On the way to the radio trailer, Ed looked back to the ugly, humping shapes of weapons creeping up a high, blackened slope a few miles away. This was fresh action by men of the old kind who had lost friends or family and who saw no future in a demoniac succession. They were exposed, an easy target. But if they were destroyed, others would come. So they dared and defied, and the vicious spiral toward Big Zero continued to mount.
Ed tried to forget this for a moment. His first words by wireless were a call for his wife: "Babs, this is Ed, at Freeman's camp! Barbara, come to us if you can. At least, try to communicate with us. You know how. Barbara!..."
She had her own quartz chip, active all the time, so she must hear! And if she did, she could send a message just as he did, from some other station. But though Ed now had help, at Freeman's orders, no reply from his wife was sifted from the countless communications that were received.
But his previous attempt to spread a rumor had brought some expected results. The morning air was full of conflicting comments: "... A cruel joke ... Psychological warfare ... Perhaps, but what if the Phonies mean to leave? Some already deny it.... Who spoke? Let him speak again."
Ed was glad to oblige, even revealing his name, his present dimensions and how a being of such size, equipped with a Midas Touch, might wreck a power station. He explained this last item because he did not want a misplaced blame to stir up more tension on both sides. Otherwise, he addressed himself mostly to the androids, aware that the old race would listen, too.
"... We were made on Earth, but not for Earth. We were meant to go much farther. Since we have so much, to be other than generous would be stupid. We have peace and the future, and most of what man ever hoped for, in our hands. That, or oblivion for everyone."
Though the ominous movement on the burned-out slope continued, the actual flash of weapons seemed suspended. The quiet was either promising or it was ominous.
He was lulled into enough confidence so that at noon he took a break. He went back to Freeman's shelter and into the tiniest workshop that Mitchell Prell had made and that Les Payten had rescued. He dropped from the air beside minute machines and the vats that had given Barbara and him their micro-android forms on Mars.
The whole piece—the greater microscope together with all the much lesser equipment—Abel Freeman had unwrapped hastily, so that entry into the twilight within the plastic cover had been easy. Freeman himself was not around.
For a moment Ed felt alone and wistful, clinging to the rough glass floor of the shop. But then he saw a faintly luminous elfin figure.