smooth-topped concrete. So could she.

We were right in the midst of the gas tanks now, six or seven of them
towered around us, squeezed like beer cans by the decade-old blast but
their metal looking sound enough until you became aware of the red light
showing through in odd patterns of dots and dashes where vaporization or
later erosion had been complete. Almost but not quite lace-work. Just
ahead of us, right across the freeway, was the six-storey skeletal
structure of an old cracking plant, sagged like the power towers away
from the blast and the lower storeys drifted with piles and ridges and
smooth gobbets of dust.

* * * * *

The light was getting redder and smokier every minute.

With the cessation of the physical movement of walking, which is always
some sort of release for emotions, I could feel the twin urges growing
faster in me. But that was all right, I told myself--this was the
crisis, as she must realize too, and that should key us up to bear the
urges a little longer without explosion.

I was the first to start to turn my head. For the first time I looked
straight into her eyes and she into mine. And as always happens at such
times, a third urge appeared abruptly, an urge momentarily as strong as
the other two--the urge to speak, to tell and ask all about it. But even
as I started to phrase the first crazily happy greeting, my throat
lumped, as I'd known it would, with the awful melancholy of all that was
forever lost, with the uselessness of any communication, with the
impossibility of recreating the past, our individual pasts, any pasts.
And as it always does, the third urge died.

I could tell she was feeling that ultimate pain just like me. I could
see her eyelids squeeze down on her eyes and her face lift and her
shoulders go back as she swallowed hard.

She was the first to start to lay aside a weapon. She took two sidewise
steps toward the freeway and reached her whole left arm further across
her body and laid the dart gun on the concrete and drew back her hand
from it about six inches. At the same time looking at me hard--fiercely
angrily, you'd say--across her left shoulder. She had the experienced
duelist's trick of seeming to look into my eyes but actually focussing
on my mouth. I was using the same gimmick myself--it's tiring to look
straight into another person's eyes and it can put you off guard.

My left side was nearest the wall so I didn't for the