eau. They're all good men. Just under
the weather right now."

"You should'a seen us when it first happened," Jed said with feeling. "I
reckon you're the E? Come to find out why we didn't communicate?" He
spread his open hands and waved them to indicate the area around him.
"Now you see why we didn't. Hollerin' loud as we could wouldn't do the
job, and that's all we got left."

Somehow the introductions relaxed them all a little, as if the familiar
formality provided some kind of normalcy in an incredible situation.

"Don't seem right hospitable, just standin' here," Jed added with a
shrug. "But there ain't no house, nor camp, nor fire to share with you."

"We're not suffering at the moment, except mentally," Cal reassured him.
Involuntarily he glanced up at the spreading branches of the tree, as if
to reassure himself also; then grinned in self-consciousness at the
pantomime of fear. "First thing is to find out what happened."

"Might as well hunker down right here on the ground," Jed said. "One
place is good as another right now."

The men all crouched or sat on the dead leaves which carpeted the
ground. Cal suddenly realized he was glad to take the strain from his
legs, as if he had been maintaining stance through sheer will.

"It is a poor greeting to visitors from home," Ahmed spoke up, then
cleared his voice in surprise to hear himself speaking. "We cannot even
provide a cup of coffee."

"Cain't have no fire," Dawkins explained. "See?"

He picked up two dead twigs laying on the ground near him. He began
rubbing them together, in the ancient way of creating fire. The two
sticks flew apart and out of his hands.

"Try it," he invited Cal.

Curious, even unbelieving, Cal picked up two broken branches. He started
to rub them together. He felt them twisted, wrenched, and pulled out of
his hands. He saw them flying through the air with a force he had not
provided. He got up, picked them up again, sat back down, and held the
sticks very tightly in his hands. He tried to bring them together.
Suddenly, he simply lost interest.

"Oh to hell with it," he said unexpectedly, and dropped the sticks. His
astonishment at himself was a shock.

There was a kind of chuckle from Van Tassel, one without mirth. "Kind of
gets you, doesn't it?" he said.

Cal looked at his hands, and at the sticks laying beside him.

"Now why would I do that?" he asked. "All at once it seemed unimportant
to start a fire, or even try. What