“And so now—?”

“We’re over the worst. Except for outlaws, we have the population fairly well controlled. The civilized people are fairly well fed, with some kind of housing. We have machine shops, small factories, and the like going, enough to keep our transportation and other mechanism ‘level.’ Presently we’ll be able to expand these, begin actually increasing what we have. In another five years or so, I guess, we’ll be integrated enough to drop martial law and hold a general election. A big job ahead, but a good one.”

The car halted to let a cow lumber over the road, a calf trotting at her heels. She was gaunt and shaggy, and skittered nervously from the vehicle into the brush.

“Wild,” explained Robinson. “Most of the real wildlife was killed off for food in the last two years, but a lot of farm animals escaped when their owners died or fled, and have run free ever since. They—” He noticed Drummond’s fixed gaze. The pilot was looking at the calf. Its legs were half the normal length.

“Mutant,” said the general. “You find a lot of such animals. Radiation from bomb or dusted areas. There are even a lot of human abnormal births.” He scowled, worry clouding his eyes. “In fact, that’s just about our worst problem. It—”

The car came out of the woods onto the shore of a small lake. It was a peaceful scene, the quiet waters like molten gold in the slanting sunlight, trees ringing the circumference and all about them the mountains. Under one huge pine stood a cottage, a woman on the porch.

It was like one summer with Barbara—Drummond cursed under his breath and followed Robinson toward the little building. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it could never be. Not ever again. There were soldiers guarding this place from chance marauders, and—There was an odd-looking flower at his foot. A daisy, but huge and red and irregularly formed.

A squirrel chittered from a tree. Drummond saw that its face was so blunt as to be almost human.

Then he was on the porch, and Robinson was introducing him to “my wife Elaine.” She was a nice-looking young woman with eyes that were sympathetic on Drummond’s exhausted face. The aviator tried not to notice that she was pregnant.

He was led inside, and reveled in a hot bath. Afterward there was supper, but he was numb with sleep by then, and hardly noticed it when Robinson put him to bed.

* * *

Reaction set in, and for a week or so Drummond went about in a haze, not much good to himself or anyone else. But it was surprising what plenty of food and sleep could do, and one evening Robinson came home to find him scribbling on sheets of paper.

“Arranging my notes and so on,” he explained. “I’ll write out the complete report in a month, I guess.”

“Good. But no hurry.” Robinson settled tiredly into an armchair. “The rest of the world will keep. I’d rather you’d just work at this off and on, and join my staff for your main job.”