Even if she had known he was following her, obviously she hadn't known these men were here. She hadn't been coming to meet them. Then what was her purpose in climbing to this old ghost town which lay just at timberline on the edge of a mountain wilderness where Cuso was held at bay? The first ruffian was standing erect. Zen brought the sights of the carbine to bear on the center of his ragged coat. "_Drop the gun!_" a voice said behind him. Even more surprising than the command was the fact that he knew the voice that had spoken. Or he thought he did. He let the carbine slide from his fingers. "Now get 'em up." He raised his hands. "Hello, Jake," he called out. An exclamation of surprise came from behind him. "How the hell did you know me?" "Recognized your voice," Zen answered. "Can I turn around now?" "Sure. Sure. But what the hell are you doing up here?" Turning, Zen saw the automatic rifle that covered him. The muzzle was wavering and the man who held it seemed confused. His face was covered with a heavy growth of black whiskers and long hair peeped out from under a battered helmet. "Jake, it's really good to see you again." As if such things as automatic rifles did not exist, Zen advanced with outstretched hand. "Kurt Zen! I haven't seen you since--since--" "The night that Denver got it," Zen answered. Horror overwhelmed him as he remembered what had happened to the Mile-High city. A bomb had struck from the sky that night and parts of Denver had gone much higher than a mile. "Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I thought you had got it that night, Kurt." "I thought the same thing about you. What are you doing up here? And what--what happened to Marcia?" The instant Zen asked the question, he wished he had kept still. At the name something happened in the man's eyes. They began to change, going from comprehension to blankness, then coming back to understanding, then losing that and going back to blankness. One instant the eyes looked at Zen and the man remembered and liked this colonel. The next instant, neither the eyes nor the mind behind them knew him. Zen was then an alien, a stranger, to be distrusted and feared and possibly destroyed. When Zen had known him in Denver, Jake had been a young airman. He and Marcia had been newly married and very much in love with each other. "She--she--" The voice was choked and tight with pain. "The radiation got her." For an instant, the memory held true. But there was too much pain in the memory for this man to face it. The memory went away. Only the pain remained. "Marcia? Oh, she's fine. The next leave I get, we're going to have a second honeymoon." A glow appeared in the man's eyes. "I can see her now, waiting for me. You must go with me, Kurt, and meet her again, the next leave I get." Zen could have slugged him. He could have lifted the rifle out of Jake's hands without protest. Instead, he did nothing. The man's pain was much too real to hurt him further.