"No."
"Radioactivity? Poison gases? Bacteria?"
"Safe."
"Then I guess we can live with the situation."
Red began to eat.
"You say you have been working for a long while," Mondamay asked, "trying to alter things back to some situation you remember from long ago?"
"That's right."
"From some of the things you'd said earlier about your memory, are you certain that you would even recognize it if you were to find it?"
"More certain than ever. I remember more now."
"And if you locate the road you seek, you will take it and go home?"
"Yes."
"What is it like there?"
"I couldn't tell you."
"Then what is it you hope to find?" "Myself."
"Yourself? I am afraid I do not understand." "Neither do I, entirely. But it is getting clearer." The sky blackened, came down with a case of stars. A piece of moon drifted rudderless, low in the east. Red lit no lights other than his cigar. He drank Greek wine from an earthen flask. The wind rose, cool now. Flowers was doing something barely audible which might have been Debussy. Blackness within blackness, a coil of shadow slid near to Red's extended foot
"Bel'kwinith," he said softly, and the wind seemed to pause, the shadow froze, an impurity in the cigar caused it to hiss and flare for a moment.
"The hell with it," he said then.
"What do you mean?" Mondamay asked him. "The hell with what?"
"Getting Chadwick."
"I thought we had been through all this. None of the alternatives struck you as sufficiently attractive."
"It's not worth it," he said. "The fat fool is just not worth it. Won't even do his own fighting."
"Fool? You once said he was a very clever man."
Red snorted.
"Humans! I suppose he's clever enough, as far as that goes. It still comes to nothing."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Find him. And make him tell me some things. I believe he knows more about me than he ever let on. Things I may not even know."
"Because of things you are remembering?"
"Yes. And you may be right I—"
"I have detected something."
Red was on his feet
"Nearby?"
The shadow retreated about the rear of the vehicle.
"No. But it is moving in this direction."
"Animal, vegetable or mineral?"
"There is a machine involved. It is approaching cautiously... Get into the truck!"
The engine started as Red leaped into the vehicle. The doors slammed. A window began closing. Another shape-change commenced.
Flowers suddenly broadcast Mondamay's words to him.
"What a beautiful killing machine!" he said. "Spoiled in many ways by the organic adjunct. Nevertheless^ :
quite artfully designed."
"Mondamay!" he shouted as the truck shuddered. "Can you hear me?"
"Of course. Red. I wouldn't neglect you at a time like this. My, it's coming on fast!"
The truck creaked and twisted. The engine sputtered twice. A door opened, then slammed.
"What the hell is it?"
"A large, tanklike device packed with an amazing array of weapons and guided by a disembodied human brain which is, I believe, somewhat mad. I don't know
whether it really hails from around here or was shipped here to await your coming. Are you familiar with it?"
"I think I've heard of battle wagons like that somewhere along the line. I'm not certain where, though."
The sky caught fire like a sudden dawn, and a wave of flame rolled toward them. Mondamay raised an arm and it halted as if it had encountered an invisible wall, boiling for half a minute before it finally subsided.
"He's got atomics, all right Neatly done, that," he commented.
"Why are we still alive?"