He stepped back to where Al and Sylvia stood.

“Can you get spare parts?”

Al said, “You show us whatcha need an’ we’ll get it for you.”

“Okay.”

“Can ya fix it?” Al shouted.

“Sure. Had one just like it in school, in mechanical repair class. Our auxiliary generator at home is a later model—”

“Okay, okay. You can stay ’til it stops runnin’ again. If you can fix it, great. If you can’t . . .” He jerked his thumb in an old baseball umpire’s gesture that meant out.

Ron said, “We ought to shut it down and overhaul it, put in new parts, get it back in good shape. Then it won’t break down on you.”

“Shut it off on purpose?”

“Yes.”

Al shook his head. “Naw, I don’t like that. It stops all by itself often enough. I ain’t gonna shut it down on purpose.”

“But—”

Al walked away from him.

They went back upstairs. Ron could still hear the clattering of the diesel engine. His ears were ringing from the noise. His skin felt slimy with machine oil.

“Okay,” Al said when they reached the ground floor. “You stay until it quits workin’ again. Now go find a room of yer own. I don’t wantcha stayin’ with my girl no more.”

Ron felt the air gasp out of him, as if someone had punched him in the gut. Your girl? he asked silently. He looked at Sylvia, but she wouldn’t look back at him.

“An’ come see me first thing t’morrow mornin’,” Al commanded. “We’ll start gettin’ those parts you want.”

Ron nodded dumbly.

He turned and headed for the stairs. His girl. Sylvia’s his girl? Then why did she . . . All at once it hit him. She’s agreed to be his girl to save me!

Ron didn’t sleep that night. Not at all.

He saw daylight come, slowly brightening the window of the room he had picked. With the Dome over Manhattan, you never got any direct sunlight, just a gradual brightness that had to fight its way through the dirt-streaked windows.

Ron had picked out a room on the floor above Sylvia’s. It was blazing hot, but he knew he could get the air-conditioner working soon enough.

Now he lay sprawled on a mattress, hands under his head, watching the daylight come to the city. And wondering about Sylvia. Wondering and worrying.

He heard the door to the hallway creak open.

“Ron?” It was Davey’s high thin voice.

Sitting up, Ron answered, “Right here, Davey.”

The boy ran in and knelt beside him. “Hi, Ron. Al says we’re gonna go out on a raid t’day! An’ you’re comin’!”

“A raid?”

Davey nodded. He was almost trembling, he was so excited. “Th’ warriors’re meetin’ up on th’ roof. Al says fer you t’ come up right away.”

Puzzled, frowning, Ron followed Davey up flights of creaking steps to the roof. More than two dozen guys were already there, clustered around Al.

The roof was the highest of all the buildings in the block. Ron could look out over the rooftops of the nearby buildings and see the gray ribwork of the Dome, dim and misty in the distance. The roof was covered with black gravel-like stuff that crunched and stung under Ron’s bare feet. There was something wrong about the place, though. It took Ron a few moments to realize what it was: no wind. If he had been this high back home at the Tracts, on a building roof or a hill, there would have been a breeze. But here under the Dome there wasn’t any. At least, not at that particular moment.