He slept fitfully. Waking in the cold darkness before dawn, he could see the beams of light shooting up from the circular cores of the great cylindrical towers, as if they were giant torches held up to illuminate the sky. Ann shivered in her sleep and tried to hug him more tightly, seeking to warm her body with his. Pity washed through him. Holding her, he felt a growing, spreading ache that was like the cold but deeper, that would not yield to warm rays of the morning sun. He had brought her to this, and he was failing her. Once, in the first week, he had trapped a small animal, one of the few species that seemed to be alive on the plain. He had had matches then, had built a fire, and it seemed they had never tasted anything more delicious than the fresh meat they shared in that festive meal. "I think," Ann had said, "Hendley, I think now we are really free. For the first time." Later that night, lying before the warm glow of the fire, they had made love, and it had been like that first day of discovering each other. Now they no longer made love. They were both dull with fatigue at the end of each day, even though they rested during the period of brutal midday heat. They were weakened by having had little to eat for days. They had tried various wild plants and even grasses that looked edible. Some were acceptable to their stomachs, some were impossibly bitter, one had made both of them sick. Hunger and thirst had jealously driven out other appetites. The need for water, Hendley knew, would soon be more urgent even than food. In all this brown, empty land they had found no stream, no spring, no sign of water. They had started out with a two-week supply in the canteens provided them, but in the first days, unused to the weight of the desert sun, they had drunk too generously. It was only near the end of the first week that the necessity for strict rationing became painfully clear. There were mountains to the west, creeping infinitesimally higher each day, and Hendley reasoned that there must be water flowing down from the mountains, but he wondered, the strange new ache piercing to his heart as he held Ann more closely, if they would find it in time. Really free, he thought. It was true. But this freedom was demanding. They were unprepared for it. Nothing in their lives before had equipped them to cope with it. Everything had always been provided--all the needs of mind and body. The social machine had taken care of its moving parts. Could they manage even to exist cut off from the benevolent machine?