His lieutenants stirred uneasily. After some ten years of association they recognized their chief’s strange moods but could not fathom them. His enormous ambitions were beyond the scope of minds focused purely on the daily struggle for life, they were awed and half afraid. But even his legion of enemies and rivals acknowledged Hammer’s skill and audacity and luck. This might work.

  Their own ideas of a future went little beyond a house and a harem. But to smash the government was a cause worth giving life for. They associated it with the disaster, and thus with all their woes. And it was their enemy. It would kill them, or at least lock them up, for deeds done when life depended on ruthless action. It would certainly never permit them to hold this green and lovely land.

  Unless—unless!

  The dog had been snuffling around the outlaw camp, a vague misshapen shadow in the fleeting moonlight. Now he howled once more and trotted down the ridge toward the dark silent mass of the town.

  * * *

  Alaric Wayne woke up at the sound of scratching. For a moment he lay in bed, mind still clouded with sleep. Moonlight streamed through the window to shimmer off the tumbled heaps of books and apparatus littering the room. Outside, the world was a black and white fantasy of bulking shadow, dreaming off into the remote star-torched sky.

  Full wakefulness came. Alaric slid out of bed, went to the window, and leaned against the screen. It was his dog, scratching to get in. And—excited. He raised the screen and the animal jumped clumsily over the sill.

  The dog whined, pulled at Alaric’s leg, sniffed toward the south and shivered. The boy’s great light eyes seemed to deepen and brighten, flash cold in the pouring moonlight; shadow-masked; his thin face was not discernible, but its habitual blankness slid into tight lines.

  He had to—think!

  The dog was warning him of danger from the south. But, though the mutation shaping the canine brain had given it abnormal intelligence, he was still a dog, not qualitatively different from the rest of his species, not able to understand or reason above an elementary level. Three years before, Alaric had spotted qualities in the pup by certain signs, and raised and trained it, and there was a curious half-rapport between them, a mutual understanding. They had co-operated earlier, on their long hikes, to hunt or to avoid the wild dog packs, but now—

  There was danger. Men outside town, to the south with hostile intentions. That was all the dog had been able to gather. It would have been enough for any normal human, as a basis of action. But Alaric wasn’t normal.

  He stood shivering with effort, clenching his hands to his forehead as if to prevent a physical disintegration of his frantically groping brain. What did it mean? What to do?

  Danger—danger was clear enough, and primitive instinct revealed the action one must take. One ran from the packs of human boys when they intended to commit mayhem on a mutant, and hid. One skirted the spoor of wild dogs or the bears beginning to spread since hunting fell off. Only in this case—slowly, reluctantly, fighting itself, his shuddering mind spewed out the conclusion—in this case, one couldn’t run. If the town went, so did all safety.

  Think—think! There was danger, it couldn’t be run from—what to do? His mind groped in fog and chaos. It could grasp at nothing. Disjointed logic chains clanked insanely in his skull.

  Reason did not supply the answer, but instinct came, the instinct which would have surged to the fore under the pressure of immediate peril, and now finally broke through the swirling storm of a mind trying to think.

  Why—it was so simple. Alaric relaxed, eyes widening with the sheer delightful simplicity of it. It was, really, as obvious as—why, it had all the primitive elementariness of the three-body problem. If you couldn’t run from danger—you fought it!

  Fighting—destruction—yes, something to destroy, but he would only have the newly reclaimed powerhouse available—

  He scrambled into his clothes with frantic speed. A glance at stars and moon told him, without his thinking about it, how long to sunrise. Not long—and in his own way he knew the enemy would attack just before dawn. He had to hurry!

  He vaulted out the window and ran down the silent street, the dog following. All the town’s electrical and electronic equipment was stored at the powerhouse. It would be quite a while before the whole community had electricity again, but meanwhile the plant ran several important machines, charged storage batteries, and performed other essential services.

  The building stood beside the river, the only lit windows in town besides the police station glowing from its dark bulk. After the war there had been no time, supplies, or parts to spare for the generators, and they had been plundered to repair the vital farm equipment, but recently the government had delivered what was necessary to get the water turbines going again. It had occasioned a formal celebration in Southvale—another step up the ladder, after that long fall down.

  Alaric beat on the door, yelling wordlessly. There came the sound of a scraping chair and the maddeningly slow shuffle of feet. Alaric jittered on the steps, gasping. No time, no time!

  The door creaked open and the night watchman blinked myopically at Alaric. He was an old man, and hadn’t gotten new glasses since the war. “Who’re you?” he asked. “And what do you want at this hour?”

  Alaric brushed by unheedingly and made for the storeroom. He knew what he needed and what he must do with it, but the job was long and time was growing so desperately short.

  “Here…hey, you!” The watchman hobbled after him, shaking with indignation. “You crazy mutie, what do you think you’re doing—?”

  Alaric shook loose the clutching hand and gestured to his dog. The mongrel snarled and bristled, and the watchman stumbled back, white-faced. “Help!” It was a high old man’s yell. “Help, burglar—”

  Somehow words came, more instinctive than reasoned. “Shut up,” said Alaric, “or dog kill you.” He meant it.

  The animal added emphasis with a bass growl and a vicious snap of fangs. His head reeling, his heart seeming to burst his ribs, the watchman sank into a chair and the dog sat down to watch him.

  The storeroom door was locked. Alaric grabbed a heavy wrench and beat down a panel. Tumbling into the storeroom, he grabbed for what he needed. Wire—meters—electronic tubes—batteries—hurry, hurry!

  Dragging it out into the main room before the great droning generators, he squatted down, a tatterdemalion gnome, eyes like blued metal, face tautened into a savagery of concentration, and got to work. Through a visual blur, the guard stared in uncomprehending terror. The dog watched him steadily, with sullen malevolent hope that he would try something. It was embittering, to hate all the world save one being, because only that being understood—

  * * *

  False dawn glimmered wanly over the land, touching houses and fields with wandering ghost fingers, glittering briefly off the swift-flowing river before deeper darkness returned. Hammer’s gang woke with the instant animal alertness of their kind, and stirred in the fog-drifting twilight. Their scant clothes were heavy with dew, they were cold and hungry—how hungry!—and they looked down at the moveless mass of their goal with smoldering savage yearning.

  “Fair is the land,” whispered Hammer, “more fair ’n land’s ever been. The fields ’re green t’ harvest an’ the fog runs white over a river like a polished knife—an’ it’s our land, our home.” His voice rose in hard snapping command: “Joe, take twenty men an’ circle north. Come in by the main road, postin’ men at the edge o’ town an’ the bridge over the river, then wait in the main square. Buck, take your fifteen, circle west, an’ come in the same time as Joe, postin’ men outside town an’ in that big buildin’ halfway down Fifth Street—that’s the machine shop, as I recall, an’ I hope you c’n still read street signs. Then join Joe. The rest follow me straight no’th. Go as quiet as you can, slug ’r kill anyone you meet, an’ be ready f’r a fight but don’t start one. O.K.!”

  The two other groups filed down the hill and vanished into misty dusk. Hammer waited awhile. He had previously divided the gang into bands assigned to his lieutenants, reserving the best men for the group immediately under him. He spoke to them, softly but with metallic rapidity:

  “Accordin’ t’ what I remember o’ Southvale, an’ to what I seen elsewhere, they don’t expect nothin’ like this. There’ve been no bandits here f’r a long time, an’ anyway they’d never think a gang had the skill and self-control t’ sneak through the fat lands farther south. So there’ll be no patrol, just a few cops on their beats—an’ too sleepy this time t’ give us much trouble. An’ nearly all the weapons ’re gonna be in the police station—which is what we’re gonna capture. With guns, we’ll control the town. But f’r the love of life, don’t start shootin’ till I say to. There may be armed citizens, an’ they c’n raise hell with us ’nless we handle ’em right.”

  A low mutter of assent ran along that line of haggard, bearded, fierce-eyed men. Knives and axes glittered in the first dim dawn-flush, bows were strung and spears hefted. But there was no restlessness, no uncontrollable lust to be off and into battle. They had learned patience the hard way, the last sixteen years. They waited.

  Timing wasn’t easy to judge, but Hammer had developed a sense for it which had enabled him to pull several coups in the past and served him now. When he figured the other groups were near the outskirts of town, he raised his hand in signal, slipped the safety catch on his gun, and started down the hill at a rapid trot.

  The white mists rolled over the ground, but they needed nothing to muffle the soft pad of their feet, most bare and all trained in quietness. Grass whispered under their pace, a staked-out cow lowed, and a rooster greeted the first banners of day. Otherwise there was silence, and the town dreamed on in the cool twilight.

  They came onto the cracked pavement of the road, and it was strange to be going on concrete again. They passed an outer zone of deserted houses. As Hammer had noticed elsewhere, Southvale had drawn into a compact defensive mass during the black years and not grown out of it since. As long as there were no fortified outposts, such an arrangement was easy to overrun. Still, the outlaws were enormously outnumbered, and had to counter-balance the disadvantage by the cold ruthlessness of direct action. Hammer stopped at the edge of habitation, told off half a dozen men to patrol the area, and led the rest on to the middle of town. They went more slowly now, senses strainingly alert, every nerve and muscle taut with the expectancy of danger.

  Hoofs clattered from a side street. Hammer gestured to a bowman, who grinned and bent his weapon. A mounted policeman came into view a few blocks down. He wasn’t impressive, he had no sign of office except gun and tarnished badge, he was sleepy and eager to report to the station and then get home. His wife would have breakfast ready—

  The bow twanged, a great bass throb of music in the silent misty street. The policeman pitched out of his saddle, the arrow through his breast, the astonishment on his face so ridiculous that a couple of gangmen guffawed. Hammer cursed; the horse had reared, screamed, and then galloped on down the street. The clattering echoes beat at the walls of the house like alarm-crying sentries.

  A man stuck his head out the window of a dwelling. He was drowsy, but he saw the unkempt band outside and yelled—a choked gurgle it was, drowned in an arrow’s blood-track before it had been properly born.

  “Snagtooth an’ Mex, get in that house an’ silence anyone else!” rapped Hammer. “You five”—he swept an arm in an unconsciously imperial gesture—“take care o’ anyone else here who heard. The rest come on!”

  * * *

  They ran down the street, disregarding noise but not making much anyway. The town had changed considerably, but Hammer remembered the layout. The police station, he thought briefly and wryly, he knew very well—just about every Saturday night, in the old days.

  They burst onto that block and raced for the station. There it was, the same square and solid structure, dingy now with years, the trimmings gone, but there were horses hitched before it and the door stood ajar—

  Through the door! The desk sergeant and a couple of men gaped blankly down the muzzle of Hammer’s gun, their minds refusing to comprehend, their hands rising by stunned automatism. Others of the gang poured down the short halls, into every room. There came yells, the clatter of feet, the brief sharp bark of a gun and the racket of combat.

  Hoofs pounded outside. A gun cracked, and one of Hammer’s men standing guard at the door, fell. Hammer himself jumped to the window, smashed the glass of it with his rifle butt, and shot at the half-dozen or so mounted police outside—returning from their beats, no doubt, and alarmed at what they saw.

  He had little opportunity to practice. Shells were too scarce. His first shot went wild, the second hit a horse, the third was as ineffectual as the first. But the police did retreat. They weren’t such good shots either, though a couple of slugs whined viciously close, through the window and thudding into the wall beyond.

  “Here, Dick!” His men were returning from the interior of the building, and they bore firearms, bore them as they would something holy and infinitely beautiful, for these were the way to a life worth living. “Here—shootin’ weapons!”

  Hammer grabbed a submachine gun and cut loose. The troopers scattered, leaving their dead, and fled down the streets. And there were those other two bands entering—Hammer laughed for sheer joy.

  “We got the whole station,” reported one of his men. “Bob got it in the leg, an’ I see they plugged Little Jack an’ Tony. But the place is ours!”

  “Yeah. Lock up these cops, take what weapons an’ horses you need, an’ ride aroun’ town. Herd ever’body down into the main square in the center o’ town. Be careful, there’ll be some trouble an’ killin’, but we don’t have to be on the receivin’ end o’ any o’ it. Mart, Rog, an’ One-Ear, hold the station here an’ look after our wounded, Sambo an’ Putzy, follow me. I’m goin’ t’ the square now to—take possession!”

  * * *

  There was noise in the street, running and stamping feet, shouts and oaths and screams. Now and then laughter or gunfire. Roderick Wayne gasped out of sleep, sweating. What a dream! Nightmare recollection of the black years—

  No dream!

  There was a tremendous kicking and beating on the door, and a voice bawling in some uncouth accent: “Open up in there! Open up in the name o’ the law!”

  More’ laughter, like wolves baying. Someone yelling. A cry that choked off into silence. Wayne jumped out of bed. Even then he was dimly surprised to find he wasn’t shaking and gibbering in blind panic. “Get Al, Karen,” he said. “Stay inside, in a back room. I’ve got to look into this.”

  He stopped in the living room to get his rifle. It was only a souvenir now, few cartridges left, but he had killed men with it in the black years. And must I go through that again? No—please not!

  Wood split and crashed, and a man leaped into the house over the fallen door. Wayne saw the pistol and dropped his own unloaded rifle. He remembered such ragged figures, the shaggy wolf-eyed men whose weapons were all too ready. The outlaws had returned.

  “Smart,” nodded the gangman. “ ’Nother see ’n’ I’d’a scragged you. Outside.”

  “What…is…this?” Wayne’s lips were stiff.

  “Get out!”

  Wayne went obliquely, praying he could draw the bandit out of the house. “If it’s loot you want,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level, “I’ll show you where the silver is.”

  Another gangman entered. He had abandoned his unaccustomed gun for his old ax. “Ever’body out o’ here?” he asked.

  “I just got in,” said the first. “I’ll search it myself. Find y’r own house.” He turned on Wayne and slammed him in the stomach with one fist, “Scram, you—down t’ the main square!”

  Retching, Wayne staggered back, and outside mostly by chance. Sick and dizzy, head roaring like his collapsing world, he leaned against the wall.

  “Rod!”

  He turned, unbelieving. Karen had just come around the side of the house, pale but outwardly composed. “Are you all right, Rod?” she whispered.

  “Yeah…yeah…but you…how—?”

  “I heard them talking and slipped out a window. But Rod—Al’s gone.”

  “Gone!” Briefly, new dismay shook Wayne. Al—whatever the mutant was, Al was his son. Then relief came, realization. “He must have sneaked out, too. He’s all right. He knows how to run and hide—all mutant kids learn that.” His mind added grayly: And in the next generation all human kids will have to learn it.

  “But us—Rod, what is this?”

  Wayne shrugged and started down the street. “Town’s apparently captured,” he said.

  “Outlaws—we have to run, Rod! Have to get away!”

  “Not much use, I’m afraid. This is the work of a well-disciplined group under a smart leader. They must have come up from the south, resisting the temptation to plunder on the way. They took us by complete flat-footed surprise, overpowered the police—I recognized Ed Haley’s pistol in that bandit’s hand—and are now rounding us up in quite a methodical fashion. I wasn’t just shoved out, I was ordered to report to the square. That suggests they’re guarding all ways out. Anyway, we can’t flee right now.”

  * * *

  They had fallen in with a group of citizens moving with the dumb blank obedience of stunned minds toward the square under outlaw guard, The gang was having little trouble. They went from house to house, forcing the inhabitants into the street. The work went fast.

  There was fighting now and then, short and sharp, ending in blow of club or knife or bullet. A couple of families with guns stood off the invaders. Wayne saw fire arrows shot into the roofs of those houses.