He took Jill by the shoulders and shook her, laughing.
"Three weeks, girl, that's all. First crops ready for harvest, first pay-ore coming out of the mines. In three weeks my permanent charter will have to be granted, according to agreement, and then....
"Jill," he added solemnly, "we're seeing the birth of a world."
"That's what frightens me." Jill glanced upward as the first flare of lightning struck down, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the dome.
"So much can happen at a birth. I wish the three weeks were over!"
"Nonsense, girl! What could possibly happen?"
She looked at the copper cables, burning with the electricity running along them, and thought of the one hundred and twenty-two souls in that narrow Twilight Belt—with the fierce heat of the Sunside before them and the spatial cold of the Shadow side at their backs, fighting against wind and storm and heat to build a world to replace the ones the War had taken from them.
"So much could happen," she whispered. "An accident, an escape...."
The inter-dome telescreen buzzed its signal. Jill, caught in a queer mood of premonition, went to it.
The face of Dio the Martian appeared on the screen, still wet and dirty from the storm-soaked fields, disheveled from his battle across the plain in the chaotic winds.