up--and for twenty--maybe fifty-year-old trees to grow!" His
ending sarcasm was directed at himself; youth angers at the spur of
illogicalness.

Carol pressed his shoulder and kissed him. "Darling--maybe we shouldn't
even think about it now. They must be waiting for us in Oregon."

"Yeah," he said absently. "Wonder what happened farther inland?" He
herded the _Latecomer_ down along the border of Lakes Ontario and Erie.
Cleveland was dotted with lakes, the city rubble choked with brush. On a
zig-zag course, Detroit was a wilderness, Chicago almost a part of Lake
Michigan. Carol's spirits sank with each revelation.

They arced high above the jet winds, on course to Oregon.

Ken almost shouted with joy when their beacon code came in weakly,
strengthening as they approached the Pacific. Carol hugged him until he
relinquished control to the autopilot and gave her his undivided
attention.

The chronometer ticked away time, but Sol gave up the unequal race, and
so it was another morning of the same day when Ken slipped the
_Latecomer_ over the mighty Cascades, homing on the beacon until they
both saw the outline of a long, level, arrow straight runway carved from
forested mountainside and spanning chasmal, growth-choked gulches.

But it was the outline only, discernible through a light rain. "At least
two years' work," mused Ken, "littered with at least a hundred years'
debris. _And we've only been gone a day._" He killed signal reception,
circled the runway.

Carol pressed his arm. "It's been longer than a day, Ken. I mean, we've
actually used up more time, because it was morning when we were over New
York, and it's still--"

"Okay--day and night don't mean much. But we've clocked a little over
thirty-three hours since we took off. That's _our_ time."

There was a catch in her throat. "I know, darling. Something's horribly
wrong. Everybody we know must be dead!"

His jaw set, then he said gently, "Snug down, kitten, we're going in."

She glanced through the port. "But how can you land on _that_?"

He tightened the couch about them. "Blow the stuff out of the way," he
said cheerfully. "Maybe." He swooped in from the east. "Keep an eye
peeled for the Caves' entrance--I bet it won't look like it did last
month."

The _Latecomer_ touched the runway at little more than a hundred miles
per hour. Its forward rockets braked sharply, blasting aside the
scattered dead limbs and smaller trees--roaring, bucking and hissing