He then locked the door. The venison was waiting, the sight and smell of it making him suddenly ravenous. He lit a small fire in the stove, one that he hoped would not be still sending smoke from the ventilator shaft when morning came. He cooked the meat crudely and wolfed it down, all enjoyment gone at the first mouthful.
He was shocked then to discover the dirtiness of his white beard. He hadn't given himself a real bath in—weeks? He searched for scissors and spent an absent-minded while trimming the beard back to shortness. He ought to take some soap—valuable stuff—down to Moses' room and wash.
Clothes, too. People probably still wore them. He had worn none for years, except for sandals and a clout and a carrying satchel for his trips to the mainland. He had enjoyed the freedom at first, and especially the discovery in his rugged fifties that he did not need clothes even for the soft winters, except perhaps a light covering when he slept. Then almost total nakedness had become so natural, it required no thought at all. But the owner of that bonfire—
He checked his rifles. The .22 automatic, an Army model from the 2040s, was the best. The tiny bullets carried a paralytic poison: graze a man's finger and he was painlessly dead in three minutes. Effective range, with telescopic sights, three kilometers; weight, a scant five pounds.
He sat a long time cuddling that triumph of military science, listening for sounds that did not come, wondering often about the unknowable passage of night toward day. Would it be two o'clock?
He wished he could have seen the Satellite, renamed in his mind the Midnight Star, but when he was down there at his port, he had not once looked up at the night sky. Delicate and beautiful, bearing its everlasting freight of men who must have been dead now for twenty-five years and who would be dead a very long time—well, it was better than a clock, Brian often thought, if you happened to look at the midnight sky at the right time of the month when the Man-made star could catch the moonlight. But he had not seen it tonight.
Three o'clock?