"Weapon?" said the Elder. "It is called Colt, not weapon. We have always had them. Our people brought them when they came into these mountains." "Then you were not always here?" It was the Elder's turn to be amazed. "Always? No--it was not the best place to be always. We came here only to escape the sickness, in the time of my fathers' fathers. Long ago." "The sickness?" "You are one of us, you are of our people," said the Elder. "We know that because you use gunpowder, for we saw you kill the saber-tooth. If you had used an atomic gun we would have fled, for they are stronger than Colt--Colt cannot fight the atomic gun. But you are one of us, you must know these things." "I don't know them," said O'Hara. The children were by now busily cutting up the giant bear, preparing it to take back to the caves. "I came from beyond the Curtain--" "What does this mean, beyond the Curtain?" "Beyond the Atomic Curtain, which shields this continent from that other world, my world, the Eastern Hemisphere. Beyond the oceans. Europe, Asia, Africa." "These sounds mean nothing to us--Europe, Asia, Africa. Are they other mountains, perhaps along the Coast? We have not been there--it is too far and the risk of death is too great." "You never go down from these mountains?" "None of us. It would be death from the sickness--or worse than death, were we caught. Below the mountains is tabu for us. Were I to go, one of my people would fire Colt at me. It is our law." "But you permit others of your people to come here?" "That is permitted, yet it has never happened until you came. We saw you far above us, in that great flying thing you rode. We had never seen that thing before, but there are stories--myths the older people told when I was young--of the flying thing that men could ride across the skies in, as the condor does. Did you come in it from another mountain, beyond the regions of the Degraded?" "From the north," said O'Hara. "Beyond the ice and the Curtain. But what are the Degraded?" "The atomic people, if you can call them people. Those who live in the lowlands below the mountains." "A different people?" The Elder looked incredulous. "You must know these things. It is impossible not to know these things." "But I do not know them," said O'Hara. "Beyond the Curtain we know nothing. Who are these atomic people and how are they different from you? And the sickness you mention. Tell me--"