Wood split and crashed, and a man leaped into the house over the fallen door. Wayne saw the pistol and dropped his own unloaded rifle. He remembered such ragged figures, the shaggy wolf-eyed men whose weapons were all too ready. The outlaws had returned.

“Smart,” nodded the gangman. “ ’Nother see ’n’ I’d’a scragged you. Outside.”

“What…is…this?” Wayne’s lips were stiff.

“Get out!”

Wayne went obliquely, praying he could draw the bandit out of the house. “If it’s loot you want,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level, “I’ll show you where the silver is.”

Another gangman entered. He had abandoned his unaccustomed gun for his old ax. “Ever’body out o’ here?” he asked.

“I just got in,” said the first. “I’ll search it myself. Find y’r own house.” He turned on Wayne and slammed him in the stomach with one fist, “Scram, you—down t’ the main square!”

Retching, Wayne staggered back, and outside mostly by chance. Sick and dizzy, head roaring like his collapsing world, he leaned against the wall.

“Rod!”

He turned, unbelieving. Karen had just come around the side of the house, pale but outwardly composed. “Are you all right, Rod?” she whispered.

“Yeah…yeah…but you…how—?”

“I heard them talking and slipped out a window. But Rod—Al’s gone.”

“Gone!” Briefly, new dismay shook Wayne. Al—whatever the mutant was, Al was his son. Then relief came, realization. “He must have sneaked out, too. He’s all right. He knows how to run and hide—all mutant kids learn that.” His mind added grayly: And in the next generation all human kids will have to learn it.

“But us—Rod, what is this?”

Wayne shrugged and started down the street. “Town’s apparently captured,” he said.

“Outlaws—we have to run, Rod! Have to get away!”

“Not much use, I’m afraid. This is the work of a well-disciplined group under a smart leader. They must have come up from the south, resisting the temptation to plunder on the way. They took us by complete flat-footed surprise, overpowered the police—I recognized Ed Haley’s pistol in that bandit’s hand—and are now rounding us up in quite a methodical fashion. I wasn’t just shoved out, I was ordered to report to the square. That suggests they’re guarding all ways out. Anyway, we can’t flee right now.”

* * *

They had fallen in with a group of citizens moving with the dumb blank obedience of stunned minds toward the square under outlaw guard, The gang was having little trouble. They went from house to house, forcing the inhabitants into the street. The work went fast.

There was fighting now and then, short and sharp, ending in blow of club or knife or bullet. A couple of families with guns stood off the invaders. Wayne saw fire arrows shot into the roofs of those houses.

He shuddered and bent his head to Karen’s ear. “We do have to get out as soon as we can,” he muttered. “If we can. They’re disciplined now, and wholly merciless. Once we’re completely rounded up, the discipline will break but the ruthlessness stay in such an orgy of looting and drinking, burning and rape and murder, as has always followed barbarian conquests.”