n the
rockets stopped falling, they started to rebuild. Fortunately, more
than half the technicians at the Fort were women; there was no
question of them dying out. But it's only been in the last twenty
years that we've been able to make nuclear-electric engines, and this
is the first time any of us have gotten east of the Mississippi."

"How did your group manage to survive?" Loudons said. "You call it the
Toon; I suppose that's what the word platoon has become, with time.
You were, originally, a military platoon?"

"_Pla_-toon!" the white-bearded man said. "Of all the unpardonable
stupidity! Of course that was what it was. And the title, Tenant, was
originally _lieu_-tenant; I know that, though we have all dropped the
first part of the word. That should have led me, if I'd used my wits,
to deduce platoon from toon.

"Yes, sir. We were originally a platoon of soldiers, two hundred years
ago, at the time when the Wars ended. The Old Toon, and the First
Tenant, were guarding pows, whatever they were. The pows were all
killed by a big bomb, and the First Tenant, Lieutenant Gilbert Dunbar,
took his ... his platoon and started to march to Deecee, where the
Government was, but there was no Government, any more. They fought
with the people along the way. When they needed food, or ammunition,
or animals to pull their wagons, they took them, and killed those who
tried to prevent them. Other people joined the Toon, and when they
found women whom they wanted, they took them. They did all sorts of
things that would have been crimes if there had been any law, but
since there was no law any longer, it was obvious that there could be
no crime. The First Ten--Lieutenant--kept his men together, because he
had The Books. Each evening, at the end of each day's march, he read
to his men out of them.

[Illustration: ]

"Finally, they came here. There had been a town here, but it had been
burned and destroyed, and there were people camping in the ruins. Some
of them fought and were killed; others came in and joined the platoon.
At first, they built shelters around this building, and made this
their fort. Then they cleared away the ruins, and built new houses.
When the cartridges for the rifles began to get scarce, they began to
make gunpowder, and new rifles, like these we are using now, to shoot
without cartridges. Lieutenant Dunbar did this out of his own
knowledge, because there is nothing in The Books about making
gunpowder; the