The moon was lowering when Hammer called a halt. They had topped a high ridge overlooking a darker mass some two miles off, a town, “You can sleep now,” said the chief. “We’ll attack shortly before sunrise. We’ll take the place an’ then—food! Houses! Women! Likker! An’—more.”

The gang was too tired then to care about anything but sleep. They stretched on the ground, lank animal figures in clumsy garments of leather and ragged homespun, carrying knives and clubs, axes, even spears and bows. Hammer squatted motionless, a great bearded gorilla of a man, his massive face turned toward the sleeping town. A pair of his lieutenants, lean young men with something hard and deadly in their impassive countenances, joined him.

“O.K., Dick, what’s the idea?” muttered one. “We don’t just go tearin’ in; if that was all, there’re towns closer to where we came from. What’re you cookin’ now?”

“Plenty,” said Hammer: “Now don’t get noisy, an’ I’ll explain. My notion’ll give us more’n a few days’ food an’ rest an’ celebration. It’ll give us—home.”

“Home!” whispered the other outlaw. His cold eyes took on an odd remote look. “Home! The word tastes queer. I ain’t spoke it so long—”

“I useta live here, before the war,” said Hammer softly and tonelessly. “When things blew up, though, I was in the army. The plagues hit my unit, an’ those who didn’t die the first week went over the hill. I headed south, figgerin’ the country’d busted up an’ I’d better go where it’d be warm. Only too many other people got the same idea.”

“You’ve told us that much before.”

“I know, I know, but—anybody who lived through it can’t forget it. I still see those men dyin’—the plague eatin’ ’em. Well, we fought for food. Separate gangs attacked when they met. Until at last there were few enough left an’ things picked up a little. So I j’ined the village an’ tried farmin’.”

The dog howled again, closer. There was an eerie quavering in that cry, something never voiced before the mutations began. “That mutt,” growled one of the gang-men, “will wake the whole muckin’ town.”

“Nah, this place has been peaceful too long,” said Hammer. “You can see that. No guards nowhere. Why, there’re sep’rate farms. We had to fight other men, an’ then when we finally settled down, it was the bugs an’ blights, an’ at last the floods washed our land from under us an’ we had to take to gang life again. Then I remembered my ol’ home town Southvale. Nice farmin’ land, not too bad weather, an’ judgin’ by reports an’ rumors about this region, settled down, a’most rich. So I thought I’d come back—” Hammer’s teeth gleamed white under the moon.

“Well, you always did love t’hear y’rself talk. Now suppose you say what your deal is.”

“Just this. The town’s cut off from outside by ordinary means. Once we hold it, we can easy take care o’ the outlyin’ farms an’ villages. But—you can see the gov’ments’s been here. Few bugs in the crops, so somebody must’a been sprayin’. A jet overhead yesterday. An’ so on.”