Nedra was pulling at his arm. "Get down," she whispered. "Crawl—they do not see well and if we stay down, going from rock to rock, it may be that they'll miss us—"
"They?"
"It is the Degraded. Down below us in the valley."
O'Hara took out his .38, kneeling by Nedra and watching for movement on the slope below. "Nedra," he whispered, "is that it, that fuming matter—the atomic weapon?"
She did not answer. He reached out, touching her, and slowly turned. She was staring straight ahead.
And standing there beside a mass of crumbled granite, gray like the stone itself, his hulking body naked, neither clad nor furred, incredibly long arms now swinging as his weak eyes focused under bone-ridged brows, a man—though not a man—was raising in his ugly hand a shining tubelike object.
"Fire now, O'Hara," Nedra was saying. "Make them destroy us. They are around us now. They want to take us, not to kill. You see, that one—and that—"
"Nedra, I want you to run. When I fire—"
"It is too late. Kill me, O'Hara."
"No, Nedra," he said, but he pressed the .38 against her side. "We can always die, and if they try to separate us, I will do it. But it's you they want—if they see I'll kill you, they'll spare both of us. Can you tell him that?"