lvania and south into Delaware it was the same. Here
the refugees were met with other streams of desperate humanity moving
out of the thickly populated cities. Epidemics of disease had broken
out where the starving population was thickest and the sanitary
facilities poorest.

On the west coast the situation was somewhat better. The population of
the Bay Area was streaming north and south toward Red Bluff and
Sacramento, and into the Salinas and San Joaquin valleys. From southern
California they were moving east to the reclaimed desert farming areas.
There were suffering and death among them, but the rioting and mob
violence were less.

From all over the country there were increasing reports of groups of
wanderers moving like nomadic tribesmen, looting, killing, and
destroying. There was no longer any evidence of a central government
capable of sufficient communication to control these elements of the
population on even a local basis.

Maria played the tapes of these reports for Ken. She seemed stolid and
beyond panic as she heard them again. To Ken, hearing them for the first
time, it seemed utterly beyond belief. It was simply some
science-fiction horror story played on the radio or television, and when
it was over he would find the world was completely normal.

He looked up and saw Maria watching him. He saw the little tin-can stove
with a few sticks of green wood burning ineffectively. He saw the large
rack of batteries behind the transmitter. Unexpectedly, for the first
time in many days, he thought of the Italian steamship alone in the
middle of the Atlantic.

"The _White Bird_," he said to Maria. "Did you hear anything more of
her?"

"One of the amateurs told me he'd picked up a report from the ship about
a week ago. The radio operator said he was barricaded in the radio room.
Rioting had broken out all over the ship. Dozens of passengers had been
killed; the ones who were left were turning cannibalistic. That was the
last report anyone has heard from the ship."

Ken shuddered. He glanced through the window and caught a vision of
Science Hall on College Hill. A fortress, he thought. There were maybe a
dozen other such fortresses scattered throughout the world; in them lay
the only hope against the enemy that rampaged across the Earth.

In the sky, he could see the comet's light faintly, even through the
lead-gray clouds from which snow was falling.

"You should get back to bed," said Maria. "You look as