He looked at the weapon. There was an arched steel spring placed crosswise at the end of a barrel like a sporting blast-rifle. Now he saw a handle and a ratchet by which the spring was brought to tension, storing up power to throw the missile. He asked:
"Who wound up this crossbow?"
Helen hesitated.
"Kim ... Kim Walpole."
"You're not a solitary refugee now? There are others of your group still alive?"
She hesitated again, and then said:
"Some of us came to realize that staying apart didn't matter. We ... couldn't hope to live, anyhow. We ... already had the plague. Kim is ... one of us. He's the strongest. He ... wound up the crossbow for me. He ... had the weapons to begin with."
Calhoun asked seemingly casual questions. She told him of a group of fugitives remaining together because all were already doomed. There had been eleven of them. Two were dead, now. Three others were in the last lethargy. It was impossible to feed them. They were dying. The strongest was Kim Walpole, who'd ventured back into the city to bring out weapons for the rest. He'd led them, and now was still the strongest and—so the girl considered—the wisest of them all.
They were waiting to die. But the newcomers to the planet—the invaders, they believed—were not content to let them wait. Groups and single hunters came out of the city and searched for them.
"Probably," said the girl dispassionately, "to burn our bodies against contagion. They ... kill us so they won't have to wait. And it's just ... seemed so horrible that we ... felt we ought to defend our right to die naturally by ... dying fighting. That's why I ... shot at you. I shouldn't have, but—"