We both fell silent then, because there are times when the whole of the future and everything that human anger and courage can do to safeguard the future and keep it from destruction seems less important than coming to grips with an immediate, life-and-death emergency. When you do that you're going all out to safeguard the future as well, but you don't think of it in that way. Just getting to the spaceport in time--Oh, God, yes, in time to be at least a little ahead of time, so that Hillard would have steady nerves and could dismantle the cylinder with cautious precision, with no zero-count demoralization to make his fingers stray from the right wires--just getting there and finishing the job before the spaceport could become a translucent cone of fire was a million times as important to me, right at that moment, as the Wendel-Endicott war. A million times as important, Ralphie boy. Don't be ashamed of feeling that way. If the spaceport blows up, and there's no Joan any more, and the universe comes to an end for you, you've no sure guarantee that the actors who will step into your shoes and occupy the center of the stage will make any better job of it than you've been doing. So it will be a loss, however you slice it, because the death of two lovers is always a loss. You fight better when you've been given that best of all head starts. 18 We stayed silent until the tractor had rumbled past eight or ten of the breaks in the Big Grayness. They were shrouded in dusk-light now, with no kids playing in the front yards of the housing area pre-fabs. Then, just as we were turning into the clear-away that branched off from the one I'd taken on leaving the hospital, Hillard shouted: "We've got to get over to the left! There's an ambulance right up ahead!" I heard the siren before I saw it, a banshee-like wail cutting through the twilight, unnerving in its shrillness. It took a moment or two for its winking red headlights to come sweeping toward us and if Hillard had seen them before that it had to mean he had exceptionally sharp eyesight. It careened past without slowing, almost grazing the hood of the tractor. I thought for an instant, when the banshee wail became shrill again, that it was still coming from the same ambulance. Then I saw four more furiously blinking headlights coming out of the dusk ahead of us, and another ambulance swept past, as swiftly as the first had done, but missing us by a wider margin. A third followed it at a distance of less than a hundred feet, its siren at such full blast that it no longer sounded like a banshee wail. You can be gripped by a dread that's practically breath-stopping and still manage to shout, if your only other choice is to die inwardly. It may have been more of a groan than a shout. My voice sounded ragged and it almost broke. "Could those ambulances be coming from the spaceport? Do you think--" He cut me off. I probably couldn't have gone on anyway.