A cool-headed few, in command of the Venusian garrison, had seen that neither side could win; that there would be only mutual and total destruction. The warfare became more and more atrocious; and the Anglo-Capitalist Bloc drifted further and further from the sort of organization that the Venus garrison, in no immediate danger, could contemplate defending with enthusiasm. Thus, when one day the Lunar Base radio complained of attack by suicide-ships and then went abruptly silent, the Venusian Base, which might have been expected to cry "Geronimo!" and leap into the holocaust, instead underwent a short and violent revolution in which the ardently military were disposed of. Then, stubbornly intending to survive chaos and idiocy, the Venus Base folded its hands and sat out the fatal clash that ended The War and virtually the whole of Terrestrian civilization with it.... After several centuries, the Venus Council risked an exploration party to Terra to see whether the globe was becoming fit for human habitation again. Large areas had, of course, through natural processes become decontaminated; there were scattered colonies of survivors--farmers, herdsmen, hunters, armed with clubs, spears, and other primitive weapons. Contact was made, communication struck up, trade--of considerable importance to both--established; and, after the ten years which this took, the Venusians were left with very little inclination to colonize Terra. Life under the domes was comfortable, with controlled climate, law and order, science and art. Comfortable, civilized, and sensible. While Terra-- "_Be a sensible Venusian_," was what Linda meant. "_Don't go looking for trouble when you can do better without. Don't be a typical Terrestrian!_" The whole clash of the previous night had been silly. Irritated by Gil Dawson's giving Linda a ruby as a souvenir of his official inspection-tour of the Council-controlled Terrestrian trading-posts, Verrill had flung the trinket into the lake. After a brisk fracas in which Dawson had finally wearied of getting up, only to be knocked down again, Verrill had shouted to Linda and to most of Venus that he'd get her a man's-sized ruby, the Fire of Skanderbek. She, thoroughly outraged, had told him and Dawson that by Heaven she'd not be the prize, either of a brawl or a souvenir-finding contest. To make it good, she had concluded by telling Verrill that he'd be far better occupied if he got the Venus Council to assign him to one of the committees for improving the living-standards of the Terrestrians, and won the Fire of Skanderbek as a token of their gratitude. But however earnestly she besought him to forget it all, Verrill was just as unhappily determined to go through with it. "I can't back down. Dawson will surely take a crack at stealing the Fire himself--and that would make it tough for me. And for you." "Oh, let the fool try!" she cried, desperately. "He'd never come back from the territory of those wildmen."