irritably.

Lansing almost choked with stifled laughter when Court just glanced briefly at Knox, then said quietly to the warden, "Sergeant Haines has just advised me that the inmates know about these gentlemen and they're—restless. I wonder if we shouldn't keep the men in their cells this afternoon."'

"Blast it!" roared Knox. "Can't you people keep a secret?"

"There are no secrets in prison, general," Halloran said mildly. "I learned that my first week as a guard, twenty years ago." To Court he said, "Sit down, Alfred. Unless you disagree strongly, I think we'll let the men out as usual. It's a risk, yes, but right now, the closer we stick to normal routine, the better."

"You're probably right, sir."

Court sat down and Halloran turned to his two visitors.

"Now, gentlemen," he smiled, "we're at your disposal. As I told you, my two associate wardens aren't here. Mr. Briggs is in town and Mr. Tate is home ill. Dr. McCall, our Protestant clergyman, is also home, recovering from a siege with one of those pesky viruses. But we here represent various phases of our administration and can certainly answer all of your questions."

"Questions!" Knox snorted. "We're here to tell you the facts—not ask."

"General," soothed Lansing. He looked across the desk at Halloran and shrugged slightly. The warden twinkled. "General Knox is a trifle ... ah, overblunt, but he's telling you the essential truth of the situation. We've come to take you away from here. Just as soon as you can leave."

"Hey?" cried Slade. "Leave here? The devil, man, I've got to take out a gall bladder this afternoon!"

"I'm afraid I don't understand," murmured Goldsmid. "I thought the war was over—"

"This is all nonsense!" There was an ominous note in Knox's hoarse voice. "Do you people realize you're now under the authority of the Fifth Defense Command?"

Lansing cried: "Let's be sensible about all this!" He pointed his cigar at the fuming soldier. "General, these gentlemen have every right to know the situation and we'll save time if you'll permit me to give them a quick briefing."

"All right! All right!"

"Well, then." Lansing crossed his long legs, glanced nervously about the room, and said, "The world as we know it is done with. Finished. In another week it will be completely uninhabitable."

"Hey," grunted Slade. "You Lansing, the physicist?"

"That's right, doctor."

"Didn't place you at first. Well, what's going to end this lousy old world of ours?"

"Well," Lansing answered, "we wiped out our late antagonists with skill and dispatch. But, in the end, they outsmarted us. Left behind some sort of radioactive dust which ... spreads. It's rolling down on us from Chicago and up from Texas. God knows what other parts of the country are like—we haven't had time to discuss it with them on the radio."

Goldsmid muttered something in Hebrew.

"Isn't that lack of communication rather odd?" asked the warden.

"Not so very. We've been too busy building rocket ships."

"Rocket ships!" Court was jarred out of his icy calm.

"You mean spaceships?" cried the doctor.

"Yes, Slade, they do," murmured the warden.

"Precisely," Lansing said. "When it looked as if the cold war would get rather warm, the allied governments faced up to the fact that our venerable planet might become a ... ah, a battle casualty. So, in carefully selected regions, rather extensive preparations were made for a hurried departure from this sector of the universe."

"Oh, come to the point!" Knox exploded. "All you people need to know is that one of those regions is this area of the Rocky Mountains, that the ships are built and ready to go, and that you're to get aboard. Fast!"

"That," nodded Lansing, "is it."

The four prison