Staggering back toward the creek bed, Johnny was felled by a fusillade of stones. He crouched on all fours at the edge of the dry brown earth, head spinning, vision blurring with pain. He expected more stones to usher in the final blackness, but when he could again see clearly, DeReggio's muscle-corded legs straddled him and the mayor cried, "Enough! Let Johnny Hope depart with his life." It was a brave gesture DeReggio had made, approaching within inches of Johnny, whose parents had been slain by the Plague. But DeReggio and Johnny's father had been close friends all their lives and had fought together in the last days of World War III before the Plague brought warfare--and civilization to an abrupt halt. Johnny forced himself upright on trembling legs. "I thank you for my life," he said, "but not for how you treat your dead companion-in-arms." The color drained from DeReggio's olive-skinned face. "Think what you will, Johnny. Think it but go while you still can. And remember that our first concern is with the living. The dead are beyond recall and the Plague victims can spread carnage in their wake. You know I loved your father like a brother, and your mother...." DeReggio and Johnny's dead mother were cousins, had been raised together under the same roof in the long-gone days before the War. Except for Johnny himself, the death of his parents could have disturbed no one more than DeReggio. "All right," said Johnny. "I'll go." There was a loud sucking in of breaths--relief--from the crowd. "But first I have this to say. I have visited the old, ruined cities. I have seen Philadelphia on its river and once I went north as far as New York, the great stumps of its buildings coming right down to the water's edge on the island called Manhattan. I have seen these things and although I am young I tell you this: we will not return to our greatness unless we strike out boldly instead of sitting, huddled in fear, at the thought of the Plague." "It is what his father always said," someone whispered from the edge of the crowd. "The Robots will cure the Plague," someone else, a woman, declared. Johnny laughed and had never heard such a sound before, from his lips or any others. "The Robots will cure nothing," he said. "Has anyone here ever seen the Robots?" The faltering wave of sound from the crowd was in the negative. "I have seen them," Johnny told his people, with whom he could no longer live. "My father wanted it that way. He sent me to the cities and to the mysterious places between the cities, the gleaming, white-surfaced roads which we use no longer, to see the Robots. And I tell you this: they will not cure the Plague. If anything they'll spread it." * * * * *