbornly. "They are!"
"All right." Gladys surrendered at last. "I shouldn't do it, but I'll call up. 
Only remember this, Virginia Mitchell. After I call I don't want to hear it 
talked about any more. Whatever they tell us is final. That clear?"
Ginny nodded happily. But the bargain proved more difficult to keep than Gladys 
had expected.
She picked up the receiver, but no dial tone came through, and when she jiggled 
the hook nothing happened either. Forcing her-self to a patience she did not 
feel, she hung up, let it stay down a moment, and tried again.
Ten minutes of trying convinced her. She put the phone down and turned around to 
find Barbara on the stairs in back of her.
"The phone too?"
Gladys nodded and turned tiredly to Ginny. "I'm sorry, darling," she 'said. "I 
can't call up. It isn't working."
Unexpectedly there was no fuss. With the sudden sympathy that little children 
sometimes show for adult troubles, Ginny offered her best reassurance.
"That's all right, Mommy," she promised. "They'll come."
Barbara laughed. "Time for the news," she said. "Let's all go in the living room 
and see what good news they have on the radio now."
"Come on, Ginny," Veda snorted. "We don't want to hear no news, good or bad. You 
an' me are goin' to go in the kitchen an' make some supper for these folks."
Gladys followed her older daughter slowly into the living room.
"Don't tell me you think those kids are still coming?" Barbara demanded 
bitterly. "Didn't Mr. Turner promise to fix it for you?"
"I told him I wanted them," Gladys answered sharply. "1 don't see what more I 
could do."
"I don't know." Barbara turned the radio up, and news of hos­pitals, trains, and 
armies filled the room. "I don't know," she re­peated miserably, "but you should 
have been able to do something."
The radio intruded: ". . . since the official evacuation warning was issued for 
lower and middle Westchester. There is no cause for alarm because of the 
warning. You are not in danger from any kind of radiations. All danger zones 
within this area have already been evacuated. The new decision is due to 
scarcity of food supplies and imminent failure of utilities.
"Please remember, this is an evacuation warning. An evacuation order may come at 
any time within the next forty-eight hours. You will be assigned to an 
evacuation train by your neighborhood squad-man. There is no other way to get a 
seat. There is no quicker way to leave.
"We have just received a list of persons rescued. . . ." "They can't make us go, 
can they, Mother?"
Gladys turned unhappily to her daughter. "No," she said, "not exactly, but they 
can make it awfully uncomfortable to stay here." How much can I tell her? Jim 
Turner had said not to tell anyone, but now it was on the radio.
"Well, we could manage," Barbie said stubbornly.
"I don't want to go either," Gladys told her. "But . . ." gas ... phone . . . 
electric power . . . water . . . "I'm afraid it's not going to be up to us." 
Never mind what he said. Barbie had a right to know. "Mr. Turner told me         
  
"Oh, you and your Mr. Turner!" Barbara faced her mother furiously. "You'll do 
anything he says, won't you? Well, I'm not going," she announced. "You can 
decide for Ginny and yourself, but I won't be going."
"You'll be doing what you're told to do, young woman." Gladys was exasperated. 
"What do you mean, you won't be going?"
"I mean I'm staying here. I'm—going to go to work in the hos­pital."
"You're what?"
"They said on the radio they need volunteer workers," she defended herself.
"Barbara, for heaven's sake." Gladys controlled her temper with an effort. "What 
makes you think they're taking children of fifteen to work in the hospital?"
"I'm not a child, and anyway, you only have to be seventeen to volunteer. Lots 
of people think I'm older than I am, and I can do just as much as anybody 
seventeen years old can do. I can tell them I'm seventeen, and I bet Pete'll 
back me up."
"Barbie! What kind of romantic nonsense are you building up? Dr. Spinelli's been 
nice to you—all right, that's how a good doctor has to be. It's obvious that he 
likes you too—he went to a good deal of trouble last night for your sake. But 
he's not a boy you can wrap around your finger. And he's not very likely to lie 
to the hospital authorities, just to help you get into trouble!"
"I happen to know he will. I asked him."
"Do you mean to say you asked him before you said anything to me?" Gladys was 
getting very annoyed. "Well, I still don't be­lieve he'd do it. You're not going 
to work in any hospital full of people with radiation disease and heaven knows 
how many things you could catch. You just aren't going to do it. You may think 
you're not a child any more, but you'll find the people at the hospi­tal will 
agree with me."
"And you can't understand why I talked to him first!" Barbie retorted bitterly. 
"At least he listened to me. All right, have it your way. I'll just stay here 
and play with Ginny, like a nice girl—"
"Wait a minute, Babsy," Gladys pleaded. "Don't get 
"That's another thing!" The girl was working herself up to a fury. "I've told 
you over and over and over I don't want to be called Babsy. If you don't want to 
call me Barbie you could at least call me by my right name, instead of a baby 
nickname. You just don't ever want me to grow up! You want me to be a baby all 
my life! That's why you never tell me anything; you're afraid I'll know as much 
as you do!"
"Bab—Barbie," she corrected herself hastily, "listen, darling, there's nothing 
to get all upset about now. You're all right, and Tom seems to be. The bombing's 
all over. Everything will get better now. You'll see, and . . ." There was one 
thing she couldn't promise, one reassurance she dare not give. She compromised 
with, "And we'll hear something about Daddy soon. I'm sure we will. Is that what 
was bothering you?"
"No, it isn't!" the girl contradicted. "See, you're doing the same thing again 
right now. You try to make me think everything's all right when I know it isn't. 
I just wish you'd stop trying to hide things from me. You did the same thing 
with the information sheets you didn't want me to read, and when you tried to 
tell me Doc Levy was crazy. . . . And please don't try to shut me up by tell­ing 
me Daddy's coming home. I'm too old for lullabies, Mother. You know he can't 
come home even if he is all right. Yes, Pete told me that too. He doesn't think 
I'm a kid who can't understand anything!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Barbara!" Gladys stopped trying to control her growing 
irritation. "Perhaps it hasn't occurred to you that if I've tried to spare you 
at all it was because I knew you were just on the verge of hysteria. And the way 
you're acting now proves it. You get a little information, some of which is 
partly correct, and look what happens!"
Barbie's head shot up and her eyes widened at the preposterous charge. "I am not 
hysteri—Mom! Listen!"
". . . aple Avenue, Purchase Village, being treated for shock and minor 
injuries. Bliss Mizzen, Central Street, Yonkers, held for observation in . . ."
"They said Mitchell!" Barbie broke the dazed concentration. "They said Mitchell! 
They did! I didn't hear the first part, but I know they said Mitchell. Oh, Morn, 
it's Daddy! Daddy's all right!"
 
the escape
 
He was lying down, and the cots stretched in a row out of sight in front of his 
eyes. He was on a cot too. It hurt when he turned his head, but there weren't as 
many cots in the other direction. He could see the door. Somebody would have to 
come through the door sooner or later.
He discovered his hands, and began exploring his body. He had no clothes. There 
was a sheet over him and he wasn't cold, but he couldn't get home without 
clothes. There was a bandage on his head. That made sense; it hurt so much when 
he turned it.
A man got oft the cot next to him, and he realized he could get up too. He sat 
up and waited for the dizziness to go away. Then he stood up. He was naked. Down 
the row of cots he saw that the other man was naked too. Nobody seemed to care.
He followed the other man and went through the door. An old man was sitting 
right outside. The man who got up first had turned to the right. He looked both 
ways, and the old man told him, "Down that way," pointing to the right.
He followed again, and the other man went through a door marked "Men." He went 
in, too, but when he came out he kept on down the corridor. He found another 
door, and tried it, but it was another room full of cots. After a while, trying 
doors, he found a closet with overalls and shirts in it. He still needed shoes.
He went down some stairs, and some more, and he was in a cellar. He found some 
boots and put them on his bare feet. There was a little door that led out into 
the street. He walked a long time, carefully reading the street numbers to make 
sure he was going the right way.
190 . . . 191 . . . 192 . . . that was right. That was the way home. He had to 
get home.
 
TWENTY-TWO
 
"Wake up, Mommy. Please, Mommy, wake up."
"Hello, baby." Gladys edged over in the bed and patted the empty space beside 
her, hoping Ginny would lie down and snuggle up, but the hands kept tugging at 
her.
"All right, I'm awake." Obstinately she refused to open her eyes. "I'm awake. 
Now just let me rest a minute."
"You'll go back to sleep," the child accused.
"No, I won't. I'm wide awake."
"Open up your eyes. If you're awake, why don't you open up your eyes?" Ginny 
demanded triumphantly. "You are not either awake," she concluded.
Face it, Gladys told herself, and tried letting a little light into one eye. The 
sun wasn't too bright. It must be early. She let her eye open far enough to 
include a vision of her daughter's ink-stained hand tugging at the blanket.
"What happened to you?" she demanded. "And, anyhow, who told you you could wake 
me up?"
Ginny studied her mother's face and decided she wasn't really angry. "Barbie let 
me use her fountain pen," she confided. "Veda said I should wake you up. 
Somebody's knocking at the door." Ginny read the curiosity on her mother's face 
for disbelief. "She did, too, say so."
"I'm sure she did, baby." Gladys pulled back the covers and sat up gingerly. To 
her own surprise, she felt fine. Then she remem­bered . . . Jon was all right! 
"Who is it? Did she tell you? What do they want? Is it Mr. Turner?"
"They want to come in. Who's Mr. Turner?"
"You know perfectly well who Mr. Turner is. He lives right next door, and he has 
a little baby."
"A brand-new baby?"
"That's right." She stood up and wrapped the cherry robe snugly around her. It 
was eight o'clock. She'd slept for eleven hours. She felt fine.
"Listen," she told the little girl. "I want you to do something for me. I want 
you to go downstairs and ask Veda who it is and what they want, and then come 
right back up without stopping and knock on the bathroom door and tell me what 
she said. Can you remember all that?"
"Sure." Ginny was disdainful. "That's easy. I can remember lots more."
"Well, you don't have to remember any more. Just remember that much and don't 
forget to come back up right away." Gladys headed for the empty bathroom. She 
washed quickly, wondering who it was. She was brushing her hair when Ginny 
knocked.
"Veda don't know what he wants," she yelled.
"Doesn't," Gladys corrected automatically.
"Wasn't what?"
"I said doesn't."
"I can't hear you, Mommy. What did you say?"
Impatiently Gladys went to the door. "Never mind what I said. What did Veda 
say?"
"I told you. She doesn't know what he wants."
"Well, who is it?"
"Mr. Turner," Ginny replied. "Just like you said."
"All right. Thank you, baby." Gladys went back for a last once-over in front of 
the mirror. "Will you tell him I'm coming right down?"
"Mommy's coming right down," Ginny obligingly shouted down the stairs. Hastily 
Gladys pulled her robe tight around her and ran down.
"Well now, you're looking a little more chipper today," Turner boomed.
"Oh, did you hear the announcement?"
"Now, there've been a whole lot of announcements, Gladys. Just which one did you 
have in mind?"
"I guess you didn't, or you'd know," she said. "About Jon! He's all right! They 
had it on the list of people admitted to the Washington Heights Hospital last 
night. They said he was suffering from shock and minor injuries, and they never 
mentioned radiation disease at all."
"Well, that's sure good news," he said, but it seemed to Gladys his tone was 
just a little less hearty than usual. "I guess you won't feel so bad about 
leaving," he added, "now that you know your hubby's in good hands."
"Leaving?" She had actually forgotten about it. "Oh yes, I wanted to ask you 
about that. Does an evacuation order mean that we have to go? I mean, what 
happens if I decide I want to stay?"
"What happens," he told her, "is, I talk you out of it. Understand, headquarters 
ain't going to force anybody to go. Folks that want to stick around without food 
or gas or electricity, and maybe without water, are welcome to do so. That many 
less to take care of at the camps. But as far as you folks are concerned, 
headquarters has nothing to do with it. I'm not going to let you stay here. I 
told you I'd watch out for you, and as a matter of fact that's just what I came 
by to tell you now."
He moved closer and lowered his voice. "This is strictly on the q.t., Gladys, 
but they already got it fixed up that the first train is leaving tomorrow 
morning. It's a special for staff and families. I got seats for you and your 
girls, and I'm working on a fancy title for you now. So you just hold tight and 
get your things packed up. You got nothing to worry about at all."
Her impulse was to refuse, outright. She remembered laughing in the bathroom at 
the notion of telling Jim Turner, "No, no, a thousand times no." She might yet 
have to do it. But he had said without gas or electricity or maybe water. . . . 
She tried a less direct approach.
"For me and the girls? What about Veda?" she demanded. `"You know I can't go and 
leave her here."
"Looks like she'll just have to go to the detention camp. Now don't get all 
upset, Gladys. I told you yesterday about that, and I checked up on it for you 
since then. They won't give her a clearance to go with you, and that's that. 
You'll have plenty help up there, don't you worry."
"I'm not worried about help!" Politic or not, she had passed the point of 
self-control. "I'm worried about Veda! And what's more, I'm not leaving without 
her. I don't want to leave anyhow. I think we'll just make out as best we can 
until Jon gets home."
"Now, Gladys," he pleaded. "You got to calm down. Why don't you just sit down 
and take it easy a minute? I got everything all arranged, you know. You can't 
just stay here. I already told you that. And you got to get over thinking your 
hubby'll come back here. You'll get to see him a lot sooner at Sampson," he 
promised. "You just leave it up to me."
How could she stay angry when she wanted to laugh? He was trying to soothe her 
and, perversely, succeeding because of the very clumsiness of his attempts.
"And you'll fix it?" she asked. She remembered something else and found she 
could still be angry after all. "Just like you fixed it about those children?"
"Now, how'd you know what I did about that?"
"That's easy. They didn't come."
"It's too bad," he said. "I know your girl was pestering you about that, but you 
got to see I had to decide according to what was best for everybody concerned."
"I'm afraid I don't see what it was you had to decide," she said stiffly. "I 
thought you said the form just asked you whether my house was adequate?"
"You sure do remember every little thing," he chuckled. "But you can't blame a 
man for doing his best. After all, if they were here now we'd have to be 
figuring on them going along with you when—"
"You mean if," she broke in. "I'm not at all sure I'm going anywhere."
"Well, one thing I can tell you for sure," he laughed. "You couldn't keep them 
kids here after an evacuation order. Now look, Gladys, I got to be getting on. 
Just stopped in to let you know things were comin' along all right, but I guess 
I kind of barged in on you too early. You get yourself some breakfast, and 
things'll look brighter to you."
It was infuriating, being treated like a spoiled baby. But what could she say?
"Kind of gloomy in here, too, with your windows all boarded up," he added. "It 
was a smart thing to do, though," he approved, moving toward the door. "I'll 
come back later if I get a chance," he promised, "but I couldn't say for sure. I 
wouldn't of come so early if I was sure I could make it later on."
It seemed as if he would never go, as though he would stay there at the door and 
ramble on forever. But at last she pushed the bolt to behind him and turned back 
to the dim interior of the living room.
The boards did make the place gloomy, she thought. She'd forgotten all about 
them until Turner noticed. Maybe that did account for some of her rapid 
depression and trigger temper. She'd been feeling so good when she got up.
She found Veda, Barbie, and Ginny all in the kitchen.
They all had breakfast together, and then Gladys escaped upstairs to the 
incredible luxury of a real bath with hot water out of the tap. Gar Levy had 
worked on his kerosene burner the evening before, while she and Barbie did the 
first-floor windows.
Now she could lie in the tub, and for a little while at least think about 
inconsequentials. Amused, she caught herself in the act of shifting her attitude 
toward the teacher. He had been Dr. Levy, and then Doc to all the others. And 
now she found herself getting used to a first-name basis by her old expedient of 
thinking both names together. It was foolish, perhaps, to resent Jim Turner's 
calling her "Gladys," and still be amused when she caught her subconscious mind 
scheming to have Carson Levy do the same thing. But Turner . . .
No problems in the bathtub, she told herself firmly, and con­centrated on Jon's 
chagrin when he came home and found all the wood for the new garage on the 
living-room windows, and the things that had happened to the plaster in the 
process!
But no bath lasts forever. She had to get out, finally, and get dressed. In the 
bedrooms, at least, there were no boards, and the sun was bright through the 
sheer curtains. She decided she could stay upstairs most of the day.
Gar Levy came by her open door and waved a greeting. His tie was knotted, and 
his hair was freshly combed.
"Are you going out again?" she asked, smiling. "You're getting to be pretty sure 
of yourself, aren't you?"
"Frankly," he told her, "I tremble and quake every time I have to take a step on 
the other side of that door. But it looks like I'll have to go this time. And if 
I'm lucky I won't be back—at least not until this mess is over and I can come to 
thank you with a box of candy, or some such small consideration, for saving my 
life."
"Oh, stop it! What do you mean, if you're lucky? Haven't you found the 
accommodations satisfactory?"
`"Very much so. When you decide to take in permanent boarders, put me first on 
the list. I'm headed for the hospital, which I don't expect to be nearly so 
pleasant."
`The hospital? I thought you said you'd treated yourself with something. And 
Barbie told me about all that stuff you brought home yesterday            
"That was mostly equipment to find out if I was getting better or worse. I found 
out," he finished with a wry smile, "so today I'm going to see if I can get into 
the hospital under my nom de plume."
"I hate to see you go," Gladys said slowly. "You've gotten to be almost part of 
the family. If there's—I don't know what—but if there's anything at all we can 
do . . ."
"As a matter of fact, there is." He smiled. "I haven't wanted to bring it up 
before, but just before I go—I've been wondering whether you've had any news at 
all about Tom. I've always been very fond of him—"
"No more than he was of you." She told him about the only news they'd had, on 
the radio, and he seemed almost as happy as she herself had been. "You know," 
she added, "when you first came in that morning, I couldn't place you at all. I 
didn't know whether you were a—well, a maniac or what. The name was vaguely 
familiar, but it just didn't connect. Not until Barbie woke up and said Doc 
Levy. That name I'd heard—approximately every third sentence, for a year or so, 
from Tom."
"I never thought I'd be glad to hear Tom was in the Army," he said thoughtfully. 
"We used to have long talks about Life and Science in the afternoons, and I 
think I spent more time trying to talk him out of joining up than I did teaching 
him anything."
Gladys was startled. Tom had never admitted to her that the beloved Dr. Levy 
shared her feelings about the Army. But of course he did. That's what he was in 
trouble about.
"Look, Gar—" She hesitated, not knowing just how to put it. "I don't know 
exactly why it's necessary for you to go. You realize how little I understand 
about all this. But I know you feel rest is important, and it occurs to me," she 
smiled, "that you haven't had much here. If it's any reason like that—I mean if 
there's anything we can do that would make it unnecessary for you to go—you know 
we'd be glad to have you stay, all of us. When you first came I—"
"When I first came," he said for her, "you were most sensibly disturbed about 
the danger I represented. But once you made up your mind to let me stay, and 
realized I wasn't going to politely refuse, you did everything you could to make 
me comfortable. If there were any more you could do I might very well feel it 
was asking too much—but as it happens, there isn't. You don't have the 
equipment, and the hospital does. So, much as I prefer the company of your 
family to that of a lot of overtired, disagreeable nurses, I'm going to do 
everything I can to get in there. But don't be too sur­prised if you find me 
sneaking back into the clothes drier tonight. I don't know how it will turn 
out."
"Well . . . just be sure you do come back, if you want to."
"I've already made sure I had an excuse. I didn't leave my gloves, but my Geiger 
counter. Barbara hid all my stuff away in what she assures me is a safe place 
upstairs. You're not supposed to have things like that around, you know—it's all 
been com­mandeered. See?" The gentle grin broke across his broad face. "I may 
take my charming presence away, but I leave my menace with you. I hope I don't 
have to add that if you think it advisable you are perfectly free to dispose of 
the stuff at any time."
"You know," she laughed, "every time I forget you're a teacher, and decide to 
treat you just like other people, you come out with a sentence like that. `If 
you think it advisable,' " she mimicked. "I wish I could talk you into staying."
"Not a chance. Anyhow"—he took her hand between both of his—"what do you suppose 
your husband would say if he came home and found you were keeping a man in the 
attic?"
"At my age?" She smiled. "He'd be right proud of me."
"Not after he saw the man, he wouldn't. At least, not unless I get to that 
hospital soon and persuade them to patch me up a little. Good-by, Gladys, and . 
. . `thank you' is pretty inadequate. I'll try to find something better for when 
I come back."
She walked downstairs with him and waited while he said good-by to Veda. He had 
already taken his leave of the two girls upstairs, and asked them to stay up 
there till he was gone. He did not, he explained, want to have to warn them 
about loud good-bys.
Gladys thought to step out, before he left, and make sure there was no patrol 
truck in sight. Then he slipped out of the house, and possibly out of her life, 
very quietly, and with much less drama than anything he had done before.
 
TWENTY-THREE
 
The house felt strangely empty when he was gone. Gladys remembered how glad she 
would have been to see the last of him only two days ago, and thought, Now 
there's no man in the house again.
Knowing where that kind of thought could lead, she banished it by plunging into 
a fury of housework.
"We better use the hot water while we've got it," she told Veda. "Lord knows if 
we can keep that stove going by ourselves."
The two of them washed, scrubbed, and cleaned, with Ginny's dubious assistance, 
while Barbie took her turn at the bathtub. Then Gladys sent Veda off for her 
share of their greatest luxury—hot water—and found it was already time for 
lunch. She scouted the contents of the refrigerator and found, next to the roast 
she had planned for Monday, a lone lamb chop which would do nicely for Ginny.
Moving around the kitchen, pulling things out, rearranging them, she felt busy 
and useful and almost happy. Then, from force of habit, she tried to turn on the 
gas range, and the happy illusion vanished when she had to take her pan over to 
the hot plate instead.
She sat with Ginny at the table while the little girl ate—or, more accurately, 
refused to eat—her lunch. Inactivity and confinement were beginning to tell on 
her. Maybe I could just take her for a walk, Gladys thought. Really, there was 
no reason not to. But she hesitated, and decided not to say anything yet.
Spurning her vegetables, Ginny bit ferociously into the chop. But after an 
experimental chew she returned the bite promptly to the plate.
"Ginny, I've told you about that, over and over again!"
"But itsh got stonesh in it," Ginny complained, and they both realized what had 
happened. "Mommy, my tooth!"
"Let me see," Gladys demanded.
Small fingers plowed through the mess on the plate and came up with ivory. Then 
Ginny opened her mouth proudly and pulled back her lip to show the hole. "I 'old 
'oo . . ." She discovered that talking with her mouth open was even more 
difficult. "I told you it was loosh."
"I guess you did."
"And you didn't believe me. I told you, didn't I? You wouldn't even feel it." 
She was learning to negotiate the air hole.
But I did feel it. It was puzzling, till she realized that wasn't the one she 
had, after all, felt. She must have misunderstood when Ginny pointed it out.
The loss of a tooth at the age of five and not quite a half is a memorable 
occasion, but not one conducive to hearty eating. When Ginny refused to stay at 
the table any longer Gladys had to scrape a half-filled plate of food into the 
garbage pail.
Clutching the precious tooth in her hand, Ginny went off for her nap, and Gladys 
had her own lunch, together with Barbara, in the darkened kitchen. She wanted to 
get upstairs again, where the sun still came through the windows, but the 
inexhaustible radio stopped her on her way through the living room.
"The news for today in the lower Westchester area. All residents are requested 
to discontinue any unnecessary use of electric power. Electricity must be 
conserved. You are being asked to use electric power in your house for none but 
essential purposes. In those areas where the gas supply has failed, cooking by 
electricity will be per­mitted. You may continue to use your radio, but 
broadcasts will no longer be continuous. News broadcasts will be made once an 
hour on the hour, and you are requested to turn your set off when the broadcast 
is concluded, and leave it off until the following hour.
"There are to be no electric lights used during daylight hours. Heating devices 
of any kind are not to be used unless authorized in writing by an emergency 
squadman. I repeat: if you wish to use special heating devices, or any kind of 
special electric equipment, you must obtain written authorization from your 
squadman. This restriction applies also to electric irons, mixers, toasters, and 
simi­lar household equipment. A squadman or emergency policeman may visit your 
home at any time to check on the equipment in use. Please understand that this 
action is necessary in order to conserve power during the emergency. Violations 
reported by inspectors will be severely penalized.
"Emergency Headquarters for the lower Westchester area reports that plans for 
evacuation are now being completed. An evac­uation order is expected 
momentarily, and it is reported that the first special train to the Civilian 
Evacuation Camp, at the Sampson Navy Base, will leave sometime tomorrow.
"Your squadman will notify you when you are to be evacuated, and you will 
receive notice in ample time to prepare to leave your homes. You are urged, 
however, to consult your information sheets now and plan your preparations ahead 
of time. If you co-operate with Emergency Headquarters the evacuation can be 
conducted in a safe and orderly manner.
"News has been received here from Denver, Colorado, by way of amateur radio 
relay stations, to the effect that . . ."
"I guess it's no use asking how you feel about it," Barbie said. "This morning I 
thought for a little while maybe you'd decide to stay here, but if the news 
yesterday made you want to go ... "
"I don't know, darling."
Barbara looked at her with quick surprise. "You mean you're not sure? You might 
. . ."
"That's right. Jim Turner was here this morning," she began. "I saw him. I 
didn't want to talk to him."
"Neither did I. He said we can't get a clearance for Veda to go with us. He also 
. . . I just don't know, Barbie, I don't know what to do."
She got up, paced around the room, and came back to where her daughter still sat 
on the floor. "Things are going to be bad here. I don't see how we can stay. And 
I don't see how we can go."
"Maybe . . ." Barbara stood up to face her. "Maybe it would be better to go—for 
you and Ginny. Mother!" Excitement flared in her eyes. "Mother, I'll bet Veda 
could go to work in the hospital! Then you wouldn't have to worry about me, if 
she was there. That would take care of everything."
"Not quite," Gladys said. "Barbie, please don't make me quar­rel with you. I 
don't want to. But as far as the hospital is con­cerned, that's out, for you. I 
don't want to hear it discussed again. For Veda, it might not be such a bad 
idea. I don't know. I just don't know."
She turned and clenched her fists, fighting against weariness and fear. When she 
turned back Barbara was walking silently away. Maybe that was better, better 
than quarreling anyway. What you didn't say you didn't have to explain away.
She went to find Ginny. The little girl had to have a bath. She had to be ready, 
in case . . .
I don't know. How can I know what to do?
Ginny had gotten over her cranky spell of the day before. She seemed to have 
accepted solitude and had taken over the attic, since that morning, as her own 
domain.
Gladys found her there and whisked her through a tub, then buttoned the 
shiny-clean child into a freshly starched frock.
"And when," she demanded, looking the little girl over, "did you last brush your 
hair?"
"I don't know." Ginny refused to take it seriously until she saw her mother pick 
up the brush and comb. "Not the comb," she said firmly. "Just the brush."
"The brush," Gladys repeated, "and the comb. The way it is, you'll have birds 
building nests in your hair soon."
"Can't," Ginny pointed out with cheerful logic. "All the birds went away." She 
smiled hopefully at her mother, decided the argu­ment hadn't worked, and set her 
face again in firm resistance. "No comb," she said stubbornly.
"Well, we'll see." Gladys began pulling gently with her fingers to separate the 
tangled mat in back before she brushed it. "For heaven's sake, hold still, 
Ginny."
"But you're pulling."
"I am not pulling. Will you stay still?"
"Ouch!" Ginny jerked her head to the side, away from Gladys' probing fingers. 
Gladys couldn't let go in time.
`"I'm sorry, baby," she started to say, "but I have to—" Then she stopped. Ginny 
had jerked her head away. Ginny's head was no longer in her hands, but Ginny's 
hair was.
Gladys stared with speechless fascination at the mat of hair be­tween her 
fingers. Her eyes followed the wisps of hair out in all directions from the 
central tangle. Down here—the ends; up there —the roots.
"Ginny!" she cried. "Baby!"
Ginny promptly burst into tears. "I'm sorry, Mommy. I'm sorry. I didn't do it on 
purpose. I couldn't help it, 'cause it hurt."
"Oh no, baby. No, that's all right. Ginny darling, stop crying. Please stop 
crying," Gladys begged. "Stop crying and tell me something. It's very 
important."
But the little girl didn't, or couldn't, stop. She put her head on her mother's 
lap and let the tears flow.
"There, baby, there." Gladys started to pat the shaking head and hastily moved 
her hand down to the shuddering small shoul­ders.
She had to get control of herself before she could stop Ginny, she knew that. 
"There, baby, it's all right. There's nothing to cry about."
Slowly the sobs diminished and the tears dried up. Bit by bit the child grew 
calmer. Finally Gladys picked her up and settled the little girl on her lap.
"Now listen, baby." She tried to talk quietly. "I want to know just what 
happened. Whatever it was, it's going to be all right, but I do have to know. 
Listen carefully now. You remember when Barbie got sick?"
Ginny nodded her head.
"You do remember? And you remember how she told you not to tell me? Remember how 
you promised?"
Again Ginny nodded.
"And then you remember afterwards it was all right to tell?" 
"Uh-huh."
"Well, now I want you to tell me whether you were sick too. Even if it wasn't 
all right to tell me before, it's all right now. You have to understand that. 
But if you were sick I've got to know."
She must have let too much urgency creep into her voice. She got no answer, but 
only a fresh flood of tears and protests.
"I'm a good girl, Mommy. I'm a good girl. I didn't do nothin' bad."
"You're sure you didn't throw up? Are you sure you didn't?"
"Mommy, don't make me go away. Don't let them take me away like Mrs. Crowell. 
Please, Mommy, I don't want to go away. I'm a good girl. I didn't do 
nothing—anything—bad!"
There was no use trying to find out any more. "All right, baby." Gladys gave up. 
"You go show Barbie how pretty you look."
"You mean I don't have to get my hair brushed?" Immediately the tears gave way 
to a bright smile.
"No, darling." The words were hard to pronounce. "You don't have to get your 
hair brushed. You go ahead and play."
She waited until Ginny had vanished into Barbara's room, and then headed 
straight for the telephone. She must have stood there, holding the unresponsive 
receiver to her ear for several minutes, before she remembered that there would 
be no answer. The phone was still dead.
She found Veda in the kitchen, cooking supper.
"That child kin make more noise'n any ten men I ever heard," Veda commented as 
Gladys walked in. "She was screamin' so's you could hear 'er a block away."
"Veda," Gladys blurted out, "1 think Ginny's—sick. I think she has it."
The spoon dropped into the stew.
"You ain't—you—now, there just ain't no way she could've got it," Veda 
protested. "She's been safe in this house fer days."
"I know. I know that," Gladys said. "But . . ." She didn't know how to start.
"What's that you got in your hand?" Veda asked. And Gladys realized that she was 
still holding the matted strands of hair clenched in her fist. She opened the 
fingers to let Veda see. Then, bit by bit, she got the story out—everything that 
had happened, how Ginny had acted, and all her own fears and worries.
"We don't know nothin' fer sure," Veda said doubtfully when she had finished.
"I tried to call up," Gladys told her. "I forgot the phone wasn't working." 
Helplessly they stood there and looked at each other.
"We're supposed to go to Monnassey's," Gladys remembered at last, "and file a 
complaint."
"I'll go right now." Veda began taking her apron off. "An' I got an idea, too. 
Mebbe if I jest stop by Mrs. Turner's house she'd have some idea where Mr. 
Turner an' that doctor would be, an' I could fetch them."
"That's a good idea. You stay here, Veda. I'll go."
But Veda wouldn't hear of it. "You start running around askin' questions, you're 
goin' to go crazy," Veda told her. "I tell you what. You jest settle down here 
an' fish that spoon out of the stew an' finish makin' supper. That'll give you a 
little somethin' to do, without you goin' to talk to people. I'll go right over 
there an' be back in a minute." She had her coat, and she was already out of the 
kitchen.
Gladys retrieved the spoon and set to work, stirring the stew. When Veda came 
back to say that Monnassey's was closed, and there was no one at home at the 
Turners', Gladys received the information without surprise or apparent 
disappointment. She ac­cepted, with equal lack of enthusiasm, Veda's offer to go 
out and look for the truck itself. There was nothing she could do, nothing 
—until the doctor came.
The front door banged behind Veda, and Gladys still stood at the hot plate, 
stirring as if her sanity depended on it.
 
TWENTY-FOUR
 
Six o'clock, and Veda not yet back.
She didn't come. The truck didn't come; the doctor didn't come.
There wasn't enough to do. Supper was all ready, and too easy to serve. The 
children ate well. Ginny's appetite had returned, and she was being determinedly 
angelic. She was out from under the spotlight and wanted to stay that way. 
Barbie insisted on doing the dishes. There was no way to keep busy.
Seven o'clock.
She would have to put Ginny to bed. It was getting late, and sleep could be 
important.
She did everything slowly, stalling for time, trying to convince herself that 
Veda would be there any minute with the doctor. Butin the end she had to tuck 
Ginny in with the blue plush Pallo, kiss her, and turn out the light, just like 
any other night.
Seven-thirty, and she sat with Barbie in the living room again, in front of the 
radio, waiting.
"I wonder what's taking Veda so long?"
Gladys looked up from the little crystal circle on her wrist with its graceful 
mocking hands.
"She hasn't got much time before curfew. You wouldn't think the stores would 
stay open so late."
"The stores?" Of course, Barbie would have wondered about Veda's absence. Or had 
Veda told her that? The girl was waiting for an answer. What was it she had 
started to say? The stores? That gave it away, of course.
She looked down again, trying to think, and the hands of her watch were 
glittering spears, piercing her reserve. She hadn't wanted to say anything to 
Barbie, not till she knew for sure. But she couldn't keep it to herself any 
longer.
Barbara heard the story out with a combination of horror and suppressed 
excitement.
"Look, Mom," she burst out as soon as Gladys was finished, "I bet I could get 
her to tell me what happened. When I got sick she found out, and I made her 
promise not to tell. If I promised her I bet she'd believe me."
Gladys wished she'd thought of it before. It just might work. "It's too late," 
she pointed out to Barbara. "She ought to be asleep now. I don't think we should 
wake her up."
"I'll go see if she's really asleep. I won't get her upset. I can handle that 
kid."
"Sit down, Barbie! I said no, didn't I?"
"Well, don't you want to know?" she demanded.
"What I don't want is to wake her up. She has to have rest."
"Well, but that's—" Barbara looked pleadingly at her mother. "You should have 
told me before anyway," she complained. "Then I could have talked to her before 
she went to bed." Barbie went back to her seat on the floor and picked up her 
book with a great display of concentration on the printed page. Gladys made no 
effort to reopen the conversation. She just sat, now, waiting.
The radio announced the fifteen-minute curfew warning and, still in silence, the 
two of them made the rounds, checking windows and doors. That didn't take long 
enough either; everything was all right, closed, tight, secure; danger was 
locked out and fear sealed in.
She didn't hear a truck pull up, but at the first knock she flew to the door.
"Doctor!"
"Thought I'd never make it." Garson Levy pushed the door closed behind him and 
leaned against it, resting a minute. "Got held up by a patrol truck a few blocks 
away." He was breathing hard. "They start questioning people just before curfew, 
and then they let you go just in time to be picked up by another one for being 
out late." He straightened up and walked toward the living room, peeling off his 
dusty jacket and smoothing his wild hair as he went. Then the tension in the 
house caught at him.
"What did you say?" He turned back to Gladys. "Before, at the door? What's 
wrong?"
"Ginny. She's got—I mean I think—her hair—" The words kept getting mixed up in 
her throat. "Her hair came out. I was brushing it, and it came out in my hand, 
and I think she's—"
"Has the doctor been here?"
Gladys shook her head. "Veda went out. The phone isn't work­ing, and Veda went 
to find the truck. That was hours ago, and she isn't back yet. I don't know what 
to do."
"Where's Ginny now?"
"In bed. You said, I think you said once, that sleep would help. She didn't act 
sick or anything; she felt fine except for the fuss when it happened. I was 
brushing her hair, and some of it came out, and she started crying when I asked 
her if she threw up. It came out right in my hand."
"Is she asleep?" He wasted no time on sympathy.
"I think so. I don't know. Why?"
"I could take a blood count while we're waiting," he suggested. "It wouldn't 
prove anything of course. But if it's gone that far already . . . I don't know. 
I don't see how it could. But we might find out something."
Gone so far? She remembered the doctor saying ". . . if we catch it early enough 
. . ." but he had never told her how early that was.
"Did you say you can take a blood count yourself? Don't you need all those 
things, the little tubes and—"
"I told you, Mom." Barbie had been waiting for a chance to get into the 
conversation. "I told you he brought all those things home yesterday: the Geiger 
counter and blood-count gadget and all that stuff. You just never listen to 
anything I say."
"But don't you have to be a doctor?" Gladys looked from one to the other with 
growing comprehension. "You mean anybody can take a blood count?"
"Not anybody, but anyone with a little training in lab work can do it easily." 
Levy loosened his tie and ran his fingers restlessly through his unruly hair. 
"It's just a matter of equipment, and I have everything here already. That's how 
I've been keeping track of myself. You remember when I asked you for the boiling 
water last night, don't you? That was for sterilizing the stuff. There's nothing 
difficult about doing it," he repeated. "If you put some water on to boil now, 
we could have some kind of result in less than an hour, I think."
"I don't think Mother would want you to wake Ginny up," Barbie put in primly, 
still nursing her grievance.
"Barbara, I don't believe you were asked    "
"Oh, Barbara! I'm glad you reminded me," he said briskly, treat­ing Gladys' 
anger and her daughter's petulance with equal indiffer­ence. "There's one big 
thing somebody's got to do right away: the patrol trucks are still out now. If 
you go out and watch, maybe you can stop one and ask the patrolman to get a 
message to the doctor. That should be about the quickest way to get him here. 
They call in to headquarters at regular intervals, I think."
"But Veda—" Gladys stopped herself and turned to her daughter. "Would you start 
the water first, please, Barbie? I want to go up and see if Ginny is sleeping."
Gladys ran up the stairs after the teacher and caught up to him in the hall.
"Veda went out to look for the truck," she told him. "I don't know why it's 
taking her so long, but what good do you think it would do for Barbie to send 
the same message?"
"I don't know if it would do any good at all," he answered. "But I do think 
Barbara ought to have something to do, and it just might help."
"Do you really think it's safe for her to go out?" Gladys de­manded.
"I really couldn't say," he retorted. "Is she easily damaged by fresh air?" 
Gladys flushed with anger and saw his face relent im­mediately. "I'm sorry," he 
said. "I shouldn't be sarcastic right now, but that was pretty silly. If it's 
all right for me to go out, and for Veda, why wouldn't it be all right for 
Barbara?"
"I don't know," Gladys admitted. "I just feel as if nobody should go out unless 
it's necessary. That's what they keep saying on the radio anyhow," she added 
stubbornly.
"You're right, of course, up to a point. But what I said before was not strictly 
true, as long as we're splitting hairs. Has it oc­curred to you that something 
might have happened to Veda? The curfew patrol is remarkably efficient, and I 
expect she is on her way to some sort of trouble right now, for violating the 
curfew. Stopping a patrol truck might be our last chance to get a message to the 
doctor until the squad truck comes around—whenever that may be."
There was no possible answer to his array of arguments. Gladys simply absorbed 
the succession of shocks and reminded herself that it didn't pay to challenge 
this man. Every time she backed him into a corner he turned around and bit her 
with some new unpleasant information.
"Before you wake Ginny up," he said, "there's one thing I wanted to tell you. I 
didn't think of it when I first offered to make the blood count, but the only 
good it will do is to let you know the worst—if it is the worst—a little sooner. 
All this kind of equip­ment has been commandeered, you know. It's illegal to 
have any of the stuff in your house. You won't be able to tell the doctor that a 
blood count was already made, and it won't save any time in his diagnosis. About 
the only concrete thing you can hope to get out of it is a personal knowledge of 
just how urgent it is to get the doc­tor here. Do you still want to do it?"
"I think so." She stared at the closed door to Ginny's room. "Suppose I go see 
how easy it is to wake her up? If she's sleeping soundly, maybe we oughtn't to 
bother."
"That sounds sensible," he agreed. "I'll get the things together meanwhile, just 
in case."
Gladys crossed the darkened threshold into Ginny's room and groped for the chain 
to the soft night light.
A gentle glow diffused the room, just as a cheerful high voice announced that 
Ginny was, after all, wide awake.
"Hello, Mommy. Did you come to tuck me in again?"
"No, baby. Doc—Mr. Carney just came home, and he wanted to say hello to you, so 
I came to see if you were asleep yet." 
Ginny puzzled over that. "Why?" she demanded finally. 
"Why what?"
"Why does Mr. Carney want to say hello when I'm s'posed to be asleep?" The young 
voice was prim and virtuous.
"Well, he—" She's not afraid of needles. Did she see the doc­tor take the blood 
from Barbie? Gladys wondered. "He wants to play a kind of game with you." She 
saw her daughter's startled disbelief and realized her own nervousness wasn't 
helping matters any. "He wants to take a kind of test."
"When I'm s'posed to be asleep?" Ginny asked again incredu­lously. Virtue was 
rapidly turning to suspicion.
"Well, it's kind of important. And he didn't get home before."
Ginny sat bolt upright, hugging faithful Pallo tight against her
cheek. "I don't want to. I want to go to sleep." Oh dear! Now what?
"I'm sleepy. Turn my light out." The child suited the histrionics to the words 
and lay down again, burrowing under her blanket. What in the world . . . ?
"Mom!" A door banged loudly, downstairs. Barbara's voice was breathless and 
excited. "Mother! Mom, c'mere!"
"I'll be right back, baby." She dropped a kiss on the tiny patch of Ginny's 
forehead that still showed above the covers. The patch promptly disappeared, and 
something emerged from under the covers about turning the light out, but Gladys 
didn't stop to listen.
"The truck's outside, Mom," Barbie greeted her on the stairs. The front door was 
wide open. "They wouldn't listen to me, but I told them I'd get my mother."
"All right, I'll talk to them."
"I'll go take care of Ginny."
"You better leave her alone. She's all upset." I hope Gar doesn't get down there 
before I get back. I hope . . . There was no use thinking about it. "You stay 
here," she called again, to Barbie, and went out the door.
The big squadman stood at the porch steps, his visor down, his foot rocking 
impatiently on the flagstone. It was as close as he could come to impatient 
tapping in the heavy shoes. At the back entrance to the truck another man looked 
out curiously, visor open for a clearer view. Gladys didn't recognize him at a 
distance.
"Come in," she told the squadman impatiently. "Isn't the doctor with you?" She 
had to stop to catch her breath. Her voice wasn't working right again.
"Sorry, ma'am, I can't come in. We're on patrol."
"Oh!" She was startled. Standing above him on the porch, she hadn't been able to 
see his face, shielded as it was by the raised visor. But his voice was that of 
a total stranger. "I thought you were         "
"If you want your regular squadman, he'll be around later on," he said. "They're 
changing off the regular schedule, so I can't say just when—but you watch out 
for him; he'll be here."
"Wait a minute. Please wait!" He was going away. He didn't understand.
"Lady, I can't wait. I've got a job to do."
"But my daughter—please! Listen to me!"
He didn't stop, but he started and half turned back. It was all the time she 
needed. "I can't wait for the regular squadman," she told him quickly. "I have 
to get a message to the doctor right away. We sent somebody out to find the 
truck, to get the doctor, but that was five o'clock and she's not back yet. All 
I want to do is let the doctor know."
At last he was showing some interest. Gladys stopped to catch her breath and he 
filled in the pause with a swift question of his own. "Still out? What's her 
name?" She told him Veda's name and, on demand, produced a brief description. 
"If we pick her up now, we'll know who she is," he explained, tucking away the 
notebook in which he had scribbled the information.
"But I need a doctor!" Gladys protested. "That's what I stopped you for."
"Who's the doctor on duty here?"
"Dr. Spinelli, Peter Spinelli. He's an intern at the new Veterans' Hospital. The 
squadman is Jim T—"
"Hey, Spinelli's the kid on duty this evening at headquarters, ain't he?" That 
was from the man in the back of the truck. For the first time Gladys realized 
how loud she must have been talking.
"Yeah, I think so. I'll leave a call for him when I check in."
"Please let him know as soon as you can," she pleaded, knowing it was useless. 
The man just didn't care. "It's my little girl," she explained again. "Her 
hair—"
"I'll tell him, but your kid ain't the only sick one, you know." He had lost all 
interest.
There had to be some way. "Do you know Jim Turner?" she asked, trying to keep 
him there until she could find something that would work. Unexpectedly Turner's 
name had an immediate effect.
"You a friend of his?" the man asked.
"Well . . . yes."
He caught her hesitation. "He's your squadman, uh? Not a per­sonal friend?"
"No, that is, yes." She forced confidence into her voice. "He's the squadman 
here, but he's an old friend too. He said if anything went wrong to be sure and 
let him know right away. If you—"
"Well, look, Miss—Mrs.—I mean, I'm only trying to do my duty. I'm not supposed 
to handle anything but violations on curfew patrol, but I said I'd get the 
doctor for you, didn't I? Look." He fished out the notebook again. "Maybe you 
better give me more details. What's the kid's name? Age? He'll know who she is, 
won't he?" He wrote rapidly. "I'll leave a call for the doctor, like I said, but 
he's on duty right now, I know. Can't say when he'll get here. Mr. Turner could 
probably get him quicker for you. Tell you what, suppose I call Mr. Turner for 
you, how's that?"
"That's not— Yes, of course, that's a good idea." It dawned
on her just in time that the man was trying to keep her from calling Turner. It 
didn't make sense. If she had a phone working she wouldn't have had to stop him 
in the first place. But she kept herself from asking questions or saying 
anything more that might modify his incomprehensible change of attitude.
She watched him fill in the house number in his little book and turn back to his 
truck.
Why should Jim Turner's name have such a startling effect? It certainly wasn't a 
matter of personal liking. The man's attitude had been one of respect or . . .
The full significance of the patrolman's change of mind finally struck her. He'd 
been afraid. Was it possible that Turner was actu­ally as important in the new 
scheme of things as he would have her believe?
She wished there had been some way to keep the patrolman from calling Turner.
She almost wished she had never mentioned Turner's name. But if it meant getting 
the doctor sooner . . .
"What did he say? Didn't they have a doctor? Are they going to get Pete—Dr. 
Spinelli?" Barbara flew down the stairs toward her.
"What? Oh." She pulled her thoughts away from the mystery of Jim Turner's name. 
"He's going to call the doctor and Mr. Turner both. They're just the curfew 
patrol truck. They don't have a doctor with them, but they said Dr. Spinelli's 
on duty at headquarters, and they'll call him."
"Well, what do they have to call Mr. Turner for?"
"I don't know." I wish I did. She started up the stairs. "Mom."
"What? Oh, is the water ready yet, Barbie?"
"I was just coming down to start some more. He's got some on the hot plate 
upstairs for sterilizing things. I thought I'd make some tea or coffee or 
something, and Doc didn't eat anything yet, so I figured I'd heat up the stew. 
There's still some left."
"That's fine." She's really such a good girl. Gladys reached out and squeezed 
her daughter's arm with sudden tenderness. It was terrible to be so young and 
not able to do anything, when the world turned upside down like this. "I . . ." 
There just weren't any right words. "I don't know what I'd do without you, 
Barbie," she finished lamely.
"Mom, listen."
Gladys stopped, her foot already on the first step. Barbara hadn't moved toward 
the kitchen at all.
"Listen, Mom, don't go up."
"What do you mean, don't go up? For heaven's sake, why not? After all, Gritty 
hardly even knows him and—of course I'm going up." Impatiently she shook off the 
girl's hand.
"Well, listen, Mom. It's just well, you know how Ginny's al-ways better at the 
doctor's if you don't go into the room with her. Little kids just are that way. 
You told me that yourself, and I know it's true. Anyhow, you're all—well, you're 
all nervous and every-thing. Don't get mad at me again, Mother, please. Only I 
think it's better if you don't, honest."
Gladys could only stare at the girl, amazed.
"Besides, she isn't upset, and anyhow, he's in there with her already, 
and—please don't be mad at me, Mom—but I was sitting with her awhile, before Doc 
Levy came down, while he was getting his stuff together, so I asked her 
about—you know—if she was—sick."
Gladys took her foot off the stairs and followed her daughter through the living 
room.
"What—what did she say?" That was silly; she knew the answer. "When was it?"
"Well, that's what I don't understand. She says it was Tuesday, when you were 
sleeping. It must have been when she was taking her nap—come to think of it, she 
didn't feel so good at lunch­time—but that's practically impossible because Pete 
said it's always within a few hours after exposure. It was about eight hours for 
me and they said that seemed like a long time. Tuesday afternoon would make it a 
whole day, or even the morning would be an awful long time."
"Are you sure she didn't go outside Tuesday morning?"
"I was with her myself practically every minute," Barbie insisted, "and anyhow, 
the door was locked up on top. She can't open that. I know she wasn't out."
"Well, she must have been. I don't know how, but she must have been."
"Well, there's another thing too. Listen, Mom, Doc says sometimes it's much 
quicker with little kids, and if her hair is coming out so soon, in just a 
couple of days, that would mean she would have had to be sick just about right 
away. So maybe—maybe it's something else. Maybe she hasn't really got it."
Gladys looked away from the pleading eyes and shook her head. "No." There was no 
way out of it. `"She's got it. I knew you didn't, and I know she does." She 
could feel the matted strands of hair again, as if she still held them in her 
hand. She wiped the damp palm against her apron.
"I promised," Barbie said suddenly. "I promised not to tell." She turned and 
pushed through the dining-room door, letting it slam behind her. Gladys started 
after her and stopped. Leave her alone, leave her alone. She has to be alone.
She started again for Ginny's room. Out of old habit she stopped at the bottom 
step to listen. There wasn't a sound from upstairs, no voices, no footsteps. He 
must have the door closed. Except for the ceaseless, senseless chatter of the 
radio, the whole house was silent, deadly silent. What is he doing up there? 
Gladys went back into the living room, made herself sit down, forced herself to 
stay there, to sit and wait.
 
TWENTY-FIVE
 
Gaily carved in the kitchen, oak-framed black on the dining-room wall, tiny 
gilded stripes in the watch on her wrist, with unremitting patience the hands 
completed and renewed their circles. And still they didn't come. No sign, no 
word, from Veda, from Turner, from the doctor.
Alone in her room again, Ginny cried a little bit in sleepy protest, then fell 
asleep in the middle of a sob.
Downstairs Gladys heard the news without surprise when Garson Levy explained 
that the blood count made it certain Ginny was sick, and almost as certain what 
the nature of her illness was. The white-blood-cell count was drastically low, 
and checked too well with the symptoms they already knew. Gladys tightened her 
grip on the arms of Jon's big chair and thanked him quietly.
"Of course, I'm not sure. I can't be sure. Another count . . ."
"Yes, of course." Gladys cut him off. She was sure; she didn't need another 
count.
When is the doctor coming?
Levy went back upstairs, to dismantle his makeshift laboratory and put his 
things back in the attic hideaway. Barbara went quietly out to the kitchen to 
get the warmed-up supper she had fixed for him. Gladys sat alone, studying the 
unchanging pace of the little gold hands on her wrist.
Afterward, when the dishes were put away and there was nothing to do again, they 
gathered in the living room and tried to talk. But every subject led, by a 
devious route of its own, to the one thing Gladys could not, would not, talk 
about.
Unworried and unhurried, the little hands on the watch, the big ones on the 
clocks moved steadily past nine and ten and toward eleven. Somewhere in those 
rounds of time Jim Turner came. They all heard the car in front of the house, 
and the sound pulled Gladys blindly from her chair, drew her unthinking to the 
door. It was Barbie who remembered and made her stop and wait, to let Levy get 
out of sight upstairs before she opened the door.
And then it was only the squadman. The doctor wasn't with him, and he knew 
nothing about Veda. He had come straight to the house when he got the 
patrolman's message, and knew only that there was trouble at the Mitchell house.
Gladys listened impatiently to his explanations, and once again she told the 
story of Ginny's hair. But now it was maddening when he tried to reassure her, 
when he urged her to wait for the blood count before she worried too much, when 
he stood there talking instead of doing something, and she couldn't tell him a 
blood count had already been made.
And when she told him about Veda his only answer was a knowing shrug. "She 
couldn't get very far. The boys have probably picked her up already. I'll let 
you know if she turns up at headquarters, but I don't think they'll let her go 
again. Don't make much difference. I'll get the doctor for you, and I already 
told you she'd probably be pulled in before evacuation anyhow."
The door closed behind him, and there was another chilling thought to add to the 
sum of fear in the household. She asked Dr. Levy, but he could not, or would 
not, add anything to what Gladys knew about the Security Office. She felt as he 
talked that there was much he was not saying, and that none of it was good, but 
she did not press him. She knew already that if anything in his own experi­ence 
would help, however unpleasant it might be, he would tell. If he was holding 
back, it was because he saw no useful purpose in adding to her fears.
When the desultory conversation died out entirely Barbie sug­gested cards. But 
Gladys couldn't keep her mind on three-handed bridge, and she broke away to find 
a corner where she could bend unseeing over a magazine and not have to talk. She 
was grateful when the others went off upstairs and left her to nurse her worries 
alone. Barbara explained that they'd be within earshot, but far enough so she 
could open the door without waiting, and she nod­ded in reply, never raising her 
eyes from the blurred page on her lap.
Once in a while she looked at her watch, but time went on forever, and the hands 
barely moved. She knew it was after midnight, though, when a car pulled up again 
in front of the house.
"Oh, thank God, thank God you're here!" Gladys was almost as relieved at the 
sight of Veda's familiar face as she was at the doctor. "You're all right?" she 
asked Veda. "What happened to you? We were so worried." Without waiting for an 
answer she turned to Spinelli. "She's upstairs, Doctor, do you want to see her 
right away? They told you, didn't they—about Ginny?"
He nodded. "I'll go right up. As soon as I can get this thing off." He was 
fumbling with the heavy helmet of his suit.
"Can I help?" Barbie came down the stairs, across the hall, and reached up shyly 
but efficiently to unfasten the metal closing that held the helmet to the suit.
"Thank you." He let her take the heavy headpiece. "Is she sleep­ing?" he asked 
Gladys.
"She was last time I looked. I don't understand it; she seems so healthy."
He nodded. "That can happen. Just a minute, will you? Barbie, will you take care 
of Veda while we go up? She's had a bad time tonight. She ought to go straight 
to bed."
"What . . . ?" Startled, Gladys saw Barbara help Veda out of the chair near the 
door. "What happened? Is it serious?" She saw Veda try to protest and then give 
in weakly. "What happened to her, Doctor?"
"The Security Office," he said briefly. "I'll tell you about it later.
Or Veda will. It's not serious—she just needs a good rest. You go ahead." He 
turned to the maid, standing in the doorway, leaning on Barbie's arm. "Get into 
bed before I put you in myself."
She smiled weakly. "I was jest thinking," she pleaded, "I'd ruther wait till 
there's some word about Ginny. I couldn't rest good not knowin'."
"I'll come in and tell you," Barbara promised. "Come on, you heard what the 
doctor said."
Veda shook her head. "I'd a sight ruther lay down in here awhile, if Missus 
Mitchell don't mind. Then I'd know fer sure." "Of course I don't mind."
"Well, I do." The doctor was firm. "You get her into bed right now, Barbie. And 
don't take any back talk. I'd have been here an hour ago," he told Gladys when 
they were gone, "if I'd left her there. Those boys had it all figured out she 
was a dangerous enemy agent."
He started up the stairs as he talked, taking two steps at a time, so Gladys had 
to run to keep up and hear what he was saying.
"They picked her up after curfew, without identification, and she kept asking 
for me. She told them who she was, and when they checked they found out she was 
supposed to have a clearance to be out at all. Of course they didn't believe a 
word she said about why she was out, and—
They were at Ginny's door. He stopped and lowered his voice to finish the story. 
"They never thought of finding out who I was. They just took it for granted she 
was lying. She was getting a pretty rugged third degree—polite American 
variety—bright lights and lots of questions, for about two hours, till Turner's 
call came in, and I was paged on the speaker system. When they realized I was 
right in the building, they called me in to identify her. Then it took me about 
an hour, after I verified her story, to get them to release her. They just 
couldn't stand the idea of giving up a suspect."
"Is she—will she be all right?" Gladys asked.
"Sure. They didn't hurt her. I told you it was the polite type. But she's beat. 
She ought to take it easy tomorrow too."
"I'll see to it," she promised.
"Okay." He grinned at her. "Now I've got that out of my system and said enough 
to be damn near court-martialed, suppose we take a look at the kid."
Gladys led the way. She switched on the overhead light, and they saw Ginny pried 
peacefully around her friend Pallo, nuzzling the worn fuzziness of his plush 
hide.
"Wake up, baby." Gladys nudged the small shoulder and leaned over to drop a kiss 
on the flushed cheek. "Wake up. You have to wake up now. You've got some 
company."
Ginny transferred her embrace from the blue horse and twined her arms sleepily 
around Gladys' neck to pull herself up. Then she looked over her mother's 
shoulder and her eyes flew open.
"Hello." She seemed to find it perfectly natural that the doctor should be 
standing by her bed. "I know who you are," she an­nounced. "You're Pete. You was 
talking to Babsy. I remember you.
Gladys saw the rare, sweet smile spread across his face, and im­mediately 
everything seemed easier and less fearsome.
"That's very clever of you," he told Ginny gravely. "This time I came to talk to 
you."
Ginny promptly released her strangle hold on her mother and patted the side of 
her bed invitingly.
"Sit down," she offered.
"That's a nice horse you've got," he complimented her. "You know your mother 
thinks you're sick?"
Ginny nodded. "Only I ain't. Amn't," she assured him. "You feel pretty good?" he 
asked.
"Sure I feel good. What's that for?" She was pointing to the long zipper on the 
back flap pocket that held his medical equipment. He pulled it open and let her 
peer in at the jumbled assortment of tubes and jars and implements. "See?" he 
said. "All the things you need to be a doctor with."
"You gonna stick a needle in me and make me bleed like before?"
"I never did it to you before, though," he said. "Just Barbie. I only do that to 
big girls and you were too little before."
"I'm big enough now," she assured him. "Because Mr. Car—"
"Ginny's used to needles," Gladys broke in hastily. "She's had all kinds of 
shots at the doctor's."
The doctor didn't seem to notice anything. "All right," he said. "If you'll get 
me some alcohol we can start right in and do it just the same way I did for 
Barbie."
"With the funny thing you squeeze?" Ginny asked. "Like a horn, only no noise?"
"You've got the idea." He turned to Gladys. "If you don't mind . . ."
She did mind. There was no telling what Ginny might say while she was out of the 
room. But there was nothing else to do. "No, of course not. I'll be right back."
She fairly flew to the bathroom and back, but when she got there Spinelli met 
her at the door and took the bottle from her hands. "Thank you," he said 
politely. "This won't take long." Then he stepped back into the room and very 
firmly shut the door in her face.
Angry and worried both, still she lacked the courage to open the door and go in. 
He was the doctor. She stood where she was and tried to distinguish words from 
the murmur of voices that came through the wall, until at last he opened the 
door to admit her.
"That's a good girl you've got there, Mrs. Mitchell," he said. "She did 
everything just right." He was holding a thin tube of pinkish liquid corked at 
either end. It didn't look much like blood to Gladys.
"Look, Mommy." Ginny was wide awake and cheerful. "Look what Dr. Pete gave me." 
She waved a wooden tongue depressor gleefully in the air. "Look."
"I see, baby. That's very nice." Gladys walked past the doctor, afraid to look 
at him. Over her shoulder she asked him, "Can she go back to sleep now?"
"She might as well."
"I don't want to go back to sleep. I'm all woke up."
"Well now, it's the middle of the night, Ginny. You have to go back to sleep." 
Gladys tried to make her lie down, without success. "Don't want to go back to 
sleep. Want to get up."
"Don't be silly, darling, you can't get up now. I told you it's the middle of 
the night." She couldn't quite keep an edge of sharpness out of her voice. She 
had to talk to the doctor.
Spinelli left the room while she tried futilely to quiet the child. When he came 
back Barbie was with him.
"Barbie's going to read to you till you fall asleep, Ginny," he said firmly.
She was perfectly willing to make a good bargain. "Will you read the whole mouse 
book?"
"Every single word of it," Barbara promised.
But when Gladys faced the young doctor out in the hall he was no longer smiling. 
His face was once again as she had first seen it, long and bony and too sober.
"Who is Mr. Carney, Mrs. Mitchell?" He came straight to the point.
"Mr. Carney?" Gladys was prepared. "Why do you ask?" She turned her back on him 
and started walking down the hall. "Don't you think we'd be more comfortable in 
the living room?"
"I don't really care. If you don't mind, Mrs. Mitchell, I'd like to discuss it 
right now. It's important. Who is Mr. Carney?"
It was silly even to try, because she knew it couldn't work, but she tried to 
make it sound convincing. "He's a friend of Veda's," she lied. "He's—Ginny is 
crazy about him. He was over here yes­terday."
"What would make Ginny say he took a blood sample from her?"
"I don't know. I guess he heard some talk about Barbie, so maybe he pretended to 
give Ginny a blood test. He's always playing make-believe games with her." She 
looked straight into his eyes and tried to fill her own with innocence. "That's 
the only thing I can think of that would account for it."
The doctor shook his head. "It's hard to believe your little girl could know as 
much as she does, unless she's really had a sample taken before," he said 
stubbornly.
"But, Doctor," Gladys objected, "you must realize I'd tell you if she had. Why 
should I try to keep it from you?"
"Because you know as well as I do that any man with the knowl­edge and equipment 
to take a blood count had no business being here. Now who is Mr. Carney? Where 
is he?"
"I told you," Gladys said slowly. "He's a friend. A friend of Veda's."
"Where is he? I want to see him."
"Well . . . he's not here now. I don't know where he lives."
"Look here, Mrs. Mitchell!" It was hard to believe he could be so angry. He had 
been so even-tempered all the time. "I'm willing to concede that you must have 
some good reason for lying to me. It would have to be a pretty dam good reason 
to weigh in the balance with your daughter's life. Or perhaps if you understood 
fully that the previous blood count could make all the difference in the world, 
you'd change your story."
Ginny's life?
Ginny, lying in the room behind the closed door, listening to a story and dying 
as she listened. Dying, dying, dying every minute.
She thought of Garson Levy, coming through the night to warn her about Barbara's 
danger, fighting off invaders in the darkened kitchen, repairing the terrifying 
gas leak, boarding up the win­dows, fixing a toy for Ginny, bringing courage and 
hope back into the house.
"I don't want to turn anybody in to the Security Office, Mrs. Mitchell. After 
the way I blew my top before, I should think you'd realize that. All I want is 
to find out the results of that last blood count. Anyhow"—he smiled a little 
grimly—"you've got nothing to worry about. Any friend of Mr. Turner's is a 
friend of the Security Office. I don't care who your mystery man is or what he's 
done; I just want to avoid any further wait in diagnosing Ginny's case."
Any further wait . . . They had waited to hear about Barbie. She had waited for 
the doctor to come. She knew the poisonous fear of waiting. She knew it too 
well.
She couldn't wait any more; she could do anything but wait. She looked up. The 
good-natured young man wasn't smiling; his face was set and determined. He saw 
surrender in her eyes and pounced on it.
"If you won't tell me, the only thing I can do is take her in to the hospital 
right away. I'll just have to assume it's as bad as it looks."
There was no way out.
"I . . ." Forgive me, please forgive me. She breathed a silent prayer, whether 
to God or Garson Levy, she didn't know. "I . . ." It was harder to do because 
she knew he would forgive her—Doc Levy would. She wet her dry lips.
"It's all right, Gladys." The door to the attic stairs stood open, and the 
teacher took a step forward to join them. She hadn't heard it open; how long had 
he been there? "You're Dr. Spinelli?" He turned to the younger man courteously 
and extended his hand. "Mrs. Mitchell and her daughter have both told me a great 
deal about you. I'm sorry I had no chance to speak to you before, but there were 
circumstances . . ." As if there were nothing to explain, as if it were the most 
common, everyday sort of meeting. "I'm Albert Carney. You want to see the 
results on the little girl's blood count, don't you?"
 
TWENTY-SIX
 
"Oh, there you are."
Gladys scrambled to her feet as the doctor pushed through the swinging door.
"How is—can you tell—I mean, do you know anything yet?" "Not really. I just came 
down to ask you—" His eyes took in the bubbling pot on the hot plate. "Oh—I see 
you knew what we'd need."
"What?" She followed his glance, and understood. "No," she admitted. "I should 
have, I guess, but I was just boiling it to keep. Really," she added, `"just to 
have something to do. Are you going to make the blood count right here?"
"It seems like the best thing—certainly a lot quicker than taking it back to the 
lab. Levy's got everything I need. He's setting it up in the bathroom now. I was 
going to help, but that water's almost ready; I might as well wait here for it."
"What did you say?"
"When?"
"Just now—about Mr. Cam—"
"Oh, that." Amused, he leaned against the kitchen cabinet, where he could watch 
the water, and told her, "I knew him as soon as I got a good look at him. Well, 
what's so surprising about that?" he demanded. "After all, I was a high school 
senior, and a science major in Year One of the atom bomb. And I was a college 
freshman the year Gar Levy was making big noises in the papers with his Survival 
Kit. I heard him talk several times, and I gave money to his committees. I even 
managed to get introduced to him at a dinner once. He didn't remember me, of 
course, but I'd know him anywhere."
The water was boiling. He felt the pot handle gingerly, and Gladys handed him 
two pot holders, one for each side.
"I could hardly forget him," Spinelli added, "seeing that the money I gave and 
the petitions I signed were largely responsible for making me a doctor. I had 
planned on biochemistry," he explained, "in connection with radiation therapy. 
Unfortunately the work you can do in that field is negligible unless you can 
pass a loyalty check. I got turned down for an atomic scholarship because of 
my—ah­—unfavorable associations, Gar Levy among others."
He lifted the pot, tested the weight of the scalding water, and began walking 
carefully toward the door. "At any rate you don't have to worry about my turning 
him in, believe me. Thanks."
Gladys was holding the swinging door open for him to go through with the 
steaming pot. She moved ahead to open the other door, into the living room. He 
paused a minute before he went through and showered her with the warmth of his 
singular smile. "And thanks again," he said. "Not for the doors. It—means a lot 
to me, knowing that somebody took him in. He's important."
He went through the door and on to the stairs. Gladys almost followed him, and 
then remembered that she hadn't turned the hot plate off.
Back in the kitchen she decided to put another pot on, instead of turning the 
stove off. She found a jar that would hold the boiled water, in case the doctor 
didn't need it, and left the problem of sealing the jar, which had no top, to 
the inventiveness of her im­portant guest. Barbara's teacher . . . Tom's teacher 
. . . Doctor . . . Doc . . . Gar Levy. .. .
She left the water heating up and went up to look in at Ginny. But as she passed 
the bathroom the young doctor called to her through the half-open door.
"Mrs. Mitchell?"
"Yes?" She peered in and saw a strange-looking machine plugged in to the outlet 
Jon had installed for his electric razor. The sink was full of little tubes and 
rubber pieces and needles and glass slides. Spinelli had his sleeve rolled up 
and was busy sticking one of the little needled tubes into his own arm.
"He wants to check the accuracy of the counter," Levy ex­plained, answering the 
question in her eyes. "Take his own count first, and check it against what it 
should be. These things are deli­cate and they can get out of adjustment pretty 
easily—and I had no way of checking it."
The doctor's hand relaxed on the little rubber bulb, and he pulled the needle 
neatly from his arm, swabbed the puncture, and corked the tube, almost with one 
gesture.
"I just wanted to suggest"—he turned to Gladys—"maybe it would be just as well 
if Ginny didn't go to sleep right away. I won't know till I finish this, but it 
might be best to take her to the hospital tonight. Look, don't—well, it's silly 
to say, don't get upset. But if Levy's count is right, then the quicker we do 
something, the better off she'll be."
"Yes . . . yes, of course." She ought to do something. She shouldn't just stand 
there. She watched him doing swift, competent things with tubes and liquids and 
slides, but she didn't really see anything. "Yes, I was just going in there 
anyhow."
The hospital?
He used a walkie-talkie on a squad truck to call headquarters when he was done.
Wisely, Gladys allowed Barbara to dress the child. She herself was strung to a 
high pitch of nervousness that would have infected Ginny immediately. It gave 
her a chance, too, for a few minutes alone with the young doctor.
"Do you want to come along?" he asked. "It won't be very pleasant for you, but 
maybe you'd rather?"
All she could do was nod. There was something she wanted to ask, but she had to 
wait for her voice to come back.
"How bad is it, Doctor?" Why did they always make you ask? Why couldn't they 
just tell you? "How did it happen?"
"I don't know. How it happened, that is. When we get her to the hospital the 
diagnosis might give us a clue. There are all kinds of radiation disease, Mrs. 
Mitchell, and they've got instruments there that will show just what she's got. 
Then we can guess how she got it."
"But how bad is it? You're in such a hurry to get her there . . ."
"Well, it's hard to answer that. The disease has obviously taken a rapid course. 
. . . But that can happen with children. In an adult the hair falling out so 
soon might indicate something serious. In a child—there's no telling. I'd really 
rather not say anything until we see what the testing machines say. How bad it 
is depends partly on the type of radiation too. I don't want to give you any 
false hopes, Mrs. Mitchell, but the fact that she's feeling all right is 
en­couraging. The white-cell count I got must be pretty recent."
Gladys waited for him to go on and then closed her mouth on another question. 
He'd tell her when he had something to tell. There was no reason to torment him 
with futile questions.
"Thanks." It sounded bitter. She summoned up a ghost of a smile to show she 
didn't mean it. "I guess I better wash my face if I'm going. Will she—need 
anything along with her? Clothes or a toothbrush or anything?"
"No." He was thoughtful. "Well, maybe you better take along a pair of pajamas, 
just in case, but I don't think we'll be there more than an hour or two."
"You mean . . . ?" She couldn't believe it. "You mean we don't have to leave her 
there? You mean she's coming home?"
"Oh, I'm sorry! I thought—didn't Levy tell you? About the hospital?"
"Oh, I never even asked him. I forgot all about it. I was so worried about 
Ginny."
"I haven't been at the hospital since it happened, myself," he told her. "But if 
things are anywhere near as bad in the children's section as he says they are in 
the rest of the place, I think she'll be better off here at home. We can draw 
supplies from the pharmacy there and bring them back to the house for 
treatments."
"Then she can stay with me? I can take care of her myself?" Now she could think 
about Doc Levy. "Is that why he came back? I never even asked him," she 
repeated. "What's he going to do? Did he get a—treatment, or anything?"
"He got a diagnosis. He couldn't be treated without waiting till it was too late 
to come back today, and he didn't want to stay there. He says his case isn't too 
serious—a medium dose of gamma, so he's probably just as well off here. I'm 
going to bring back some stuff for him, too, if I can."
"What's gamma? What does that mean?"
"Oh. Well, as far as treatment is concerned, it means what he needs is rest, and 
if he could get some blood, that would help too, but—Oh, hello," he broke off. 
"Ginny's all ready. You better get started, Mrs. Mitchell, if you want to wash 
up."
Barbie was bringing Ginny, dressed in her best, down the stairs, and Gladys 
passed them on the run, going up.
"Don't we look pretty?" She saw that Barbie was dressed too. Levy was in the 
bathroom, clearing away equipment.
"Oh, Gar . . ." She paused on the flight to her room. "I—Dr. Spinelli was just 
telling me about you, about this afternoon. I never even asked you before. I 
just couldn't think about anything but Ginny, and          
"Of course not." He dismissed the subject. "You want to get in here? Are they 
waiting for you?"
"I'll go change my dress while you finish. The car's not here yet." She had to 
hurry. "I seem to owe you a whole new set of thanks, Gar. I don't think I've 
even realized, half the time, how much you were doing. You just keep . . . 
stepping in, when we need you. But—"
"Has it occurred to you that you very likely saved my life when you took me in 
here?"
"I? That's nonsense! What I wanted to say was, Dr. Spinelli says he's going to 
try and bring back some stuff for you. I don't know just what it is, but he also 
said what you need most is rest. All this time you've been doing everything for 
us, and I just wanted you to know that it won't be that way any more. If there's 
anything any of us can do—"
"You may get your chance, but I'm not that sick yet." It was the first time she 
had seen him really embarrassed. "Now go ahead and get dressed. I'll be out of 
here in a minute."
But when she got downstairs there was a new problem to face. Barbara had made up 
her mind she was going along. For just a moment Gladys hesitated. Then she 
remembered the mysterious "conditions" Spinelli had referred to. "It won't be 
pleasant." And things had been too bad there for Levy to stay.
"No," she said firmly, and the battle was joined. That was how Ginny heard the 
word "hospital" and found out where she was going.
"I don't want to go to the hospital."
"But, baby, you're not going to stay."
"I don't want to go to the hospital. I won't go to the hospital."
She sat down on the floor, spread her hands flat on the rug as if she could 
cling to the hairs of the nap, and repeated her defiance.
"Darling," Gladys explained patiently, "we're going to take a ride there with 
the doctor and come right back. We're not—"
But Ginny had found a single sentence that perfectly expressed her feelings, and 
stuck to it. She stopped repeating it only to try the effects of an occasional 
sob. They tried ignoring her, and for a while it seemed as if it was going to 
work. Ginny was tired, after all, and within a few minutes she had almost fallen 
asleep, had actually dozed off, only to come awake, screaming and kicking, when 
Gladys tried to pick her up. The noise brought Veda out of her room, bundled in 
a bathrobe, pale and frightened.
She tried her hand, too, but her "No nonsense!" attitude had no more effect on 
Ginny than Gladys' explanations or Barbie's prom­ises. Eventually, under the 
doctor's stern injunctions, she went back to bed, leaving Ginny still in 
possession of the floor.
"Not gonna go. Not gonna go."
In the ensuing hour the little girl was alternately coaxed, threat­ened, 
ignored, patted, pacified, and pulled at. But when the car came she still 
clearly had no intention of going anywhere.
Spinelli solved the problem then by simply wading in and picking her up, bodily. 
With his heavy suit on, he could afford to ignore nails, teeth, and shoes. He 
dumped her unceremoniously in the car, and Gladys followed meekly. Barbie had 
lost all interest in arguing. She watched them go and made no effort to push her 
plea again.
 
TWENTY-SEVEN
 
Nightmare rode with them through the empty streets in the speeding car. Every 
familiar pattern of the suburban night was gone. There were no late cars coming 
back from town, no lonely men out walking in the night, no hastily dressed women 
pulling on the leashes of their dogs.
Throughout the five-mile drive, there was nothing to stop the car, hardly 
anything to slow it down. The headlights pushed a golden fan ahead, to 
underscore the darkness all around, picking out blind street lamps and dead 
traffic lights in their glare. The only signs of life they passed were squad 
cars and trucks parked here and there on neighborhood patrols. And when they hit 
the highway, even the trucks were gone.
The noise of the motor made a roaring world of its own inside the car, and the 
only other sound in the night was the steady wailing of the terrified child.
It was a nightmare from which they woke only to face the white-lighted horror of 
the hospital. And this horror was not a dream; this was such reality as Gladys 
had never known before. The sight, the sound, and above all, the smell, of pain 
and fear, not hidden discreetly behind closed doors, not closed away in back of 
neatly folded screens, not quieted by starched, white, rubber-soled nurses, not, 
in any way, the civilized sadness of a hospital.
This was pain on parade, fear on exhibition. All doors stood open, so tired 
nurses and doctors could hoard what energy they had. Basins and bedpans stood by 
the beds; no one had time to fetch and carry. Inside each room the floor was 
crowded with cots, begged, borrowed, improvised from stretchers and wooden 
blocks. And in the heart of the building, away from the traffic of the outside 
doors, mattresses lined the floor along the corridor walls. They passed a wagon 
piled high with dirty dishes outside a ward; a little farther on, an attendant 
in rumpled khaki coveralls was serving tea to corridor patients. Each one in 
turn held up a cup or glass, or a small basin, to be filled from a soup ladle 
out of the bucket she wheeled along.
A young man with a bandage on his head got up and walked along beside her, 
picking up the cups of those too weak to sit. After a little way the attendant 
spoke to him, shaking her head, and he went back to lie down on his mattress. 
There was a small crimson spot on his bandage. A middle-aged woman with one arm 
in a sling took his place. She wore a torn sweater over the cotton oper­ating 
gown the hospital had given her. The flapping of the gown on her legs annoyed 
her, and she draped it to one side with her good arm, then looped the long end 
over her sling to keep it out of the way.
They reached the children's section by walking through endless corridors and 
climbing interminable stairs. The elevators were not running, whether for lack 
of power or personnel, they did not know.
Here bigger rooms and smaller beds made overcrowding less of a problem. The 
rooms were lined with rows of cots which Gladys recognized as standard nursery 
school equipment. Different-colored canvas and different types of legs marked 
their varied origins. She pointed out to Ginny the familiar square green legs 
and the yellow canvas of the cots at Burl's, but the little girl wouldn't look.
Again Gladys tried to explain to her that she would not have to stay. Ginny only 
shook her head wisely, refusing to be fooled. She had long ago stopped crying, 
but ever since they entered the harshly lit white corridors she had been using 
her own legs and her mother's eyes to walk with. Her two hands clung fiercely to 
Gladys' skirt, and her head was turned in toward its folds. She would look up 
only when they were ascending the stairs, where the lights were dimmer, and 
there were no frightening rows of cots and mattresses.
Now, when her mother's interest in the cots informed her they had reached the 
children's section, she still refused to show any interest in her surroundings. 
But when the doctor, looking down at the disheveled curls, remarked kindly, 
"We're almost there—just around the corner," she responded immediately.
With a howl of protest she flung herself away from Gladys and ran back to the 
head of the stairs. Too tired and confused to attempt an escape by descent, she 
seized the doorknob and clung with all her might.
"I won't go!" she shrieked, and the noise echoed down the corridor. "I won't! I 
won't go!"
"Ginny!" Gladys swept down the corridor after the child. "Ginny, you 
ab-so-lute-ly-have-to-keep-quiet! There are children sleeping —sick children. 
Now you behave yourself. If you don't want to get well, they do. Now stop it, 
once and for all!"
To her complete surprise, the shrieking stopped. Gladys seized the opportunity. 
"Get your hands off that knob," she commanded, "and walk down this corridor like 
a lady. I'm sick and tired of your nonsense."
Meekly the child did as she was told. And belatedly Gladys un­derstood. Every 
effort they had made, in the house and on the way, had been with the 
consciousness of Ginny's trouble in their minds. Now for the first time she had 
gotten angry enough to forget to be sorry for the little girl—and Ginny had 
promptly stopped being sorry for herself.
They went around the bend in the corridor, down to a little room labeled 
"Dispensary."
"If you wait right here"—Spinelli pointed to a bench—"I'll be right out." He 
knocked on the door and entered without waiting for a reply. Gladys and Ginny 
sat down on the bench in silence and stayed that way. Determinedly Gladys 
controlled an impulse to pet the little girl, to apologize to her. Her hand kept 
trying to move that way, and she kept pulling it back. But the effort was worth 
while. After minutes of utter silence a little voice whispered, "Mommy?"
"Yes?" She tried to make it sound still annoyed.
"Mommy, will I really not have to stay? Can I really go home again?"
"Of course you can, Ginny. I told you so over and over again."
"Mommy." The little voice was honeyed with an appeal Gladys recognized only too 
well. Ginny had learned the art of successful apology early, but Gladys never 
had been able to resist the sweet contriteness of the tone. She looked down and 
allowed herself a very small smile.
"What?"
"Mommy, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was bad."
"All right, baby." She squeezed the small hand that wriggled into hers. "Now 
forget it and behave yourself." The poor tyke. She's too little. It isn't fair!
Promptly Ginny dropped her head in her mother's lap, and the tears began to flow 
afresh, more quietly this time, but no less fluently.
"Ginny, I said stop it!"
"Will you come in now?" A nurse, this one in crumpled white, opened the 
dispensary door.
Gladys stood up and prayed that Ginny would follow without more emotion. When 
she looked she found the cheeks still wet, but the eyes were dry and, 
miraculously, alert.
"What's that?"
"That's a very smart machine," the nurse told her. "It knows all about everybody 
who sits in that chair, and we're going to sit you in that chair, and then we'll 
know all about you without asking you anything at all."
Gladys braced herself for the resistance and watched her daugh­ter walk over, 
examine the chair, and announce happily, "You don't have to sit me in it. I can 
sit in it myself." She scrambled up promptly, and the nurse moved to a switch on 
the wall and threw a lever. Nothing happened but a gentle humming. Then lights 
began to flash on the machine. The nurse watched closely, at the same time 
guiding a piece of tape through a gadget near her side, with one hand, and with 
the other moving a small lever. Curiously Gladys followed the connections to the 
lever with her eye and finally located a small glass-tipped tube on the big 
machine that kept moving in response to the nurse's motions.
Abruptly the nurse switched it off, pulled out the tape, and studied it briefly.
"Pete."
Dr. Spinelli came through a door in the side wall, and the small incident shook 
Gladys more than anything else. You read about floods and earthquakes and 
emergencies. You heard of overcrowded hospitals, saw newsreels of corridors like 
the one outside, but one of the unchangeable things in life, somehow, was that a 
nurse never, never called a doctor by anything but his title in front of a 
patient. It was such a little thing, but it told so much more than the soiled 
uniform, the linenless mattresses, the dirty dishes, or the tired lines on the 
nurse's face. Gladys remembered the woman's unhurried patience, explaining the 
machine to Ginny, and marveled at it.
"I think the photoindicator would be a good idea." She showed the doctor the 
tape, and he examined the little punches on it carefully. "Oh, you haven't used 
these much, have you? There's a chart someplace." She found it under a pile of 
discarded tape, a heavy cardboard intricately diagrammed; she fitted the tape 
across it pre­cisely and handed it back to him. This time he looked it over 
swiftly and nodded.
"Looks that way. Come on, Ginny, we're going to take some pictures of you." He 
picked up his helmet and the nurse helped him fasten it back onto his suit.
Docilely the child jumped down from the chair, cast one dubious glance at 
Gladys, and took a step forward.
"Like at the dentist?" She didn't like the idea of the helmet. "Same general 
idea, only more so." He had the visor working now.
She decided in favor of it, and followed him through another door in the 
opposite wall. Gladys started to get up, but the nurse motioned her back.
"Sorry," she said briefly, "you can't go in there."
"But why? What are they going to do?"
"Just another test." She explained no more.
Gladys went back to her seat. She didn't have to say it that way! She watched 
angrily while the nurse looked around, decided there was nothing that had to be 
done immediately, and sat down. Scien­tifically and deliberately the woman 
relaxed in the straight white chair, shifting her position to rest each weary 
muscle separately, and closing her eyes for a brief, blessed moment of escape 
from the white light overhead. Gladys' protest died unspoken. "Pete," she 
remembered, and marveled again at the sustained cheerfulness with which the 
nurse had treated Ginny. She had to let go sometime.
"I am sorry."
She hadn't meant to say it out loud. The nurse's eyes opened to regard her with 
embarrassing surprise. Then the eyes softened and warmed, and she saw that the 
woman understood what had impelled the remark. They smiled at each other, and 
Gladys had an impulse to thank her for being so nice to Ginny, but she left it 
unsaid. It wasn't necessary.
The girl closed her eyes again, and Gladys sat there, studying her. "Pete," she 
thought again, and tried to imagine the nurse, fresh and untired, dressed up, 
out on a date with the strange young man who was so sober and so unexpectedly 
warm. She smiled inside now, thinking how Barbie's new-found love would have 
flared into jealousy.
The door opened, and Ginny came out, chattering and blinking at the strong 
light. Gladys caught a glimpse of a screen and a bulky machine in a darkened 
room, and then the door was closed again.
"If you'll wait just a few minutes," Spinelli told Gladys, "I'll collect the 
stuff we need." The nurse came to help him with the helmet, but he shook his 
head.
"Never mind, Jan." He was scribbling something on a pad of paper. "I won't be 
here much longer." He tore off the page he'd written on. "Could you do me a 
favor? Put this through to Supply for me?"
She took the sheet, glanced at it, and looked up, puzzled.
"I wouldn't ask you," he apologized, "but I've got to talk to old man Kallen 
before I go, and I have to get out fast." He looked significantly at Ginny, and 
Gladys began herding the child toward the door.
"That's okay. But all this . . ." Gladys had the door almost closed; the nurse 
must have thought she couldn't hear. "What are you putting over, Pete? I don't 
get it."
"Tell you later, kid. It's important, that's all." Gladys was too curious to 
feel guilty about eavesdropping. "They need this stuff."
The nurse wasn't convinced. "What the hell do you think I want it for?" There 
was silence for a second, a kind of whispering silence, and then Spinelli's 
voice again. "For God's sake, keep it under your hat. That's what I have to see 
the old man about. Now be a good girl and see how fast you can make them move 
down there."
"Right." All the tiredness had gone out of her voice. Gladys heard footsteps and 
moved unhurriedly away from the door toward the bench, once more aware of what 
Ginny was telling her.
"Mommy, he said they were my bones, but they didn't look like bones. It was all 
dark, and shadows . . ."
Gladys tried to keep her mind on Ginny's prattle, but she kept thinking about 
the conversation she had overheard. What was it all about? What was wrong with 
the supplies he wanted? Why did he have to talk to "the old man"? Who was that?
Peter Spinelli was so young, so terribly young, to carry the re­sponsibility 
that had been suddenly thrust upon him. For just a moment Gladys felt panic, 
wondering if he knew what he was doing, whether Ginny was safe in his care.
But what can I do? What else can I possibly do? If she only knew more about it . 
. . You could tell when a doctor was no good if your child had measles or 
pimples or a rash. You knew something about those things. But how could you tell 
now? What was he planning anyhow?
"Lady, do ya know where the toilet is? I gotta go to the toilet, an' I can't 
find it."
The little boy's voice reached her first. When she saw him she was shocked into 
silence. She could only shake her head, to show she didn't know. Ginny was 
equally silent—until the child stretched his hand out from under the rolled-up 
sleeve of the man's shirt he was wearing.
"Pretty," he said. "So pretty," and reached for the furry muff that dangled from 
Ginny's coat sleeve.
"Mommy!" It was a whisper, and it was a scream. "Don't let him touch me. Don't, 
don't! Mommy!"
Bandages covered the boy's arm, but on the active hands they couldn't stay in 
place. Blood and pus ran from a visible open sore; inside, his sleeve the 
bandage was stained with the accumulation from others unseen. His hair wasn't 
shaved off, she realized then. There just wasn't any. And there was something 
wrong with his face, something that made him look as much younger than his four 
years as the bald pate made him look older. She placed it at last. No eyebrows. 
None at all.
Ginny was drawing in close to her, shrinking away from the child's touch.
"Are you her mama?" He ignored Ginny. "She's a baby. She acts like a baby. You 
seen my mama any place?"
"I am not a baby. You're dirty. Go away."
"Shush, Ginny. Would you like me to find the nurse for you?" she appealed to the 
little boy.
"No, I want my mama. Do you know where the toilet is? I gotta go real bad."
"You wait a minute," she told him. "I'll get the nurse." 
"I don't want any old nurse. I want—"
"Don't go away. Mommy, don't go away!"
"I    " She didn't want to leave Ginny alone with the little boy, not with that 
open sore, not with . . .
She sat down again. The door opened, and the doctor came out. "Hey! What're you 
doing out of bed?" He surveyed the child. "Which room are you in? Where's your 
bed?"
But the little boy was no longer there. He paused just long enough to take in 
the bulky suit the doctor wore and skittered away down the corridor for dear 
life.
Around the corner he stopped and peered back, showing only enough of himself to 
be able to see.
"Can't catch me," he shouted defiantly. "Bogeyman can't catch me!" Then he was 
off again.
When they went down the stairs the nurse was following the youngster's path of 
flight down the hall. Ginny was sobbing un­controllably, and they made no effort 
to stop her. They had to wait again, down in the main hall, while Spinelli 
collected an armload of apparatus, the things he had asked the nurse to order 
for him. Then they were outside, and the empty dark that had been so frightening 
before was a blessed relief.
 
TWENTY-EIGHT
 
The door flew open while they were still coining up the walk in front of the 
house, and a breathless Barbic ran out to meet them. As soon as they were 
inside, with the door shut behind them, Gar Levy appeared on the stairs and came 
down to join them.
"How'd it go?"
"About what we thought," Spinelli told him briefly. "I got everything we 
needed."
So that was it, Gladys thought. Something for him.
"You find the trouble?" Levy asked.
"Um-hmh." He nodded, and didn't explain. Mystery upon mys­tery. Why did they 
have to talk in code? Maybe when Ginny wasn't there . . .
She hung up coats in the hall closet and turned to find the doctor stripping out 
of his big suit again, with Barbie's help.
"Can I sit on your lap?" Ginny approached the older man. "That's what I've got 
one for," he admitted. "How did you like your trip?"
She shook her head vigorously, made what she fancied to be a horrible face, and 
confessed, "They took pictures. It was dark. He said it was a picture of my 
bones. But it was all dark. It didn't look like bones." She snuggled into the 
warmth of his lap, and he looked up at Spinelli questioningly. The doctor 
answered with a nod, and Levy pursed his lips.
1 wish I knew what was going on!
"It was nice riding in the car." Ginny sat up now. "It went fast—wheeee—all the 
way home."
"You must be all tired out."
"Nope." She snuggled down again with a sigh of contentment. "Your lap is almost 
as nice as my daddy's. Do you know my daddy? Where is he?"
"Doctor," Gladys asked hastily, "should she go to bed now, or . . . what?"
"Not just yet," he said thoughtfully. "I think we better take agglutinization 
samples first," he told Levy, "and we can arrange everything else while they 
wait." The older man nodded agreement. "For transfusions," Spinelli explained to 
Gladys, "to test blood types."
Transfusions!
"Is there anything I should do?"
"I don't think so. We'll need boiling water of course."
"What for?" Ginny had been following the conversation as well as she could. Now 
she was suspicious.
"To wash things in," Gar told her. "You wouldn't want to take any medicine from 
a dirty spoon, would you?"
"I don't want to take any medicine."
She's so tired, Gladys thought. This was going to be a struggle. But the teacher 
was laughing, as if the child had said something outrageously funny, and Ginny, 
finally convinced, joined him. The subject of medicine was, temporarily at 
least, disposed of.
"I'll start the water," Barbie offered. "Would you like me to make some coffee, 
too, Mother?"
"Why, yes, I guess we could use it." Gladys quelled her own restlessness and let 
the girl go out alone. Barbie wanted to be efficient and helpful while the 
doctor was around to sec it. There would be plenty for her to do later, Gladys 
realized.
Barbara was back to keep Ginny entertained, too, while the men set up their 
bathroom laboratory again. Surprisingly quickly the young doctor was coming 
around with alcohol, cotton, and hypo­dermic needle, collecting neat little 
samples of blood from each of them. Barbie proudly announced that it wasn't 
necessary to take hers, because she knew her type, but Spinelli explained that 
that wouldn't help if they didn't know Ginny's.
"I'm AB," she told him gratuitously.
"Oh." He finished swabbing her arm but didn't stick the needle in. "Are you 
sure?"
"That's what the school doctor said when they tested us there." "Well . . ." He 
hesitated. "We might as well take a sample anyway. In case you made a—Ginny's 
might be the same anyhow." "What's wrong with AB?" She offered her arm. "Why 
wouldn't you take– "
"AB's pretty rare," he explained, "and it means you can't give blood to anybody 
except another AB. Do you know what your husband's type is, Mrs. Mitchell? If he 
was in the last war it must have been on his dog tag."
"B," she answered automatically, without having to think about it. She 
remembered the dog tag, she could see it around his neck. She hadn't thought 
about Jon for a long time. How long? Never mind how long. This was no time to 
start. She could see the metal chain, with the flat coin at the end, swinging 
forward when he leaned over the sink in the flat near the camp . . . Stop it!
The doctor started upstairs with his collection of tubes. "Oh, Mrs. Mitchell, I 
think you could get Ginny undressed now. Levy's fixing up some stuff for her. It 
ought to be ready any minute."
"What is it, Mommy? What's gonna be ready? What is it?"
"Just some things to keep you from getting sick. Let's go up and get into your 
pajamas, so you'll be all ready to go to bed afterwards."
"I'm not sick," Ginny insisted. "Not sleepy either." But she came along 
docilely. She was unnaturally quiet while Gladys took her clothes off, then, 
with her pajama half on, she suddenly twisted around to face her mother.
"Mommy?"
The child was terrified again.
"What is it, baby?"
"Is it—is the medicine—to keep me from being sick like that boy? So I won't get 
like him?"
She was glad enough to escape when Spinelli remembered they had no blood sample 
from Veda, and asked Gladys to wake her. She turned Ginny and Ginny's difficult 
questions over to Barbara and went downstairs to knock on the door of the little 
room.
Veda wouldn't wake up, and she finally had to try the door. Surprisingly it was 
unlocked. But where tapping had failed to waken her, the lightest footstep 
brought her bolt upright imme­diately.
"What is it, Missus Mitchell? Is Ginny bad?" She was reaching for the robe on 
the chair beside her when Gladys turned on the light, trying to wrap it around 
herself under the blanket.
"Ginny's all right, and you lie down," Gladys told her promptly. "Go on, now. 
The doctor said you weren't to get up." She stopped talking and refused to say 
any more until the woman put the robo away and lay back under the covers again. 
"Dr. Spinelli wants to take a sample of your blood," she explained. "He's taking 
them from all of us, to find out who can give transfusions to Ginny. But he said 
you're not to get out of bed. He's—"
"Transfusions?" Veda stared at her in horror. "Ginny didn't look near that sick. 
She take a turn for the worse?" She was reach­ing for the robe.
"Put that back and lie down. She's no worse than she was. That's just what they 
do for this kind of sickness. Please, Veda, the doctor specially said you 
shouldn't get up. You've got to take care of yourself. I can't have you sick 
too."
That did it. Veda lay back again, frowning. "But how's he goin' to take that 
sample? You jest now said he had to have some of my blood."
"Yes, I did." Gladys tried to sound firm. "But he's coming right down here as 
soon as I tell him you're ready, and you don't have to budge out of bed."
"No'm. I'd ruther get up."
"Well, he ought to know what he's doing. He says you should stay in bed. Now for 
heaven's sake, Veda, don't be foolish. All you have to do is stick an arm out. 
I'm going to get him, and I want to find you right where you are when I get 
back." She turned and left before there could be any argument, but when she got 
back with the doctor she found Veda had struggled into the robe while she was 
gone. True enough, she was in bed, but sitting up, and bundled up to her ears. 
Gladys refrained from comment and wisely did not try to leave the room till the 
doctor was done. Then she let him go out first and did not close the door till 
she had given Veda a last warning about staying put.
"We don't need you for anything now, but we probably will tomorrow," she pointed 
out. "You go back to sleep. I can always come and get you if anything happens."
In the living room she found the doctor waiting for her. There was time now to 
ask some of the questions she'd been saving up.
"You see, we can't really treat the disease at all," he told her. "There's no 
way to deactivate an ionized cell. But if we treat the symptoms, just help the 
body through the worst of it, the damaged cells are eventually replaced, and the 
patient is all right again. There are several different drugs that are useful. 
I'm leaving some dramamine in case she gets nauseous again, and Gar has some 
other stuff."
He rattled off a series of things, most of which, she gathered, affected the 
blood in some way, and none of which were familiar, except one called toluidine. 
"That was on the information sheet, wasn't it?" she asked.
"That's right. Gar has all the stuff, and I've given him complete instructions. 
If I had more time I'd rather show you everything myself, but Gar's familiar 
with the techniques, and I think it's better to space the treatments—give each 
drug a little while to work before we shoot her full of a new one. She should 
get regular doses, and he has it all written down. You don't have to worry about 
that part of it at all right now."
"Will—will she be very sick? How long does it take?"
"It's hard to answer either one. They're really the same question. It'll take 
months before she's completely healed—before her hair grows back and her blood 
count is entirely normal. But how long it will take her to start recovering, or 
how sick she'll get . . . it's different with everybody. So far the disease 
seems to be taking a rapid course, and she hasn't shown much evidence of being 
affected by it. But when the blood count drops this way—well, we just don't 
know."
"You said, till her hair grows back. Is it—that is, will it all come out? Like 
that little boy, the one in the hospital?" She was being as foolish as Ginny.
"No telling." He smiled slightly. "If that was all we had to worry about . . . 
As a matter of fact," he went on briskly, "I'm not even trying to do anything 
about that. I'm worried about her teeth. The hair'll grow back by itself when 
she gets better. The teeth—I don't know. It doesn't matter about these first 
ones coming out, but I wish I knew what would happen to the second teeth. Well, 
a good dentist can worry about that later on. I don't know anything to do about 
it right now."
"You mean, that tooth that came out . . . That's part of it too?" She was so 
proud!
"Oh, didn't you know? I guess that wasn't on the information sheet. It's usually 
a much later symptom. Anyhow, the thing we have to concentrate on is the blood. 
That's where the greatest dam-age occurs, especially in the type of disease 
she's got."
"What type? What's the difference?" There's so much I don't know.
"That's a tough one," he said. "The diagnosis is inhalation of a fission 
product, with an alpha emitter lodged in the bones. In plain English, that means 
she breathed in some particles resulting from the explosion of the bomb, and 
that the particles were deposited inside her body, in her bone marrow. They're 
still there, and until they burn themselves out there's no way of getting rid of 
them. What complicates things is that we don't even know what isotope it is. It 
doesn't behave like anything I know. It might not even be a uranium derivative, 
although God knows what else . . . Anyhow, we'll be able to find that out later 
on.
"Meanwhile, at least we know what it's doing. An alpha emitter lodged in the 
bone destroys the marrow and stops production of blood cells. Later on we may 
have to worry about anemia; that's not serious yet, and we might be able to 
forestall it with liver extract. I'm leaving some of that too. But the 
white-cell count is dangerously low right now. The first thing for that is 
transfusion; after that the stuff I'm leaving will help too. I'll give one 
transfusion before I go, and they should be repeated regularly—say, every ten or 
twelve hours. You could give her one tomorrow morning, and another before 
bedtime, and after that it would be regularly twice a day. Got everything clear 
now?"
"Practically nothing," she admitted, "but I guess Dr. Levy can explain most of 
it later on, when there's more time."
He had already risen from his chair, impatient to get started.
"Wait a minute," she asked. "There's just one thing I've got to understand now. 
Do you mean I'm supposed to give her trans-fusions?"
Why should he look so surprised?
"Well, of course," he said, "some of them. Unless your type's not right. That's 
what I took the samples for. Levy can't give any, of course; he'll have to get 
some. I almost forgot I wanted to tell you about that too." He stopped edging 
toward the stairs and rested his weight against the edge of the table. "You and 
Barbie and Veda ought to take turns—if everybody's blood's all right, that is. 
You won't have to give much anyhow. I guess I made it sound like a lot when I 
said twice a day. After this first one it won't be more than about half a pint 
for Ginny each time. You could give that much yourself each time for a couple of 
days and not have it bother you. Unless .. ." A new thought struck him. "Unless 
there was some reason you thought you shouldn't—the time of month, or anything 
like that?"
"What? Oh no! I didn't mean . . . It wasn't giving the blood I was worried 
about, it was giving the transfusion, you know, doing it. Isn't it awfully 
delicate?"
His smile was warm again. "Don't worry about that. You have to be careful of 
course," he explained, "but it's not the major opera­tion it used to be in young 
Dr. Kildare's day. I'll show you how to do it when I give Ginny hers. And I 
think I'd better give Gar some, too, before I go. Then, for him, the day after 
tomorrow would be soon enough for the next. That is, tomorrow, really—Saturday. 
It's Friday by now, isn't it?"
"I guess so." She hadn't looked at her watch since just before he came, around 
midnight. Now the hour hand was almost four.
"Look," he said, "Ginny ought to get some sleep. Let's finish up with her first, 
and fill in anything you want to know afterwards. I think the samples should be 
ready by now."
But when he had examined the samples he was less cheerful. Levy explained it to 
Gladys.
"Barbie was right. She is an AB, or it looks that way. And Ginny isn't. Anyhow, 
whatever the classifications are, we can't use Barbie's blood at all. But I 
wouldn't worry. You'll be able to give Ginny all she needs if Veda's doesn't 
turn out right."
"Mine is all right?"
"Yours is fine. There's really nothing to worry about. I was just thinking about 
Barbie, though. She's going to feel bad about this. She wants to help so much, 
and she's got this bee in her bonnet about going to the hospital to help out 
there."
"Has she been bothering you about that too?"
"It wasn't any bother. She has to talk about things. Then Veda's not in such 
good shape, and you'll need some rest. If Barbie can't give any blood herself, 
why don't you put her in charge of the sick-room? Let her do the transfusions 
and take charge of Ginny's shots and general care? I think it might make her 
feel more a part of things, and take a load off your shoulders at the same 
time."
"But—she can't manage all that."
"I thought she was doing some kind of child care. She had a baby sitters' club, 
didn't she? Something like that. She was forever asking about first aid and such 
in school. That's why she had her blood tested, I believe. She had some notion 
of being prepared for emer­gencies. Why shouldn't she be able to handle it?"
"Well, naturally she can help. But I don't think she ought to do anything as 
complicated as a blood transfusion. She just isn't old enough for that kind of 
responsibility!"
"I was thinking just the other way round," he urged. "Let her take the 
responsibility and I'll do the helping, if there's anything too difficult for 
her."
Gladys shook her head doubtfully.
"You ready now, Mrs. Mitchell?" the doctor asked. "We can give her the 
transfusion and let her go to sleep. Looks like you're elected as donor in 
chief."
"Think it over." Levy put in a last word.
"All right." She let herself be led away.
The transfusion itself turned out to be simpler than she had imagined possible. 
The doctor drained blood out of her arm exactly as he had done before for the 
sample, with the difference that he had her lie down beforehand, and that it 
flowed into a larger con­tainer, in which a small amount of some fluid had 
already been placed. When he had as much as he wanted he changed the needle and 
rubber tubing on the jar and took the apparatus into Ginny's room.
"Maybe you'd like to hold her on your lap, Mrs. Mitchell?"
Ginny let the doctor take her arm and wipe it off, and watched him suspiciously 
while he inserted the needle and taped it down. Explaining each step carefully, 
he flicked a valve, and the blood began, very slowly, to drain from the upended 
jar. Ginny squirmed a little and giggled.
"It tickles," she announced when the doctor checked the tape to make sure her 
squirming had not dislodged it.
Then it was done, and Ginny had only to be tucked into bed, with a scrap of 
adhesive on her arm, to show where life had flowed in. It seemed a much more 
serious matter that Pallo had mysteri­ously disappeared. Gladys hunted under the 
bed and all over the room, but the horse had vanished. Ginny called his name in 
vain, decided he had run away because she hadn't taken him along to the 
hospital, and dropped off promptly into a deep normal sleep.
"You mean that's all there is to it?" Gladys demanded when she was out in the 
hall again. "I was so worried about giving transfu­sions: It seemed 
so—technical."
"The only part that's even a little delicate is getting the needle in just 
right. And on a child that's easy, as long as you have small needles. The veins 
are so easy to see." The doctor was doing mysterious things again, with a little 
tube of blood, in the bathroom lab. He put it down and turned to Levy. "Looks 
like Veda's a type O, too, so you'll be okay. She ought to be able to spare some 
by Saturday afternoon, if she takes it easy till then. You don't think she'll 
have any objections, do you, Mrs. Mitchell? She was very anxious to give some to 
Ginny, I know, but yours is all right for Ginny, and Veda seems to be the only 
one who can give anything to Gar—except me, and I don't know when I'll be 
around."
"No, I'm sure she won't mind." Now it began to penetrate why he had been so 
upset about the failure of Barbie's sample. He'd been worried about Levy, not 
Ginny. She was so wrapped up in her own problem, she kept forgetting . . .
"I'm sure she won't," Gladys repeated. "She's—almost as de-voted to him as we 
are."
"While we're on the subject of admiring me," Gar broke in, "remember what I was 
talking about before? I was trying to con­vince Gladys," he told Spinelli, "that 
we should make Barbie nurse in chief. I think she could handle the techniques 
all right, don't you?"
"That's a good idea." He kept working while he talked, sterilizing the jar he 
had used for Ginny's transfusion. "She can do it all right," he added easily. 
"Might get her mind off the hospital, too. This place is rapidly turning into a 
hospital annex anyway."
He was silent a moment, concentrating on the work in his hands. "You were right 
about conditions there," he went on to Levy. "But I don't know what else we 
could have expected, the way they were piling them in there the first few 
hours."
"Do you really think she can do it, Doctor?" Gladys asked. "She's so young. I'd 
hate to have anything go wrong."
"She's not that young. She's good with her hands. And she can certainly manage 
both patients. She's got this one"—he pointed to Levy—"wrapped around her 
manicured toenail." The two men smiled at each other, with an understanding that 
left Gladys out. How could they be so cheerful, at this hour of the morning, 
with horrors just past still in mind, and the future holding nothing but fear?
"Anyhow, we can find out," the doctor finished. "Let her prac­tice on the boss 
over here, tonight, and I'll be around to see how she does."
"Anybody want that coffee?" Barbie's voice floated up the stairs.
"Do you need more proof?" The doctor grinned at Gladys. "The girl's not only 
competent—she's clairvoyant." He put the jar care-fully into the boiling water.
"Not anybody!" he called down. "Everybody!"
 
pursuit
 
He was very thirsty. He wasn't hungry any more, and his head had stopped hurting 
a long time ago, but he was afraid to drink from pools, and afraid to go into a 
house. He'd had a drink somewhere, but he didn't remember when. He was very 
thirsty.
It didn't matter, because he was almost home. He knew he could wait for a drink 
till he got there. The road he was on looked like home. It was pretty white 
gravel, and now that the sun was coming up the lawns were green on either side.
He had to find someplace to hide. It was getting too light, and now he'd come 
this far, he couldn't take chances. He was too tired to dodge, and being so 
thirsty made him dizzy. He didn't always see people coming soon enough.
He'd have to hide, and he didn't want to. He was so close now, he didn't want to 
wait another day to get home.
"Halt!"
His eyes searched the road ahead, the trees, the lawns, the houses. He needed 
someplace to hide, to dodge.
"Halt!"
There was someplace up ahead. He began running.
"Halt or I'll shoot!"
He couldn't stop running. A hot poker went through his shoulder. There was a 
terrifying loud noise, and he tripped and fell.
He lay still. A man's boot nudged him, but he didn't move. The man walked away 
and said something to another man. He didn't move for a long time, until he was 
sure the men were gone. Even then he was afraid to stand up. He crawled forward 
slowly, not caring about the dampness of the ground or the gravelly stones.
 
TWENTY-NINE
 
"What about those—sores?" Gladys asked.
"Well . . ."
In the pause while the doctor considered his answer they all heard distinctly 
the sound of the shot outside. It was no longer a novelty, nor even uncommon, 
but Gladys could not get used to it.
"I know they look awful." Peter Spinelli sipped his coffee and tried to ignore 
the interruption. "Gar is going to be a gruesome sight in another week or so, 
unless this stuff I'm giving him takes hold faster than it has any reason to. 
You were thinking about that kid in the hospital?"
Gladys nodded. All night her voice had been playing tricks on her; now she only 
used it when she had to.
"Well, if it's any comfort, Gar's won't look so bad, for the simple reason that 
they'll be properly cared for. You've treated pus sores before, haven't you? 
This is just more of them all at once. It's an inevitable result of the drop in 
the white-cell count. There just isn't any way for the body to fight off minor 
infections. As far as Ginny's concerned . . . I don't know. We haven't had too 
much experience with the kind of radiations she got, and if they haven't shown 
up yet . . . I just don't know."
He fell silent, and they all waited for him to go on.
"I keep saying that, don't I? `I don't know.' I wish there was some other 
answer. You just fix your mind firmly on the fact that those repulsive red 
blotches are unimportant secondary symptoms. They only become important if 
they're not kept clean. In thc hos­pital, without enough nurses, that's a 
problem—particularly with the youngsters, who don't keep their bandages in place 
and won't lie still. But here . . . You might have to lance one occasionally. Do 
you know how to do that?"
Gladys nodded again. "I think so," she added.
"Just like an ordinary boil," he told her. "Aside from that, just keep them 
clean—by which I mean antiseptically clean, not just free from dirt. And I think 
I brought some salve in with the other stuff, but I'm not sure."
"We have some penicillin ointment," Barbie put in, "from when I had acne." Even 
in the middle of the more important conversa­tions, Gladys was startled at 
Barbara's casual reference to a forbidden topic—and in front of the attractive 
young doctor.
"That should be all right if it's still good," he said. "Or anything else you'd 
use for a pus pimple or a boil."
"You keep talking about boils." Gladys essayed a full sentence. "Do you think 
Job got irradiated in the whirlwind?"
The gale of laughter that greeted the small joke was out of all proportion. It 
must have covered the first knock on the door, because when it died down they 
heard a steady determined banging from in front.
"Ten past five," Barbie announced. "Who in the world?"
But Gladys knew. "It's Jim Turner," she told them. "He—" It seemed very funny, 
and she had to control an impulse to giggle before she finished. "He has seats 
for us on the priority train this morning. He's going to be very annoyed that we 
can't come." She got up.
"I better get up to my castle in the air." Levy rose with her. "You stay here, 
Mr. Carney," the doctor told him. "Let's see. Can you drive a car?"
"Haven't driven one for years, but I used to."
"All right, you're my driver, if anything comes up. You better go let him in, 
Mrs. Mitchell." The thumping had started again. "Keep him in front if you can. 
I'll join you if I can think of anything to say that might help. But frankly, I 
think you can handle Turner better than I can."
The trip to the front door was like walking in a dream. From time to time she 
would look around and discover she had traversed five or six feet after all; 
each time it was a fresh surprise.
The banging stopped while she was making the long passage through the front 
hall. She didn't quite dare to hope that he had gone away. When she opened the 
door he had his gloved fist raised to knock again.
"Well now, I'm glad to see you," he boomed. "Couldn't see a light on anywheres 
in the front of the house, and I didn't know if your kid was home sleeping or in 
the hospital or what. You look like they put you through the wringer tonight all 
right. What happened?"
One thing about Jim Turner, she thought, I don't have to talk. She didn't 
answer, and he went right on.
"They take her in to the hospital yet?" he asked.
Gladys shook her head.
"Well, I can see just to look at you it wasn't no false alarm.
What did the kid say? I called in to him right after I saw you, around eleven. 
Told the clerk there to get him a relief and let him come right over here. You 
better sit, down, Gladys. You look beat."
He took her arm and led her to the armchair, almost pushed her down into it.
"Now you take it easy," he said, "an' I'll get everything cleared up. But first 
you got to tell me what the Doc said. I been looking all over for him, but he 
never got back to headquarters tonight, so I don't know what happened at all."
"Ginny's sick," she said. "We took her to the hospital and found out what it 
is." Even that much was an effort.
"Well now, I know she's sick, Gladys, but you said just before she didn't go to 
the hospital."
"No, I meant they didn't—we brought her back."
"Now that don't make sense. You sure she's sick?"
She was too tired to be indignant. Bit by bit, in half sentences, and mostly in 
small corrections of his statements, she told him most of the story.
"I wish I knew where the kid got to," he said finally. "I don't know what he 
wanted to bring her back home for. Now we got to get a truck and take her in 
again. Maybe I can get a car; that would be quicker. That train goes at 
six-thirty. There ain't too much time."
"But I can't "
"You can make it," he assured her. "I can get a car here in ten minutes, if I 
have to, and we can get her all settled at the hospital in plenty of time. You 
could even go along if you want to, and get back in time. I'll tell the driver 
to stick with you."
"You don't understand," she said clearly. Now I have to tell him. Spinelli . . . 
no hospital . . . no train. She listed the things carefully in her mind.
"You're not worrying about your things, are you?" he asked. "If you're not 
packed up, don't give it another thought. We'll find you everything you need, 
and with the place boarded up like it is, you don't have to worry about anybody 
breaking in."
He was trying to anticipate everything. Why, he's being kind, she thought. It 
wasn't even fair to be so surprised. He'd been kind all along.
"No," she said firmly, out loud. "I'm tired, and I'm not—I guess I haven't been 
too clear. It's hard to talk," she explained, and added a smile, apologetically. 
"Just give me a minute and I'll get it straight," she promised.
He waited, and she went over her mental list again.
"Dr. Spinelli's here," she said, "if you want him. He's been with us all night. 
That's the first thing." She paused to form the next thought into words, and he 
filled in the silence.
"I kind of thought he'd be here when he wasn't at headquarters, but then I 
didn't sec a car out front, so I figured he was gone."
"He sent the car away. He said he'd get another one when he was done." She 
remembered. How is he going to say Gar's his driver? He must have forgotten, 
too, about the car. Now she had to keep Turner out of the kitchen.
"I got a bone or two to pick with that young man," Turner said. "Where is he?"
"I don't know. Upstairs, I guess. Wait a minute. Please."
He had already risen. Now he paused. She pointed to his chair, and he sat down 
again reluctantly.
"Let me finish, please. I have to tell you. I'm not going. I'm going to stay 
here. I'm going to keep Ginny home and take care of her. She isn't going to the 
hospital."
"You can't do that," he explained patiently. "You just can't do it, Gladys. 
How're you gonna take care of a sick kid without gas or electric? What're you 
going to do for food? How do you even know the water'll keep running?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything, except I won't send her to that hospital!"
"Now, you're getting too excited, Gladys. You got to calm down. I can see how 
you wouldn't want to send your little girl away from you, but for her own sake, 
you got to think where she'll be best off. You can't take care of her     
"Where she'll be best off?" At last her voice had come back. "I saw that 
hospital! If you think I'd let a child of mine   
"Now, there's no call to yell at me, Gladys. I told you, you got to calm down. I 
know just as good as you that hospital's crowded, and things ain't all they 
might be. Maybe if you saw some of the other places you'd realize how good that 
one is. We had a good outfit in this district. We were all set up, and we kept 
things run­ning smooth. But you got to understand it won't be that way after 
tomorrow. The only place around here that we're hanging onto is the hospital. 
They'll get supplies, and the folks there'll be taken care of."
"I am not going to send my child to that hospital!"
"Gladys, do you think I'd ask you to do anything I wouldn't do myself? I never 
told you, because I figured you got enough troubles of your own, but I had to 
send my own wife and baby there, on account of not having anybody to take care 
of them at home. They didn't even get exposed, but you know Peggy's been laid up 
a long time. She couldn't take care of herself, and whether I like it or not, 
she's better off at the hospital. That's true for your kid too."
"You sent Peggy . . . ?" Gladys stared at him incredulously. "That's right. Now 
you see what I mean."
"Have you seen that place?"
"I ain't had the chance to get up there, but I was figuring on going up before I 
transfer to the camp."
She didn't know what she might have said, or what she could have said, if 
Spinelli hadn't come in then. For a while she just sat still, not even really 
listening. The men were arguing about Veda, she realized, and about the 
hospital.
Then abruptly Turner announced that he had to go. "There's still time for you to 
make that train, Gladys," he told her, ignoring the doctor. "I can arrange for 
Ginny to get to the hospital, and you could come down and see her as soon as 
things get running a little smoother." He wasn't pleading or arguing. He just 
made the state­ment and waited for her answer.
Exhausted, she shook her head stubbornly and said nothing.
"You sure now? All right, then, I hope you don't mind me telling you a thing or 
two before I go. I think you're being a damn fool, if you'll pardon my saying 
so, to listen to this kid. Neither one of you has any idea what's going on in 
this country. You hear what it says on the radio, and you think everything's 
hunky-dory. Well, it ain't. Maybe you don't think much of the way we run that 
hospital," he told Spinelli, "but wait till we're not here, and see how the 
doctors do it!
"And if you think sending Peggy up there was so had"—he turned back to 
Gladys—"wait till you get a taste of what it'll be like around here when there's 
no more controls and no more supplies." He headed briskly for the door. "When 
you come to your senses," he added, "maybe when you get some sleep"—he softened 
it a little—"there'll still be patrols around here till Saturday night. Any one 
of 'em can fix you up with seats on some other train."
He was gone.
The young doctor helped Gladys out of the deep chair. "In my professional 
opinion," he said gravely, "you need some more coffee."
Gratefully she accepted his arm and went back to the kitchen. She didn't want to 
talk about Jim Turner. She was glad when he returned to his instructions for 
Ginny's care, as if there had been no interruption.
"The most important thing is to keep her in bed—aside from the treatments, of 
course. In a way it would almost be better if she felt worse. Her body needs all 
the rest it can get. If you have to hold her down by main force, you do it. With 
three able-bodied adults in the house, that shouldn't be too hard."
"Four," Levy corrected with a meaningful look at Barbie.
"Three," the doctor repeated grimly. "It would be better for you if you felt 
worse too." He turned to Barbara thoughtfully. "A lot of this is going to be up 
to you," he told her. "Suppose for a start you sec to it that the patients stay 
in bed—I mean both of them.
Do you think you can keep your kid sister under your thumb, and the boss here 
too?"
"I'll try," she promised happily..
He studied her eager face and reached a decision. "Your mother is worn out," he 
added. "And Veda—well, I'll come back to that. But all in all, it kind of leaves 
you holding the bag for the next day or two. I'd like to show you how to give 
transfusions. Then you could take care of the most delicate jobs, until your 
mother and Veda are ready to help."
"I'm all right," Gladys started to protest, but her voice had stopped working 
right again, and she had to laugh herself at the feeble sound of the statement.
"Do you really think I can do it?" Barbara was starry-eyed.
"I know you can. It only depends on whether you believe it."
"I . . ." She hesitated. "I wouldn't want to take a chance on doing anything 
wrong."
`"You won't have a chance," he assured her. "You can give one to Gar tonight, 
under my eagle eye. If it goes all right, and I don't see why not, he'll watch 
you do Ginny's tomorrow. If you feel shaky about it he can do it himself. But he 
ought to stay put as much as possible, not even exert himself that much. How 
about it? You want to try bleeding me now?"
"Come on." Levy pushed his chair back and got up, without giving the girl any 
time for doubts. "I need my pint of blood."
They were milling around, getting ready to go, but there was something else 
Gladys wanted to ask about.
"Wait a minute," she pleaded. They were quieter, waiting, and it was easier to 
get everything clear in her mind. I am so tired. . . . "I was wondering, about 
what Jim Turner said," she told the doctor. "How are we going to manage? We've 
got food for a week, so we don't have to worry about that right away." She 
forced her-self to keep talking coherently. "But he said the electricity and the 
water—what can we do without water?"
"I think that was mostly bluff," Spinelli said slowly. "They can't stop the 
water. It would be silly to bother, for one thing, and they'll have to keep it 
running for the hospital. The electricity might go, though. I don't know . . ."
"i could probably do something about that," Levy said. "We might have to use 
candles for light, but I have plenty of batteries in the lab at school, that 
would run any electric equipment you want to use. Or I could rig up something."
Mr. Fix-it! She smiled.
"You," the doctor said again, "will stay in bed and do nothing. My God, man, 
what do you think you're made of? Impregnated lead? You can tell somebody else 
where the stuff is, how to get it, and what to do with it. Doctor's orders," he 
added brusquely. "Is there anything else on your mind?" he asked Gladys.
"Veda," she said. "What about Veda?"
"Oh yes . . . Look." He turned to the others. "You two go upstairs and get 
things started, will you? I want to talk to Mrs. Mitchell a minute anyhow. As 
far as Veda's concerned," he went on, "I told you she needs to take it easy a 
day or two, but there's no special care required. There is one thing that 
worries me, though. I have a hunch the Security officers are going to be here 
looking for her, either this morning or tomorrow when Turner gets back. He's—a 
little annoyed at the way I walked out with her. It wouldn't hurt to keep her 
out of sight until they move their office to the camp. Maybe Gar could share his 
hide-out with her whenever company comes. If you tell them she just walked out 
on you and disappeared they'll be very ready to believe it, you know."
She tried to smile. Her face was stiff and didn't want to bend.
"What I wanted to tell you," he went on, and she realized the others were gone, 
"was about Barbie. I hope you don't think I took too much on myself. It just 
seemed like the best thing to do." He took her arm and began propelling her 
through the door, toward the living room. She didn't have the energy to question 
him or to resist.
"After all," he was saying, "I'm supposed to be the doctor here. You know, a 
couple of days ago, I wouldn't have had the nerve to take over like that. The 
very idea of telling Gar Levy what to do!"
They were in the living room, and he steered her to the couch. "But these last 
few days—well, I'm not the only one. Barbie's been growing up too. You have to 
realize that. Wasn't there a quilt around here?" he broke off, looking for it.
"I'm not trying to make you go to bed," he explained, wrapping it around her 
legs, "because I know it wouldn't do any good. But if you don't get some rest 
you'll be on the sick list too."
Under his warmth she relaxed. What was it about that smile?
"Doctor," she asked dreamily, "why are you doing all this? You don't have to 
take so much trouble. There are other people . . . so many people . . ." She 
thought of the hospital, and a shudder ran through her.
"Why? I don't know." He smiled at the recurrent phrase, but he wasn't joking 
now. She tried to concentrate on what he said, because it mattered.
"Partly because you took Gar Levy in. Maybe mostly because of that. You don't 
know what that means to me. I've been going around with Turner from house to 
house, going back to head-quarters, calming hysterics, taking urine samples, 
making blood tests, giving first aid—and all the time knowing it's come at 
last—the whole bloody mess is really here, and we've all just been sitting on 
our backsides all this time, letting it come. All of us except people like 
Turner, that is. They were ready—all set to pick up their big sticks and wave 
them around playing soldier."
He broke off sharply. "I shouldn't be talking this way," he said. "You're tired, 
and I've got work to do. Gar Levy is a special person to me, that's all. But 
even if it weren't for him I'd want to help you. That first evening, when we 
came in here—honestly, I can't remem­ber anything you did or said that should 
have made any difference."
He half smiled. "That was four days ago. I'm not the same person now. I can't 
remember what happened. I do know that I'd had a bellyful of Turner by that 
time. He went out for a while, looking for someone they spotted in the trees, 
and all the time he was out I was listening for a shot—like the shot tonight. I 
know I blew my top, and gave you a lecture for no good reason, and you didn't 
get angry. I think I blew off because you didn't understand something I said, 
and I don't know why I should have expected you to. It was something . . . but 
it all happened too long ago. I don't know now what it was."
I know, she thought, I know what it was. But it would take too many words to 
explain.
". . . playing soldier," she repeated, and hoped he would understand. "It wasn't 
funny," she remembered out loud. She wanted to make it clear to him that they 
had shared the same distaste, that she had been thinking the same thing.
"Mrs. Mitchell," he said suddenly, "this is a silly thing to ask now, but—would 
you mind telling me how old you are?" "Thirty-seven." She looked at him 
quizzically.
He nodded, thoughtful again. "I'm just about halfway, you see —between you and 
Barbie," he said, as if it explained something. "You go to sleep now, if you 
can." He was brisk and medical again. "I'll wake you up before I go if there's 
anything at all to tell you." He took the stairs three steps at a time.
 
THIRTY
 
She must have dozed off right away, because she remembered he was still in sight 
going up, and when she looked again he was standing at the foot of the stairs. 
He had his suit on, and Barbie was holding out his helmet. He seemed to be 
putting Ginny's blue horse in his pocket. She saw him close the zipper, and 
Barbie handed him the helmet. They were talking all the time; at least they were 
moving their mouths, but she couldn't hear anything.
She came all the way awake, trying to decide when she had stopped dreaming. That 
was silly about the blue horse. . . . They were talking in low voices so as not 
to wake her.
"You did fine, Barbara," he said. "I know you won't believe it, but I couldn't 
have done any better."
She turned her face up eagerly to his smile. "Do you really think so? It'll be 
all right with Ginny too?"
"That's easier," he assured her. "Just be careful about sterilizing —ask Levy if 
you forget anything—and that's all there is to it."
"Will you—do you know when you'll be back?" She seemed to be standing on tiptoe, 
her whole body poised toward him, tense and completely worshipful.
He shook his head, keeping his eyes on her face. "I couldn't say. God knows 
what's going on back there. But I'll get back here, one way or another, before 
you people have to get out. I don't know just what I can do about it, but there 
are a lot of people who'd be willing to help Gar. Maybe they'll have some 
ideas."
Barbara nodded, looking up to him, waiting.
"He's pretty sick, Barbie—sicker than he says. Take good care of him."
Again she nodded, and silence hung between them. He fumbled with his helmet. "I 
have to go now. But I'll get back."
She didn't move.
"Pete," she said, and then with a rush, "oh, Pete, I'm so young!"
His free hand cupped her chin and raised her face closer to his. Then, with the 
fierce swiftness of self-conscious youth, he bent his head and pressed his lips 
against hers.
She didn't touch him. Her hands stayed at her sides, but her mouth clung to him 
until he wrenched away.
"Cut it out! Oh, God, cut it out!" He didn't say it to her or to anybody. He 
said it to the world. Gladys knew that; she hoped Barbara knew it too.
Something went burp on the radio no one had remembered to turn off. Gladys 
managed a convincing start. Barbie covered the minute by running into the room 
to adjust the volume. The doctor had his helmet to keep him busy.
"Five thirty-seven A.M., Friday, May seventh," a hoarse voice intoned. "That is 
the historic moment. We have just received the official news from General 
Headquarters. The war is over! The enemy conceded at 5:37 A.M., Eastern Standard 
Time, just five minutes ago. Ladies and gentlemen, the national anthem!"
Gladys could hardly hear the scratchy record because Barbie was laughing so 
hard. She sat in the big armchair, helpless with laughter, until it was done. 
Spinelli went out in the middle, closing the door very quietly behind him.
When she was spent with laughter Barbara went over to tern the radio off. Then 
they heard the announcer's voice again.
"An important notice: all evacuation orders for suburban areas are temporarily 
suspended. There will be no evacuation trains leav­ing for suburban residents 
until further notice. The war is over, ladies and gentlemen. At five 
thirty-sev—" Barbie's hand closed on the switch.
"Hurray for the red, white, and blue!" she said. "Red for courage and white for 
purity and blue for Pallo."
Pallo? Then it wasn't a dream.
"What about Pallo?" Gladys sat up and shoved the blanket away.
"What about Pallo? You know perfectly—" Hysteria drained
slowly out of her face. "Didn't anyone tell you?" she asked. "Doc found it with 
his little Geiger counter. Patio's a Trojan horse, atomic style. He's hot—a 
one-man radioactive rodeo." A travesty of a smile crossed her face. "Ginny 
should have known better." The smile twisted. "She left him out in the rain!"
Gladys stood up uncertainly, rubbing her arm where it was stiff from sleeping on 
it.
"Pallo?" She tried the sound of the word, but that hadn't changed. "It was 
Pallo." She left it out in the rain . . . she brought it home and went to bed 
with it. . . .
There was a clear picture in her mind—the worn blue horse and the pink and white 
girl safe on the pillow together, night after night. Isn't anything safe? Not 
the rain or the house? Not even a little blue horse?
"But the war's over," she said out loud.
Would anything ever be safe again?
Heavy, pounding footsteps on the porch, heavy, pounding hand on the door. She 
crossed the room and pulled back the bolt, numb to all further shock.
Peter Spinelli pushed past her to the living-room sofa, carefully deposited the 
limp form he carried over his shoulder.
Gladys took one curious step forward.
"Keep away," Spinelli warned. "I think he's out of decontam. Barbie, go up and 
get Doe's Geiger." He closed his visor and turned back to the unconscious man, 
feeling through his heavy gloves for broken bones, aligning the flaccid limbs in 
more normal positions.
When Barbie came back with the counter he opened his visor to speak briefly 
again. "Better get some water boiling. He's been shot, I think."
Barbara ran off again, and Gladys watched from across the room while the doctor 
set up the small machine and angled it every way from the man's body.
"Okay," he said at last. "He's not hot anyway. Poor beggar looks like he's come 
a long way, though." He took off his gloves and helmet, set to work ripping off 
the bloodstained shirt. He studied the shoulder wound and grunted, "They just 
grazed him."
He began pulling things out of his pocket, instruments familiar and unfamiliar 
to Gladys. Briefly he vanished into the kitchen, to wash his hands and give 
Barbie the things that needed sterilizing.
Gladys stayed behind, staring with painful fascination at the man on the couch. 
Step by slow step she went closer, till she could see clearly. She found herself 
curiously unsurprised. Just once she rested her hand softly on the man's head 
and felt him stir in re­sponse. Then she heard the doctor returning, and 
retreated to where she would be out of the way.
She waited patiently while he finished his examination. He turned to her at 
last, relief clearly written on his face.
"I think he'll he all right. I'll clean out that wound as soon as Barbara brings 
the things, and I don't think there's anything else very serious. They just left 
him lying there," the young man said sourly. "Shot at him and drove off. They—" 
He stopped and looked questioningly at Gladys. "He'll need care. He's in bad 
shape; but he can pull through with care. Of course he might turn out to be 
another radiation case. The Geiger wouldn't show that. If he is, I'm afraid 
there's no hope . . ."
He's not. She knew that much at least.
"We'll take care of him," she told the doctor. Shock and minor injuries, the 
radio said. "We'll take very good care of him." Then she explained.
"It's Jon, you know. He came home."