Outside, another man began to scream. The nurse moved automatically in that direction. He caught her arm and held her back.

"Wait until the rocks stop rolling, Nedra."

She did not protest. Looking up at him, she said, "You think I'm one of the new people, don't you?"

Zen coughed and swore at the cigarette, insisting that the tobacco was moist. This was a lie and both knew it. But—what to say? Her question was a complete stunner. "What makes you think that?" he asked, desperate for words.

"I just think it. It's true, isn't it?"

As an intelligence officer, Zen was accustomed to asking the questions, but this nurse had completely turned the tables on him. He took a deep drag on the cigarette. "I don't know. Are you?" He made his voice as casual as was possible.

Her eyes studied him. The trace of a smile came over her face and tugged at the comers of her lips. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Go right ahead." The man had stopped screaming outside but another boulder was going past. In the distance, the avalanche was trying to grind to a halt but it sounded as if millions of tons of rock were on the move to a safer location.

"Are you one of the new people?" the nurse asked.

The cough was real this time. Zen could not suppress his surprise. "What on earth makes you ask a question like that?"

"I just felt like asking it," the nurse replied. "Am I wrong?"

"Who are the new people?"

"Why, everybody has heard of them. They're the new race that is going to provide the nucleus for new growth after all ordinary men and women have been destroyed in this war." Surprise showed in her violet eyes. "Do you mean you have never heard of them?"

"I've heard the usual rumors that are afloat," Zen said, shrugging. "But all the stories have impressed me as a pack of lies. Really, I think the enemy has started most of them, to get us to relax our war effort."

"Do you honestly think that?" Her voice had a puzzled note in it. "I mean, honestly and truly."

"I think what the evidence tells me to think, nothing less. In this case, I have seen none of the so-called evidence."

Shrugging, Zen moved toward the opening of the tunnel, then drew back as a mass of rock crashed outside. "It's raining boulders out there," he said. "What do you know about the so-called new people?"

"Not much," she answered.

"You're a very lovely liar, but the fact that you are lovely doesn't make you any less a liar," Zen said. She was very beautiful with her violet eyes and bronze hair, but an overworked intelligence officer could not be concerned with these things.

"Thank you, colonel," she said. "But I do not relish being called a liar." Her face showed hurt, just the right amount of it, but at the same time her eyes laughed at him. "However, I guess there is nothing I can do about it, is there?" Somehow she contrived to look like a small girl who has been unjustly accused of some deed she has not committed.

In the distance the avalanche had ground to a halt. Now, no more boulders were bounding down the hill. A vast, puzzled silence held the mountains. In that silence, Zen fancied he could hear the thoughts of the frightened men who had remained alive thus far, and were wondering how to prolong their precarious existence. They were also wondering if staying alive was worth the effort involved. Why not give up now and be done with all tragedy, with all tears, with all trying to find the road to the future?

Up the trail a man began to scream.

Like a homing pigeon that has finally found the right direction, the nurse moved toward the sound. Zen caught her arm again. Looking puzzled, she stopped. "Please, colonel. I am needed up there." She nodded up the slope in the direction of the screaming man.

"You are probably needed by many others," he commented.

She did not seem to understand. "But I am a nurse. It is my duty to help those who are wounded."

"I know." He was a little startled to find himself in sympathy with this impulse. "But, not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because that slope is still too hot to be safe." He held up his left wrist. Instead of a watch, he wore a miniature radiation counter there. The needle was creeping up toward the red line.

"The radiation count is about forty right here at the mouth of this prospect hole," he pointed out.

"That is interesting," the nurse said. The tone of her voice said it was not important.

"Halfway up the slope, it will hit a hundred. At the top of the ridge, where the explosion took place, the count may reach a thousand." In his opinion, he had said enough.

In her opinion, he had not said anything at all. "That makes no difference. Wounded men are up there. I am a nurse. My duty is clear to me."

"If you try to help them under these circumstances, you will become a casualty yourself."

"But what of the men who need help?"

"They will simply have to get out of the radiation zone themselves, or wait until the area is clear and help can reach them."

"You are heartless!"

"Not at all," he denied. "If anything could be done to help them I would be doing it. Don't you understand what has happened? That was an Asian N bomb that exploded. In an N bomb the immediate effect is minor. The real purpose of the weapon is to spray the area with high intensity radiation, to make the ground unfit for living for months. Any living creature caught within the direct blast of the radiation is doomed, and neither you, nor I, nor the medics, can do anything to help them—" He broke off as another man began screaming up the slope.

The nurse was irresolute. "But that man needs help," she pointed out.

"Certainly he needs help," Zen agreed.

"Well—"

Zen watched her carefully. She seemed to understand his words but something else pulled at her far more strongly: the screaming of the injured man. Each time the soldier cried out, she started in his direction.

"Well, well, thank you, colonel." Turning, she moved with a sure stride up the slope.

Zen swore under his breath and started after her, then caught the motion as the question rose in him as to why she should throw her life away. She knew the meaning of radiation in lethal quantities. Unquestionably, she also knew what would happen to any normal human who ventured into a hot zone.

Was she, then, a normal human being? Was he actually witnessing one of the miracles performed by the new people? If she came off the mountain slope alive, it would certainly prove something. Zen cursed again. She was going where he could not safely follow. If she returned unharmed, he had enough proof to warrant following her to the ends of the earth, if need be.

III

The radio transmitter inside Zen's pack was small but very powerful. It did not look like a radio transmitter at all; there was no antenna and no apparent source of power. Only the tiny earphone and the throat microphone revealed its true nature.

He slipped the phone into his ear, fitted the microphone against his throat, then picked up the piece of plastic tubing that was red on one end and green on the other. Wires ran from each end of this tube to the small box that housed the transmitter.

"Red goes to the right hand," he muttered. "Green to the left. Or is it the other way around?" Making up his mind that red went to the right, he closed his fingers around the ends of the plastic tube, then watched the tiny meter on top of the small box that contained the transmitter.

The needle moved on the dial.

"Calling nine dash nine," he spoke. "This is six one calling nine dash nine." He repeated the call three times, then sat back on his haunches to await an answer.

"Come in six one," the earphone said. "What color is red?"

"It's green this week," Zen answered promptly.

"What color was it last week?"

"Last week? Um. Oh, yes. No color."

"And that means—"