He shook his head, hardly able to put into words the bitterness in his heart. "It won't do any good to go back, without destroying the Rocket. It's the last remnant of the old world--standing out there--the world that led us to _this_. It's poisonous, it's evil. There'll never be recovery unless the ship is wiped out." He looked down into her frightened eyes, rubbed her shoulders gently. "Don't be afraid. It won't be long. I'm going out there tonight. I'm going to blow that Rocket into a million pieces." She clung to him like a child, shaking her head helplessly. "You will be killed, I know you will be killed, _please_, Matt--Oh, if anything happens to you, I--I won't know what to do, I can't let you go--" "I've got to, Mary." Her voice was very small. "And when it's over--?" "We'll manage somehow. I don't know how. It doesn't really matter now. I don't know what kind of a world we'll have when it's all over, but I know that I'm going out to get that Ship. If it's the only thing I ever do that's right." * * * * * He went out alone. He tried to force out of his mind the account Mary had brought of the butchery back home, concentrating on one thing, and one thing only. The Ship had to be destroyed. Standing out there in the desert, it was the symbol of all that was wrong with a world that had somehow, abruptly, been left behind. Matt saw it in black and white, bitterly, a cause and effect relationship. He could neither rationalize it or deny it. But somehow, he felt, by destroying the Ship he could wipe out a past too horrible even to think about. He knew he had to do it. Matthews moved quietly through the blackness. The sandy soil was caked and hard under his feet, and the moon had just gone under the horizon to the West. Far ahead he could see the feeble guard lights of the enclosure, and he stopped, panting, staring at the tiny figures pacing back and forth. He had grown used to moving cautiously through the desertland without making a sound; now he concentrated on silence for his very life, and the only sound in his ears was the jogging of the dynamite pack on his shoulders. He circled slowly, making for the section of the fencing closest to the ship. He knew there would be few lights, since precious gasoline had to run generators to provide any at all. He had examined the gates as they had opened earlier in the evening, and felt certain there was no break-circuit alarm on the fence. Power, again. Only for the barest, most critical essentials. And with four hundred men available, eyesight was the best way to guard the fence--