d then to
die a natural death."

The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and
whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate
us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... _Let_ them be
finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."

There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him
forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing
there close together, as though attached.

Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth--to die. You
_will_ die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or
your people again."

"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."

"A ground car," repeated the President. "And--supplies.... Yes."

"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range
of mountains."

"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been
allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds
of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the
sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you
any longer. Go now. Quickly!"

Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the
half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that
should sink to the floor.

* * * * *

It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth
that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The
ground car sat still on a crumbling road.

Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk
into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way
along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically
for the place of salvation.

"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you
think they'd be with us?"

"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space
again--or in prison."

She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the
night over the decaying road.

"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"

"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill
myself."

"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward
the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the
land?"

He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward,
watching the headlights push back the darkness.

They fol