Because she could not yet face the prospect of finding other men and women like herself. Through all their preparations she had only half believed it, deep down. Yet now the most terrible question of her life rose in unshrouded hugeness before her: HAD OTHERS OF HER KIND SURVIVED THE DESTRUCTION? Or was she truly alone with Kalus, who she seemed to know less and less each day? And why did a part of her WANT to be alone with him? She could not face it. If after all her hopes and fears it came to nothing..... 'All right,' she said, trying to calm herself. 'All right. What do we do now?' 'Build a fire, eat and drink, then move inland carefully. We don't know yet what we'll find. I think I can trace the source of the beams well enough. The Island is large, but not infinite. Only its uneven surface makes it appear so. If we miss on the first try, or even the second, we will be closer to the source; and we can trace the beams by night, if need be.' But for all her need of nourishment, Sylviana's knotting stomach would not think of food. 'We've got to go now! I'm sorry, Kalus, but I can't possibly wait another minute.' He started to overrule her, then checked himself, secretly bitter at her eagerness. 'Very well,' he said. 'But we go slowly, and with our weapons in our hands. I'll take no chances in this wretched place.' His mood had changed abruptly. He too felt the specter of the waiting unknown, though his hopes and fears were nearly opposite; and he became once more the untrusting hill-man. He lifted his spear, jaw set against the dark uncertainty that awaited them. Sylviana strode ahead anxiously. Together they cleared the sand, and climbed the first slanting rise. It dipped, and another rose before them, frail earth punctured by an agony of stone and steel. They advanced. Chapter 38 Inland the earth grew somewhat less troubled. The undulating cross of ridges became smoother and more widely spaced, with patchwork valleys sinking in their midst. The scarred remains of buildings were also less frequent, though here and there an inexplicable mound of slag, half overgrown like an ancient, impoverished barrow, rose to recall the unsleeping dead that still walked there. Sylviana was soon pale and exhausted, and Kalus could no longer indulge her almost distracted urge to keep moving. Almost angry, he made her sit down in the grim shade of a leering monolith. For the day had grown hot and humid, with hardly a breeze to calm the reeling senses, or break the spell of sunny, smiling death that seemed to hang in the air around them like a witch's curse. A delirium of fever had come over her from the tumultuous passage of the rapids and the sea, but in her excited state she was not calm or rational enough to realize it.