hich makes men
different from beasts will soon be no more."

"He's right. One of us, alone, is helpless," the Reader said. "It is
only in the Toon that there is strength. He wants to organize a Toon
of all Toons."

"That's about it. We are beginning to make helicopters like the one
Loudons and I came here in. We'll furnish your community with one or
more of them. We can give you a radio, so that you can communicate
with other communities. We can give you rifles and machine guns and
ammunition, to fight the ... the Scowrers, did you call them? And we
can give you atomic engines, so that you can build machines for
yourselves."

"Some of our people--Alex Barrett, here, the gunsmith, and Stan
Markovitch, the distiller, and Harrison Grant, the iron worker--get
their living by making things. How'd they make out, after your
machines came in here?" Verner Hughes asked.

"We've thought of that; we had that problem with other groups we've
helped," Loudons said. "In some communities, everybody owns everything
in common; we don't have much of a problem, there. Is that the way you
do it, here?"

"Well, no. If a man makes a thing, or digs it out of the ruins, or
catches it in the woods, it's his."

"Then we'll work out some way. Give the machines to the people who are
already in a trade, or something like that. We'll have to talk it over
with you and with the people who'd be concerned."

"How is it you took so long finding us," Alex Barrett asked. "It's
been two hundred or so years since the Wars."

"Alex! You see but you do not observe!" The Toon Leader rebuked.
"These people have their flying machines, which are highly complicated
mechanisms. They would have to make tools and machines to make them,
and tools and machines to make those tools and machines. They would
have to find materials, often going far in search of them. The marvel
is not that they took so long, but that they did it so quickly."

"That's right," Altamont said. "Originally, Fort Ridgeway was a
military research and development center. As the country became
disorganized, the Government set this project up, to develop ways of
improvising power and transportation and communication methods and
extracting raw materials. If they'd had a little more time, they might
have saved the country. As it was, they were able to keep themselves
alive and keep something like civilization going at the Fort, while
the whole country was breaking apart around them. Then, whe