each other in trouble, and work
together.

"If this isn't done, everything that 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 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 and so we don't have much of a problem. 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 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 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, whi