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boy did not answer.
    Hendricks frowned. "You're not all by yourself, are you?"
    The boy nodded.
    "How do you stay alive?"
    "There's food."
    "What kind of food?"
    "Different."
    Hendricks studied him. "How old are you?"
    "Thirteen."
    It wasn't possible. Or was it? The boy was thin, stunted. And probably sterile. Radiation
exposure, years straight. No wonder he was so small. His arms and legs were like pipe-cleaners, knobby
and thin. Hendricks touched the boy's arm. His skin was dry and rough; radiation skin. He bent down,
looking into the boy's face. There was no expression. Big eyes, big and dark.
    "Are you blind?" Hendricks said.
    "No. I can see some."
    "How do you get away from the claws?"
    "The claws?"
    "The round things. That run and burrow."
    "I don't understand."
    Maybe there weren't any claws around. A lot of areas were free. They collected mostly around
bunkers, where there were people. The claws had been designed to sense warmth, warmth of living
things.
    "You're lucky." Hendricks straightened up. "Well? Which way are you going? Back -- back
there?"
    "Can I come with you?"
    "With me?" Hendricks folded his arms. "I'm going a long way. Miles. I have to hurry." He looked
at his watch. "I have to get there by nightfall."
    "I want to come."
    Hendricks fumbled in his pack. "It isn't worth it. Here." He tossed down the food cans he had
with him. "You take these and go back. Okay?"
    with him. "You take these and go back. Okay?"
    "I'll be coming back this way. In a day or so. If you're around here when I come back you can
come along with me. All right?"
    "I want to come along with you now."
    "It's a long walk."
    "I can walk."
    Hendricks shifted uneasily. It made too good a target, two people walking along. And the boy
would slow him down. But he might not come back this way. And if the boy were really all alone -
     
    "Okay. Come along."
    The boy fell in beside him. Hendricks strode along. The boy walked silently, clutching his teddy
bear.
    "What's your name?" Hendricks said, after a time.
    "David Edward Derring."
    "David? What -- what happened to your mother and father?"
    "They died."
    "How?"
    "In the blast."
    "How long ago?"
    "Six years."
    Hendricks slowed down. "You've been alone six years?"
    "No. There were other people for a while. They went away."
    "And you've been alone since?"
    "Yes."
    Hendricks glanced down. The boy was strange, saying very little. Withdrawn. But that was the
way they were, the children who had survived. Quiet. Stoic. A strange kind of fatalism gripped them.
Nothing came as a surprise. They accepted anything that came along. There was no longer any normal,
any natural course of things, moral or physical, for them to expect. Custom, habit, all the determining
forces of learning were gone; only brute experience remained. "Am I walking too fast?" Hendricks said.
    "No."
    "How did you happen to see me?"
    "I was waiting."
    "Waiting?" Hendricks was puzzled. "What were you waiting for?"
    "To catch things."
    "What kind of things?"
    "Things to eat."
    "Oh." Hendricks set his lips grimly. A thirteen-year-old boy, living on rats and gophers and
half-rotten canned food. Down in a hole under the ruins of a town. With radiation pools and claws, and
Russian dive-mines up above, coasting around in the sky.
    "Where are we going?" David asked.
    "To the Russian lines."
    "Russian?"
    "The enemy. The people who started the war. They dropped the first radiation bombs. They
began all this."
    The boy nodded. His face showed no expression.
    "I'm an American," Hendricks said.
    There was no comment. On they went, the two of them, Hendricks walking a little ahead, David
trailing behind him, hugging his dirty teddy bear against his chest.
    About four in the afternoon they stopped to eat. Hendricks built a fire in a hollow between some
slabs of concrete. He cleared the weeds away and heaped up bits of wood. The Russians' lines were not
very far ahead.
    Around him was what had once been a long valley, acres of