id, thoughtful all at once. "They sure need it."
Then he grinned. "Hey, how'd this sound: HEAR THE WORLD-FAMOUS MURDERER
POP TRUMBULL TALK AGAINST WAR. WEAR YOUR STEEL THROAT PROTECTORS. Pretty
good, hey?"

We all laughed at that, grudgingly at first, then with a touch of
wholeheartedness. I think we all recognized that things weren't going to
be very cheerful from here on in and we'd better not turn up our noses
at the feeblest fun.

"I guess I didn't have anything very bright in mind," Alice admitted to
me, while to Pop she said, "All right, I forgive you for the present."

"Don't!" Pop said with a shudder. "I hate to think of what happened to
the last bugger made the mistake of forgiving me."

We looked around and took stock of our resources. It was time we did. It
was getting dark fast, although we were chasing the sun, and there
weren't any cabin lights coming on and we sure didn't know of any way of
getting any.

We wadded a couple of satchels into the hole in the World Screen without
trying to probe it. After a while it got warmer again in the cabin and
the air a little less dusty. Presently it started to get too smoky from
the cigarettes we were burning, but that came later.

We screwed off the walls the few storage bags we hadn't inspected. They
didn't contain nothing of consequence, not even a flashlight.

I had one last go at the buttons, though there weren't any left with
nimbuses on them--the darker it got, the clearer that was. Even the
Atla-Hi button wouldn't push now that it had lost its violet halo. I
tried the gunnery patterns, figuring to put in a little time taking pot
shots at any mountains that turned up, but the buttons that had been
responding so well a few minutes ago refused to budge. Alice suggested
different patterns, but none of them worked. That console was really
locked--maybe the shot from Savannah was partly responsible, though
Atla-Hi remote-locking things was explanation enough.

"The buggers!" I said. "They didn't have to tie us up _this_ tight.
Going east we at least had a choice--forward or back. Now we got none."

"Maybe we're just as well off," Pop said. "If Atla-Hi had been able to
do anything more for us--that is, if they hadn't been sieged in, I
mean--they'd sure as anything have pulled us in. Pull the plane in, I
mean, and picked us out of it--with a big pair of tweezers, likely as
not. And contrary to your flattering opinion of my preaching (which by
the way none of