“I only wish,” he said restlessly, “that I could work out some way of getting Nancy's heifer into the cellar. And if eggs stay high one more month, I can build the tunnel to the generator. Then there's the well. Only one well, even if it's enclosed—”

“And when we came out here seven years ago—” She rose to him at last and rubbed her lips gently against his thick blue shirt. “We only had a piece of ground. Now, we have three chicken houses, a thousand broilers, and I can't keep track of how many layers and breeders.”

She stopped as his body tightened and he gripped her shoulders.

“Ann, Ann! If you think like that, you'll act like that! How can I expect the children to—Ann, what we have—all we have—is a five-room cellar, concrete-lined, which we can seal in a few seconds, an enclosed well from a fairly deep underground stream, a windmill generator for power and a sunken oil-burner-driven generator for emergencies. We have supplies to carry us through, Geiger counters to detect radiation and lead-lined suits to move about in—afterwards. I've told you again and again that these things are our lifeboat, and the farm is just a sinking ship.”

“Of course, darling.” Plunkett's teeth ground together, then parted helplessly as his wife went back to feeding the baby.

“You're perfectly right. Swallow, now, Dinah. Why, that last bulletin from the Survivors Club would make anybody think.”

He had been quoting from the October Survivor and Ann had recognized it. Well? At least they were doing something—seeking out nooks and feverishly building crannies—pooling their various ingenuities in an attempt to haul themselves and their families through the military years of the Atomic Age.

The familiar green cover of the mimeographed magazine was very noticeable on the kitchen table. He flipped the sheets to the thumb-smudged article on page five and shook his head.