on the road ahead. The
headlights showed a place where another road crossed this one and
there was a filling station, still and dark, and four or five
dwellings nearby with no single sign of life about them. Then the
crossroads settlement fell behind. A mile beyond it Jill said
startledly, "Lights! There's a town. It's lighted."

"It's Serena," said the driver. "The street lights are on because the
electricity comes from far away. With the lights on it's a marker for
the planes, too, so they can tell exactly where they are and the Park
too. They can't see the ground so good at night, from away up there."

The white street lamps seemed to twinkle as the trailer-truck rumbled
on. A single long line of them appeared to welcome the big vehicle. It
went on into the town. It reached the business district. There were
side streets, utterly empty, and then the main street divided. The
truck bore to the right. There were three and four-story buildings.
Every window was blank and empty, reflecting only the white street
lamps. No living thing anywhere. There had been no destruction, but
the town was dead. Its lights shone on streets so empty that it would
have seemed better to leave them to the kindly dark.

Jill exclaimed, "Look! That window!"

And ahead, in the dead and lifeless town, a single window glowed from
electric light inside it, and it looked lonelier than anything else in
the world.

"I'm gonna look into that!" said the driver. "Nobody's supposed to be
here."

The truck came to a stop. The driver got out. There was a stirring,
behind, and the small man who'd given his place to Jill and Lockley
popped out of the trailer body. Lockley saw the name of a local
telephone company silhouetted on the lighted windowpane. He opened the
door. Jill followed him instantly. The four of them--driver, helper,
Lockley and Jill--crowded into the building hallway to investigate
the one lighted room in a town where twenty thousand people were
supposed to live.

There was a door with a frosted glass top through which light showed.
The driver turned the door-knob and marched in. The room had an
alcoholic smell. A man with sunken cheeks slept heavily in a chair,
his head forward on his chest.

The driver shook him.

"Wake up, guy!" he said sternly. "Orders are for all civilians to
clear outa this town. You wanna soldier to come by an' take you for a
looter an' bump you off?"

He shook again. The cadaverous man blinked his eyes