silent, in a brooding
reverie, and Allan, recovered somewhat, saw that the other strange
occupants of the place had risen and were clustered about that cage
where something fluttered.

He turned to his mentor. "But I still don't understand. How is it that
we escaped the holocaust?"

"Four of us, members of the scientific faculty of the National
University, having foreseen the inevitable result of the course of
world events, had joined forces and developed a substance--we called
it nullite--so dense and so inert that no gas could penetrate it or
chemical break it down. We offered it to the Western General Staff,
and were laughed at for our pains. Then we decided to use it to
preserve our families from the danger we foresaw.

"At first we sheathed one room in each of our own dwellings with the
nullite. Later we decided that the deposited gas might last for many
years, and blasted out this cave, a hundred feet below the summit of
Sugar Loaf Mountain, for a common refuge.

"When the red word flared from the newscast machines, 'War!', we fled
here with our wives, as we had planned. All, that is, save one couple,
the youngest of us. They never arrived--I waited for them in the
clearing at the entrance to the shaft. At the last moment I saw you
dropping in your parachute, saw the death beam just miss you, saw you
land at my feet, unconscious, but still breathing. I carried you in
with me. There were two vacant spaces: you could occupy one of them.
Then we sealed the last aperture with nullite, and settled to our
vigil. We did not know how long the gas would last, but we had
sufficient concentrated food, and enough air-making chemicals, to last
two persons for a century."

"Two people," Allan interjected. "But there were seven here."

* * * * *

Anthony nodded. "We had worked out every detail of our plan. When
release came we needs must be in the full vigor of our prime. From our
loins must spring the new race that will repopulate the Earth; that
will found a new civilization, better, we hope, and wiser than the
one that had died. By injecting a certain compound we suspended
animation in all but a single couple. Those so treated were to all
intents dead, though their bodies did not decay. The two who remained
awake kept watch, making daily tests of the outside atmosphere, drawn
through tubes of nullite that pierced the seal. At the end of six
months they revived another couple by the use