"Good-bye, then, Bly Stanton," Hays said. "And good luck."
Bly Stanton did not turn as he clambered over the rock ramparts. And after a while the night hid him in its sable fold.
The man climbed the last ridge of the giant sand dune and looked down at a setting moon sending a long slanting fan of silver over an immense lake. He had seen the lake many years before, had almost forgotten its existence so long ago had it been.
He turned and looked at the ruins, rising pyramid-like from the tree line to the north. Chicago had been the name of a vast city which had existed here. There had been other cities as large, and some larger. From the deepest recesses of his mind, Stanton remembered an almost forgotten fact. There had been more than three billion people on the Earth at one time. Then, on an afternoon long gone, a bomb was dropped on one of the cities. It had been called an atom bomb. The name of the destroyed city was soon forgotten, as were the other cities which were soon wiped off the face of the Earth. For man had discovered in the atom bomb a weapon which proved to be the agency of his destruction. It led to bigger bombs, better bombs, more efficient bombs, and at the last a bomb which by chain reaction killed almost all the people on Earth. And those whom it did not kill it made sterile.
That was the beginning of the end. For in the new way of life, the force of creation died. Men thought of nothing but hatred of other men. So they fought, first with weapons of complex design. Then, as the creative desire was stifled, the weapons became more simple, until at the last man went back to a sword and a knife blade for his murderous tasks.
But it was in the death of woman that man suffered his worst loss. With sterility, woman felt their reason for existence was no longer justified. And so they died, one by one, until now there was no record of any.
These were the thoughts of Bly Stanton as he plodded over the ridge of another dune. Then, all thoughts were wiped from his mind. He dropped to his knees at the sight of the blaze in the hollow between two dunes directly below.
Their proximity to the fire and the light of the moon combined to make their features readily discernible. There was no mistaking the Mongoloid features of Himlo men. And if that was not enough, two of them were dressed in garments of fur which would have identified them immediately. The wind was coming from their direction, so Bly was safe for the moment. They had keen senses of smell, and had the wind been otherwise, Bly would have been discovered.
He retreated like some huge beetle, on all fours, backward, as if he had been suddenly confronted by a larger beetle. When he had traveled some few yards and saw only the serrated ridge of sand interposed between him and the sky, he rose, turned, and started for the edge of the water.