"No," she said quickly, smiling. For whether Tom or Davey, the kindness and quiet strength, the comfort and peace she drew from them, was the same. * * * * * The clamor of the pursuing dogs had drawn close. Now their lithe shapes came bounding out of the deepening shadows. They splashed across the stream, leaped forward with triumphant buglings. Fangs were bared, muscles gathering for the attack. A soft, pale light glowed from Davey. It touched the dogs, and they plunged to a stop, frozen. And then they were yelping, tumbling over each other in panic as they whirled to flee. The shadows swallowed them. The pale light touched Fran, touched her ankle--and the pain was gone. Pain would always go like that, she knew. "Come," Davey said. "We're going to a place that has been waiting for us, Fran--a place none of us ever thought of until a while ago.... Follow the pattern in my mind. Carefully, now. Carefully." The voices of men, puzzled and angry. The footsteps of men, grating on rock, rushing nearer. "Quick, Fran! Quick!" A bright thread that seemed to run endlessly through an awesome darkness. The hills around her vanished, and she felt herself whirl dizzily across an unimaginable void. Then--The city took shape around her, glowing and spectral in the dusk. She and Davey stood on a deserted street, littered with wreckage. Ruin lay everywhere, but many of the buildings still stood. Davey said softly, "The radiation here would kill ordinary people, Fran. But it gave birth to us and is a part of us. We of the new race draw life and not death from it. The cities are home to us, for only we can live in them. And we will live in peace, safely and without being disturbed. In the cities we will build again, more wisely and strongly than those before us." A group of figures appeared up the street, tall boys and slender girls. They hurried forward, laughing and dancing, and their friendly welcoming thoughts reached out. "Home...." Fran murmured. She drew closer to Davey and felt a deep content.