"I've got to, Mary."
Her voice was very small. "And when it's over—?"
"We'll manage somehow. I don't know how. It doesn't really matter now. I don't know what kind of a world we'll have when it's all over, but I know that I'm going out to get that Ship. If it's the only thing I ever do that's right."
He went out alone. He tried to force out of his mind the account Mary had brought of the butchery back home, concentrating on one thing, and one thing only. The Ship had to be destroyed. Standing out there in the desert, it was the symbol of all that was wrong with a world that had somehow, abruptly, been left behind. Matt saw it in black and white, bitterly, a cause and effect relationship. He could neither rationalize it or deny it. But somehow, he felt, by destroying the Ship he could wipe out a past too horrible even to think about. He knew he had to do it.
Matthews moved quietly through the blackness. The sandy soil was caked and hard under his feet, and the moon had just gone under the horizon to the West. Far ahead he could see the feeble guard lights of the enclosure, and he stopped, panting, staring at the tiny figures pacing back and forth. He had grown used to moving cautiously through the desertland without making a sound; now he concentrated on silence for his very life, and the only sound in his ears was the jogging of the dynamite pack on his shoulders.
He circled slowly, making for the section of the fencing closest to the ship. He knew there would be few lights, since precious gasoline had to run generators to provide any at all. He had examined the gates as they had opened earlier in the evening, and felt certain there was no break-circuit alarm on the fence. Power, again. Only for the barest, most critical essentials. And with four hundred men available, eyesight was the best way to guard the fence—
The heavy metal wire appeared suddenly in the gloom, and he fell flat on his face in a little gulley as the tread of a guard's feet sounded from a distance. A small flashlight flicked on and off as the footsteps approached. Matt hugged the ground, holding his breath as the soldier moved silently by. Then he was up against the fence, dragging the climbers from his pockets, strapping them onto his boots. Cutting the heavy fencing wire was out of the question—the sound would ring out in the stillness like a pistol shot. But the barbed wire at the top could be cut with only a small sound. He struggled up the bare fence, a few inches at a time.
It seemed like hours. He knew the guard's timing down to the second, and he worked himself up, panting. It was the dog-watch; the men would not be too alert, even men fighting for their lives—
He clung to the fence with one hand, and snapped the four barbed strands with a hand tool, felt them curl away with a ping. He dragged his body up and caught his knee on the top of the fence. In an instant he had dropped to the ground inside the enclosure—