He found, oddly enough, that actually working out how you could drive a giant truck was the easiest part. The hardest part was getting people to believe that they could do it. He wasn't the leader. He'd have liked to be a leader. A leader could stick his chin out and do brave things. What Masklin had to do was argue and persuade and, sometimes, lie very slightly. He found it was often easier to get people to do things if you let them think it was their idea. Ideas! That was the tricky bit, all right. And there were lots of ideas that they needed. They needed to learn to work together. They needed tolearn to read. They needed to think that female nomes were, well, nearlyas intelligent as males (although everyone knew that really this wasridiculous and that if females were encouraged to think too much theirbrains would overheat).

Anyway, it all worked. The truck did leave just before the Storemysteriously burned down, and hardly damaging anything very much, it wasdriven out into the country.

The nomes found an abandoned quarry tucked into a hillside, and movedinto the ruined buildings.

And then they knew everything was going to be All Right. There was goingto be, they'd heard, a Bright New Dawn.

Whatever that was.

Most nomes had never seen a dawn, bright or otherwise, and if they hadthey would have known that the trouble with bright new dawns is thatthey're usually followed by cloudy days. With scattered showers.

Six months passed ...

This is the story of the Winter.

This is the story of the Great Battle.

This is the story of the awakening of the Cat, the Dragon in the Hill, with eyes like great eyes and a voice like a great voice and teeth likegreat teeth.

But the story didn't end there.

It didn't start there, either.