Don Mariner, leaning out of the window of the station wagon as the band emerged, said urgently, "One of them landed. It landed just over there a way, I don't think more than half a mile. There aren't any others in sight. This one floated down not half a minute ago."
"What did I say?" exclaimed McEldownie. "They eliminated radioactive dust, so they could come right in after a bombing. It's logical."
"We'll go on foot," said Brave, "though I hate to abandon the car. But we'll have to go on foot over this rubble, and I take it we are going to the thing?"
"We sure are," said Rob Pope.
"Wait a minute. One of us ought to go with Win in the wagon and try to make it back to Project Star. She shouldn't be in this ruckus," protested Alan.
"You think she'd be better off out there with Lord knows how many mutants or supermen or aliens?" asked Bill Thihling. "You're not thinking straight, boy. We've got to stick together. Separate now and we may never see each other again."
"Besides, you can't get rid of me," said Win finally.
Don passed out the heavy sporting rifles, one to each of the men. They each had a sidearm, Brave two, and he and Alan had the wicked knives of the shopkeeper. Win had her little automatic for use in emergencies. Dividing the ammunition, and anchoring Unquote firmly to Alan's left shoulder with lengths of twine fashioned into harness and leash, they set off across the street; passed between buildings and across another street and yet another; and came to the area of near-total destruction. Here the going was precarious and tricky. Brave stared around them.
"Looks like Pergamino when we'd finished with it," he said to his friend.
A queer dead hush followed them about, muffling their footsteps and depressing them as though they crept through a graveyard. "That's what it is," said Alan half-aloud. "The biggest graveyard in the world." His hands ached to feel the throat of an enemy, to tear out the jugular, to slay and slay. His world had been struck a fantastic, unaccountable blow, and it was dead around him and he and his friends seemed the only living humans from pole to pole.