could for them ... and now he would leave forty-nine
men, women and children to face the unknown forces of Big Winter while
over them hung the sword he had forged; the increasing danger of
detection by the Gerns.

The question came again, sharp with the knowledge that it was far too
late for him to change any of it. _Did I arrange the execution of my
people?_

Then, through the red haze of the fever, Julia spoke to him out of the
past; sitting again beside him in the summer twilight and saying:

_Remember me, Billy, and this evening, and what I said to you ... teach
them to fight and be afraid of nothing ... never let them forget how
they came to be on Ragnarok...._

She seemed very near and real and the doubt faded and was gone. _Teach
them to fight ... never let them forget...._ The men of Ragnarok were
only fur-clad hunters who crouched in caves but they would grow in
numbers as time went by. Each generation would be stronger than the
generation before it and he had set forces in motion that would bring
the last generation the trial of combat and the opportunity for freedom.
How well they fought on that day would determine their destiny but he
was certain, once again, what that destiny would be.

It would be to walk as conquerors before beaten and humbled Gerns.

* * * * *

It was winter of the year eighty-five and the temperature was one
hundred and six degrees below zero. Walter Humbolt stood in front of the
ice tunnel that led back through the glacier to the caves and looked up
into the sky.

It was noon but there was no sun in the starlit sky. Many weeks before
the sun had slipped below the southern horizon. For a little while a dim
halo had marked its passage each day; then that, too, had faded away.
But now it was time for the halo to appear again, to herald the sun's
returning.

Frost filled the sky, making the stars flicker as it swirled endlessly
downward. He blinked against it, his eyelashes trying to freeze to his
lower eyelids at the movement, and turned to look at the north.

There the northern lights were a gigantic curtain that filled a third of
the sky, rippling and waving in folds that pulsated in red and green,
rose and lavender and violet. Their reflection gleamed on the glacier
that sloped down from the caves and glowed softly on the other glacier;
the one that covered the transmitter station. The transmitter had long
ago been taken into the caves but the