“Of course not, dear—” Evelyn said.

“So I just held on to him and tried to get my legs under me,” Crane said. “And then something smashed my legs and side—”

He paused, wondering how much she knew of what really had happened. He didn’t want to frighten her.

“Evelyn, darling—” he said, trying to reach up his arms. “No dear,” she said. She looked back in fright. “You’ve got to hurry. You’ve got to watch out behind!”

“The cinder storms?” He grimaced. “I’ve been through them before.”

“Not the storms!” Evelyn cried. “Something else. Oh, Stephen—”

Then she was gone, but Crane knew she had spoken the truth. There was something behind—something that had been following him all those weeks. Far in the back of his mind he had sensed the menace. It was closing in on him like a shroud. He shook his head. Somehow that was impossible. He was the last living thing on Earth. How could there be a menace?

The wind roared behind him, and an instant later came the heavy clouds of cinders and ashes. They lashed over him, biting his skin. With dimming eyes, he saw the way they coated the mud and covered it with a fine dry carpet. Crane drew his knees under him and covered his head with his arms. With the knapsack as a pillow, he prepared to wait out the storm. It would pass as quickly as the rain.

The storm whipped up a great bewilderment in his sick head. Like a child he pushed at the pieces of his memory, trying to fit them together. Why was Hallmyer so bitter toward him? It couldn’t have been that argument, could it?

What argument?

Why, that one before all this happened.

Oh, that!

Abruptly, the pieces fit themselves together.

Crane stood alongside the sleek lines of his ship and admired it tremendously. The roof of the shed had been removed and the nose of the ship hoisted so that it rested on a cradle pointed toward the sky. A workman was carefully burnishing the inner surfaces of the rocket jets.