At ten that night, after they were in bed, a knock sounded on the door. They had been in bed three hours, because all they could think of as soon as they had eaten was getting into bed and staying there until the last possible minute on the following morning.
But the knock came and Jim went down. He called back upstairs with more life than he'd shown in a long time, "Myra—come down. It's Hugh. Hugh's come to see us."
And Myra came down quickly—something she hadn't done for a long time either.
Hugh seemed weary and drawn, but his smile was the same. Hugh hadn't changed a great deal from the gangling kid who never studied mathematics in school but always had the answers. It came natural to him.
During the coffee that Myra made, Hugh said, "Had quite a time getting here. Trains disrupted. All air lines grounded. But I wanted to see you again before—"
"Then there is a war," Jim said. "We've been kind of wondering out here. With the censorship we don't get any news and the people hereabouts have almost forgotten the bombs I guess."
Hugh stared into his coffee cup for a long time. "No—there isn't any war." Hugh grinned wryly. "I don't think anybody in the world has got enough energy left to fight one."
"There was one then? One that's over?" Jim felt suddenly like a fool, sitting here on a world that might have gone through a war stretching from pole to pole, and asking if it had happened as though he lived on Mars somewhere—out of touch. But that's the way it was.
"No there wasn't any war."
"You mean our government shot off those bombs themselves? You know I thought it was funny. Landing out in the desert that way like they did.