"Kendrick's so-and-so," said one of the farmer-looking men, disgustedly.
"I thought," said Wales, "that I'd see if my girl was going to leave, before I decided."
He wondered if he weren't laying on the stupid yokel a little too thick. But he had realized his danger from the first.
All the bands of non-evacuees who remained in closed-out territory, making their own law, were dangerous. He'd found that out in Morristown only last night. And Lanterman and his men seemed especially suspicious, for some reason.
"Look," said Lanterman, and then asked, "What's your name, anyway?"
"Jay Wilson," said Wales. His name had been in the news, and he'd better take no chances.
"Well, look now, Wilson," said Lanterman, "you don't always want to believe what people tell you. Me, I'm from West Virginia. Had a farm there. On the TV it told us how this Kendrick had found out Earth was going to be destroyed, how, everyone would have to go to Mars. My woman said, 'Sam, we'll have to go.' I said, 'Don't you get in a panic. People have always been predicting the end of the world. We'll wait a while and see.' Lot of our neighbors packed up and went off. People came to tell us we'd better get going too. I told them, I don't panic easy, I'm waiting a while."
Lanterman laughed. "Good thing I did. More'n a year went by, and the world didn't end. And then it turned out that this here Kendrick that started the whole stampede—he hadn't left Earth. Not him! Got all the fools flying out to Mars on his say-so, but wasn't fool enough to go himself. Fact is, people say he's hiding out so the Evacuation officials can't make him go. Well, if Kendrick himself won't go, that predicted it all, why should we go?"
And that, Wales thought despairingly, was the very crux of the problem. Where was Lee Kendrick anyway? He must know that his remaining on Earth was being fatally misinterpreted by people like these.
Lanterman added, with a certain complacency, "All the fools went, and left their houses, cars, cities. Left 'em to those of us who wasn't fools! That's why we gathered together. Figured we might as well pick up what they'd left. We got near a hundred men together, I said, 'Boys, let's quit picking over these empty villages and take a real rich town. Let's go up to Pittsburgh.'"