head was charred. There wasn't enough of him left. Oh, you and your damned science, Mitch."

She was weeping again. Mitchell Prell became either cruel or perhaps he spoke in self-defense.

"The people that used to neglect things like insurance," he remarked, "are still plentiful, aren't they? Oh, well, maybe there's still a sort of way. A makeshift. People are bound to think of it. Let it go for now. I've got lots to worry about, sister of mine."

"Your own skin, for instance?" she challenged him. "Why did you come here at all, Mitch? The scapegoat-seekers will certainly look for you here first."

"My own skin," Mitchell Prell agreed. "Maybe yours, since you are a relative of mine, responsible for my sins. That is an ancient defect of logic among certain types of people still in existence, I'm afraid—if the provocation becomes great enough. The skins of the three of us, my most prized treasures."

He smiled slightly then, and his blue eyes were gentle. "Don't worry too much, though," he went on. "I'll be gone sooner than most people will even think of looking for me. I'll keep out of sight, not even leaving the house, except after dark. I have some things to deliver to Schaeffer. Then I've got to get away. Because life goes on, in spite of everything. I'm still curious about nature, the stars and some other things. I remain eager for some vast freedom, Eileen—for you and your son, and the rest of the cussed race, whose errant qualities and usually good intentions I share. I see no good in becoming the offering of expiation for an accident that came out of a general human urge to learn that can't and won't be downed."

Something like a truce came then. Eddie Dukas could feel it. Family loyalty was in it and a little of understanding and contrition.

"All right, Mitch," was all that Eddie's mother said. She kissed his uncle's cheek. Eddie knew that it was a woman's gesture of armistice.

Fires had died down. Dawn was beginning to show in the patio. The rain had stopped long ago. For no reason Eddie's eyes sought out a pool of muddy water in a crack in the flagging. The water was clay colored, as it might have been after any shower. A robin, which had somehow escaped death, was scolding angrily.

Breakfast was eaten listlessly. There were radio reports and orders. "Able persons must report to their municipal centers...."

"That's for you, Eddie," Mitchell Prell said ruefully. "And your mother. While I play hiding rat."

Eddie didn't know whether to hate his uncle or not. There was an inner bigness about that slightly built man that matched some obscure drive that was Eddie's own—in spite of his grief.

"Watch yourself, sir," he growled stiffly.

The day was a day of searching for corpses, of cleanup, of tentative restoration. At least there would be no smells of death. Pruning machines were already busy on charred treetops. The world was being put back into order, like a disturbed anthill. Grass and leaves would sprout again. The scared faces of younger children—many from the Youth Center were given small tasks to help in the cleanup, since it was not the custom now to hide reality from the young—would smile again. On that day of sweeping the streets with a broom, Eddie Dukas made and lost many a brief friendship. Hello.... Goodbye....

Fortunately the poison of radioactivity had not been transmitted to any great extent from across space by radiation alone. Gases and fragments of the Moon that were still falling as meteors bore a taint to the atmosphere; but it was now below the danger level.

Overhead, arching the sky like the Rings of Saturn turned ragged, was what was left of Luna: rock and dust. For an hour its texture veiled the sun, until, near noon, there was almost twilight, like that of an eclipse. That arch was a permanent monument to a night that would be remembered.

There still were hysterical people around. Eddie saw Mrs. Payten, his friend's mother. She passed in the street, muttering, "Oh, Ronald, you were a beast of a man, but I loved you. Why were you a fool, too?... No record.... None...."

It had been a subject of neighborhood gossip that Ronald Payten, a large, passive lug, had been a very much hen-pecked husband. His neglect of having a record made of himself might have seemed strange for so noted a biologist. Maybe it was absent-mindedness, professional difference of opinion, or even some backhanded defiance of his wife.

There were moments when the wild taint in young blood and the magnificence of disaster gave Eddie and others almost an outing mood. But toil, sweat and horror soon turned things grim as he worked with the men. His hands were blackened and scratched. But maybe tiredness was balm for delayed shock. Maybe it was thus that he stood at the brief funeral services—for his father, too—with less hurt. The great trench was closed over the corpses, and the thing was done.

Later, back in the house, he struggled with himself somewhat, and said, "I know it wasn't your fault, Uncle Mitch."

Eddie had seen stern faces that day, topping trim gray uniforms: regional police. In him was the thought: Harboring a fugitive. One who shouldn't be called that. But who is—now. Because people have taken a beating like never before. Even laws can be changed. Ideas of justice won't stay quite the same.

"Have you outgrown my calling you Nipper?" Mitchell Prell asked him seriously. "Perhaps.... But I still want to show you something."

Young Ed Dukas was no sucker for easy come-ons. But his polite wariness soon dissolved, when, in the room where Mitchell Prell was holed up, he saw that the man who turned to face him was not his uncle. The nose and lips were much heavier. Only the eyes and grin remained much the same, though their general effect was made different by the difference of surrounding features. This man looked like a good-natured mechanic.

Eddie's spine chilled. But he gave a sullen snort as the man peeled his face away. Underneath it was Uncle Mitch.

"A mask, Eddie. A trick for kids, you'd say." His uncle laughed. "I spent the day making it up, to help me get around more easily. That's nothing. The important fact is that it is made of vitaplasm. Remember the bar of it that I once had? Crude stuff then. Better now. Alive in a way of its own. A synthetic and far tougher cousin to natural protoplasm. Far less susceptible to damage by heat and cold. Self-healing, like flesh. Sustained by food and oxygen. But capable of drawing its energy from sunlight or radioactivity, too. And in some of its forms less dependent on a fluid base such as water. No, it's not consistently the same substance, or combination. Like the flesh we know, vitaplasm is in constant change. Here and now it's just an amorphous mass, crudely molded. An unshaped building material. But, like star ships, it belongs to the future. Here it's undeveloped principle, another phase of our advancing science everywhere. You could call it the clay of the superman, Eddie. I want you to remember all this. Because I may be back from where I'm going to try to go. Or I might get in touch sometime. We might need each other's help."

Young Ed Dukas listened with intense interest. Perhaps his deepest drive was toward the shadowy splendor of times yet to come. They seemed a part of his growing self. They must become real! And he must take part in their fulfillment. Grief or hardship could not stop him. Therein he and Mitchell Prell traveled the same road.

"You didn't invent vitaplasm, Uncle Mitch," he stated. "No one could have—alone."

His sullenly serious gaze lingered on the mask. It was warm to his touch. It even recoiled a little.

Mitchell Prell shook his head and chortled. "No, Nipper. You know that research is now far too complex for that. I helped a little. Lots of men did. Maybe I've added something to what is known. I've got to give my data to specialists here before I leave."

Eddie thought of a man he'd sometimes seen on television. No bigger than Uncle Mitch. And plain