He turned his attention to the Elder. "What first?" he asked. "My people," the Elder said simply. Together, they began their tour. IV Three weeks had passed since Kimball Trent's arrival. At first, he had met doubt and suspicion from the inhabitants of the tunnels beneath the rubble of New York. His manner of speech was odd, as were his weapons, his clothing and his knowledge. But gradually, he had been accepted by the majority of those he had met through the Elder. The dwellers of the underground caverns were a strange admixture of modern and primitive cultures. None but the Elder, the Reader and his acolytes could read or write. They knew nothing of the past except what the Reader gave to them from his books, or what the Singers gave to them in their songs of legend. They had been cleaved into three classes: workers, warriors and growers, each with its distinct duties, each contributing to the welfare of the whole. The warriors were the hunters of wild game and the protectors of their homes; the workers kept everything used in as good repair as they were capable of doing, except upon the mechanical machines and contrivances of which they had no knowledge either inherited or acquired. The growers were the food gardeners and flock tenders, utilizing their skill in abandoned subway tubes where gardens grew fabulously beneath the radi-lights studding the walls, and where various food and milk animals and food fowls were kept in penned-in tunnels. Over all were the Elder and his council of five. They ruled by election of the people, and so kindly and wise had been their rule that never had one been deposed except by death. They studied the old books, sent parties searching on great journeys in efforts to contact other groups of men and women hidden from the invaders. They made the laws that were needed, interpreted them, and meted out what punishment was necessary. Major crimes were unknown, for the knowledge had been bred into generation after generation that life could only be maintained by absolute dependence upon each other. This was the society that Kimball Trent found beneath the earth, one that amazed and embittered him; for in his mind was the world that had been his, one of freedom of movement and thinking, with only the coming of the Gharrians to mar the peace that had seemed eternal. He found a great admiration, too, for the people of the caverns. Never had he heard grumbling among them, always there had been soft laughter. And always had there been, deep beneath their mannerisms, that steel-like will that would never bow beneath the weird tyrants.