"She is immune to radiation!" Zen thought after Nedra had left to rejoin her unit. This in itself was of sufficient importance to attract and hold the interest of the top military and scientific minds. Perhaps soldiers could also be immunized. Perhaps, by some impossible freak of chance, a way might be found for workers to return to abandoned factories, to long-closed shops and forges. This might mean a new flow of goods and materials to troops that were desperately short of them and to a civilian population that, at a conservative estimate, was more than half starved. A human being who had achieved immunity to radiation was important enough to command his complete attention. Also, the probability was very great that she was one of the mysterious new people. Something else about her interested him even more. He could not put his finger on this something else but he suspected it had to do with the future, with another world than the one he knew. Or with another universe. Again the memory of his contact with the race mind flicked through his consciousness. Now he knew what he was going to do insofar as Nedra was concerned. He had a hunch what her next move would be. He would wait for her to make it. Finding a carbine was not difficult. On this trail, the weapons were to be had for picking them up. A dead man's ammunition pouches were filled with cartridges. He took the pouches. Carrying the carbine, he slid down the bank toward the mountain stream that talked to itself at the bottom of the canyon. The water was clear and cool but dead trout floating in it warned him not to drink. Seeking a place from which he could watch the canyon, he moved upward. A dim trail was visible through the pines here. "An old narrow-gauge railroad," he thought. The rails had been removed long since, the ties had rotted away, and the roadbed itself was hardly a trail through the growth of trees. He had barely settled himself in a spot from which to watch the ravine below, than a stone turned on the old roadbed. Nedra was coming along the trail. He let her pass without challenge. Sliding out of hiding, he followed her. Twisting and turning, the trail climbed slowly upward. When it reached the edge of the timber, Zen caught a glimpse of a slide of yellow rock far ahead, an old mine dump, which told him why the road had been constructed in the first place. A ghost town was probably ahead. He caught a glimpse of Nedra moving steadily ahead along the old road bed. "If she doesn't know exactly where she is going, then I'm missing my guess," he thought, as he followed her. Elation was rising in him. She was leading him straight to the hiding place of the new people.