The warmth of the fire acted like an opiate, but Tchassen realized he didn't dare risk falling asleep. Tynia or Briggan might be Earth people, waiting for the chance to finish the job they had begun when the Nevada station was destroyed. After a brief hesitation, the Captain took another shock capsule from his belt pouch and choked it down. The drug would keep him awake, although it was dangerous to take a second capsule so soon after the first; there were sometimes emotional side-affects which were unpleasant. "One of us should stay on guard," Briggan said. "We could take turns at it, Captain--two hour stints until dawn." "Good idea, Briggan. I'll stand the first watch." "I was going to volunteer--" "No; you're tired; you and Tynia need your sleep." "You're too considerate of us, Captain." The overtone in Briggan's voice suggested far more than he actually said. He lay back on his blankets, but he did not shut his eyes, and he put his dispersal ray across his belly with his hand on the firing stud. Tchassen stood up, sliding a weapon over each shoulder. He went through a connecting hall into a narrow room. A few scattered dishes, overlooked by the looters, and built-in cooking machines indicated that this had been a restaurant. The room gave him an excellent vantage point, for the windows, still unbroken, provided a broad view of the highway and the clearing in front of the building. The restaurant was bitterly cold. Tchassen pulled the rough, fibrous clothing tight around his shoulders, but it felt irritating rather than warm. He looked out on the ice and the snow and the pines, and he was acutely conscious of the savage alienness of Earth. Snow he knew as a scientific curiosity; he had seen it created in laboratory experiments. Nowhere in the civilized galaxy did it exist as a natural phenomenon. The teeming billions of people crowding every world could not survive unless every square inch of soil was occupied and exploited. Science regimented the temperatures in the same way that it controlled rainfall. For more than twenty centuries neither deserts nor Arctic wastes had existed. All animal species had disappeared. Trees survived only as ornamental growths in city parks. The Earth was a relic of the past, a barbaric museum piece. The strong, individualistic genius of its people had evolved in no other society; and that genius had created a technology which mushroomed far beyond the capacity to control it. It gave this savage world atomic power before it had planetary unity.