There seemed to be no balance or reason left in mankind, save for the seven on the knoll, who clung to their sanity only by conscious physical effort.
Now they ran for the station wagon, to find its windows broken, the upholstery slashed by a knife, the windshield shattered. "Berserk," said Rob Pope. "They've all gone berserk."
"It does that to me, too," said Don. "I want to sink my teeth into something and worry it. I can't touch the enemy and so I want to take it out on something I can touch." He shrugged. "If you were lost in Hell, and found a car, and couldn't start it because you didn't have the key, wouldn't you get sore enough to wreck it? How are the tires?"
Brave said, "Okay. He was too mad to think of them." He knocked the remaining shards of windshield from the frame and got in behind the wheel. They all piled in. He started it and it rolled off northward.
McEldownie said, "No, Brave. Go down towards town. I want to get to a radio or TV station. We've got to try to establish contact with the rest of the world. This may have happened in other cities too." He leaned forward and put his hand on Brave's shoulder. "I don't think we need worry about radioactivity," he said. "These are beings from another planet, obviously much farther advanced than we are. Their weapons, though producing an apparently atomic cloud, would probably be without post-explosion danger. They'd have eliminated the radioactive dust because they'd want to land and take over at once, or at least quite soon. Let's take a chance. Let's go down toward Times Square."
Brave glanced back at him. The argument was specious, as a basis for action it wouldn't hold water. But Alan said, "I think so too, Brave. It sounds logical." Win and Don agreed. Brave looked at them. He was about to argue and then the fatalism of his ancient race seemed to grip him. They ought to get to a radio station, true; and if the city were radioactive, what did it matter in the long run? They were only seven people and a cat; ranged against them on one hand stood the ranks of shadowy supermen and aliens, on the other the unknown disk-people. The world was in chaos. He could not dredge up enough ego to believe that he and Alan and the others would be very important in the ordering of that chaos. He shucked off his science and his civilized thought processes and he said, "All right. We'll go down." Stoically, the very incarnation of his thrice-great grandfather Pony Sees-the-Sky, he wheeled the car around and sent it hurtling toward Times Square.
Broadway was a shambles. As far up as Columbus Circle all the windows were gone, the light standards had been curved by the blast, autos were overturned and leaking gas and oil. There were cracks in the paving. Occasional men and women staggered along northward, and bodies lay in the gutters, across the thresholds. The wreckage of an air taxi half-blocked the way, corpses spilt halfway out of its doors.
"How many weapons have we?" asked Mac suddenly. "There's a sporting goods store. We ought to load up on guns. There's no telling what maniacs we'll be meeting; and if there's an occupation, we might have to be guerrillas." He pulled back his coat. "I have a grenade pistol, for a start."
Brave had one, and an automatic for longer range work. Don Mariner carried another grenade pistol. Win had her derringer-sized automatic in her purse. That was all they had. Brave pulled to the curb. He and Alan got out.