They made their way toward the buildings in good order, Alec walking up front on the right point, Kobol taking the three-man rear guard position, the truck in the middle of the spread-out formation of armed, wary men.

The ground around the buildings was barren. Scrub grass straggled here and there in thin patches. Large stretches of ground immediately outside the buildings were bare, broken cement and blacktop. There were some areas of gravel, as well, Alec saw.

As they approached the buildings, Alec began to understand why Kobol had volunteered for the rear guard. He was the only man who had been here before, the only one who knew the area. Alec wanted to ask Kobol if the buildings looked the same, but to do that he would have to bring Kobol up to the point position with him. In front of the men, he would have to show that Kobol was the man who knew what’s what.

Screw that! Alec paced steadily toward the lifeless, gaping buildings, gripping his machine pistol in his right hand, feeling the welcome pressure of its strap riding firmly on his shoulder.

It was a longer walk than he had anticipated.

The morning was deathly quiet. No breeze. No bird songs reached them from the distant trees. The Sun was barely over the crest of the hills, yet already it was much hotter than the previous day had been. Does the heat come from the buildings? Alec wondered. Fears about radioactivity sifted through his thoughts. But he kept marching steadily, glancing back at his men and the trundling laser truck only occasionally.

When they reached the edge of the cement walkways that surrounded the buildings he called a halt. Faint dark streaks and strains mottled the walls.

“Stop the truck here, where it can cover the whole area. Form up in front of the truck.”

Kobol limped up to him, thin chest and underarms of his coveralls dark with sweat. He looked slightly foolish with the heavy helmet clamped bulbously over his head.

“What do you think?” Alec asked, gesturing toward the buildings with his pistol.

Kobol hiked his shaggy brows enough to make them disappear inside the helmet. “It’s been a long time since I was here. But everything looks pretty much the same.”

“That’s the main entrance, isn’t it?”

Kobol nodded.

“All right. Gianelli, take two men and follow us. The rest of you stay here and stay alert. Keep a sharp watch all around.”

The five of them walked slowly toward the building, tension mounting with each step. Alec could see that the windows gaped emptily, they had been shattered long ago. The doors were gone too, and the walls were streaked with the sooty reminders of old fires. The interior of the building was completely in shadow.

He could feel his heart hammering as they climbed the steps to the open, dark doorway. His hand felt slippery on the gun’s handle, but inside himself Alec felt cold, not hot.

The interior of the building was littered with broken shards of cement, plaster, dried leaves and debris. The room was large and bare, stripped of everything except the litter on the floor.

“Reception area,” Kobol said. “Everything in here was looted or burned long ago.”

A sudden fear struck Alec. “The fissionables?”

Kobol laughed bitterly. “Don’t worry. They’re too hard to get at, even if the barbarians knew what they were and wanted them. Which they don’t. There are all sorts of legends and taboos about radioactive material. They’re scared to death of the stuff.”

They walked through an empty, desolate building. The rooms were huge, but blackened, charred. Most of the roofs were gone, and the still-climbing Sun lit their way through the moldering shambles. Nothing stood except a few sagging partitions. No sign that human beings had ever occupied the area. Everything caked thick with grime; here and there the tracks of small animals. Kobol pointed to some dried grass wedged into a crack high up on a cement wall.

“Bird’s nest,” he said.

“Creepy,” said Gianelli in a low, awed voice.

“The barbarians took everything they could from this building,” Kobol explained needlessly, “and burned the rest.”

They reached a metal door that opened onto a long tunnel ribbed with I-beams.

“This is the connector tunnel between the main administrative building, here, and one of the processing plants. That’s where they produced the fissionables from low-grade natural ores.” Kobol’s lecturing voice twanged irritatingly off the metal walls of the tunnel as they walked through it. “You’ll see plenty of heavy equipment in the next building, and beyond that are the storage vaults.”

They opened the door at the end of the tunnel.

The room was huge, vaster than any enclosure Alec had ever seen. Sunlight filtered down slantingly through the shattered roof. It was eerie and still.

And empty.

The giant processing building had been looted even more thoroughly than the administration area. Nothing remained except the bare walls and a few dust motes drifting through the shafts of sunlight.

Kobol’s jaw fell open.

“There’s nothing here!” Alec said.

“It’s been cleaned out.” Kobol’s voice was strained, shocked.

“The fissionables!”

They ran, the five of them. Kobol in the lead, they raced across the huge empty room, boots clumping dully on the cement floor. To Alec it was like a nightmare, running endlessly across the barren, torn-up expanse, this giant cement box they were trapped in. He ran as hard as he could but seemed to be getting no closer to the far end of the one-room building and the metal door that they had to reach. Almost subliminally, Alec noticed that the floor was studded with metal fixtures where equipment had once been bolted down to the solid cement. The fixtures looked bright and clean; the equipment had been removed only recently.

They dashed, gasping, up to the heavy metal door. It was slightly ajar.

“The vaults...” Kobol puffed, wide-eyed, as he strained to swing the door open. Alec and Gianelli leaned into it, helping him.

The room on the other side was small, barely big enough to allow the five of them to squeeze in. It was lined with dull gray metal. Three walls were filled with box-sized compartments, like metal bookshelves, but with many thick separations along each shelf.

“Empty!”

Kobol was panting hard, his face white. “No... barbarians... did this.”

Alec turned to face him.

“Only one man... knew what... the fissionables were worth,” Kobol said. “Your father.”

Chapter 14

Alec forced himself to breathe deeply several times before answering.

“You think he deliberately cleared out this place?”

Kobol’s eyes were glaring. “Who else? Barbarians couldn’t organize the men and machines you’d need for this. They wouldn’t even know what all this was. They’re scared as hell of this place.”

Gianelli kicked at the wall. “Chrissake! We came all this way for nothing.”