alized that Venus and Mercury were due to be shattered
after Earth, just as Mars was bombarded before it.

So the struggle to escape through time was begun in the fifty-ninth
minute of the last hour. Cities struggled to build time-ships and get a
pioneer vessel through to future time. Asteroids plunged down upon them,
wiping them out. Cities struggled on, passing to each other--to the
thinning number of those who remained--such solutions to such problems
as they developed. But there were fewer and fewer.... The city from
which the children came had fallen in ruins from earth-shocks, and only
a fraction of its population continued frantically to labor on....

But Soames hadn't thought of this. It was Gail who found it out from the
children with her. And she'd told Soames that he must help Fran at any
cost, and told the reason in two words and a number. Speaking of Fran's
people, she'd told Soames,

"_Only 2,000 left._"

It was true. It checked with the number of ships that came through to
modernity. Only two thousand people remained of Fran's race. They could
not conquer two billions of humankind. They could not rule them. They
could only take refuge among them, and share what knowledge they could
with them.

Fran leaned happily against Soames' shoulder. The 'copter swung away
from a broad wide valley.

Fran pointed. Two valleys came together here. He, who had come away from
the missile base on foot, was an authority on how to get back to it in a
helicopter.

The 'copter flew on.

* * * * *

Fran said:

"There!"

And there were small lights, the color of kerosene lamps. But they were
not lamps, but electric lights. Soames sent the 'copter sweeping toward
the remarkably convincing Rocky Mountain village. The ship barely
cleared an electrified fence, the last of three. But if there were
sentries who might have fired on it, they had already heard of the
arrival of a fleet of alien spaceships. Nothing so human as a helicopter
could be an enemy when an invading fleet from who-knows-where was just
reported....

The 'copter settled to ground with a whistling noise. Soames cut off the
motors. Then Fran was calling joyously, and Zani squealed from a window,
and Hod came tumbling out of a window and Mal popped out of nowhere and
came running. There were shouts in the village. Then Gail was coming,
also.

"Pile aboard!" commanded Soames. "Your families are here, kids, and
they're wa