! Can't you almost hear some kinda cars and trucks goin'
by?"

John Endlich's wife, helping him open the great box, also had things to
say, in spite of the worry showing in her face. She touched the
dessicated soil with a gauntleted hand. "Johnny," she remarked
wonderingly. "You can see the splash-marks of the last rain that ever
fell here--"

"Yeah," Endlich growled without any further comment. Inside himself, he
was fighting the battle of lost things. The blue sky. The shifting
beauty of clouds in sunshine. The warm whisper of wind in trees. The
rattle of traffic. The babble of water. The buzz of insects. The smell
of flowers. The sight of grass waving.... In short, all the evidences of
life.

"A lot of things that was here once, we'll bring back, won't we, Pop?"
Bubs questioned with astonishing maturity.

"Hope so," John Endlich answered, keeping his doubts hidden behind
gruffness. Maybe it was a grim joke that here and now every force in
himself was concentrated on substantial objectives--to the exclusion of
his defects. The drive in him was to end the maddening silence, and to
rub out the mood of harsh barrenness, and his own aching homesickness,
by struggling to bring back a little beauty of scenery, and a little of
living motion. It was a civilized urge, a home-building urge, maybe a
narrow urge. But how could anybody stand being here very long, unless
such things were done? If they ever could be. Maybe, willfully, he had
led himself into a grimmer trap than it had even seemed to be--or than
he had ever wanted....

* * * * *

Inside his space suit, he had begun to sweat furiously. And it was more
because of the tension of his nerves than because of the vigor with
which he plied his pinchbar, doing the first task which had to be done.
Steel ribbons were snapped, nails were yanked silently from the great
box, boards were jerked loose.

In another minute John Endlich and his wife were setting up an airtight
tent, which, when the time came, could be inflated from compressed-air
bottles. They worked somewhat awkwardly, for their instruction period
had been brief, and they were green; but the job was speedily finished.
The first requirement--shelter--was assured.

Digging again into the vast and varied contents of the box, John Endlich
found some things he had not expected--a fine rifle, a pistol and
ammunition. At which moment an ironic imp seemed to sit on his shoulder,
and l