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conceal ignorance; it was
obvious that none of them had ever heard of Fort Ridgeway, or Arizona either.
"We've been in what used to be Utah," Altamont said. "There's nobody there but a
few Indians, and a few whites who are even less civilized."
"You say you come from a fort? Then the wars aren't over, yet?" Sarge Hughes asked.
"The wars have been over for a long time. You know how terrible they were. You
know how few in all the country were left alive," Loudons said.
"None that we know of, beside ourselves and the Scowrers until you came," the Toon
Leader said.
"We have found only a few small groups, in the whole country, who have managed to
save anything of the Old Times. Most of them lived in little villages and cultivated land.
A few had horses, or cows. None, that we have ever found before, made guns and powder
for themselves. But they remembered that they were men, and did not eat one another.
Whenever we find a group of people like this, we try to persuade them to let us help
them."
"Why?" the Toon Leader asked. "Why do you do this for people you've never met
before? What do you want from them--from us--in return for your help?" He was
speaking to Altamont, rather than to Loudons; it seemed obvious that he believed
Altamont to be the leader and Loudons the subordinate.
* * * * *
"Because we're trying to bring back the best things of the Old Times," Altamont told
him. "Look; you've had troubles, here. So have we, many times. Years when the crops
failed; years of storms, or floods; troubles with these beast-men in the woods. And you
were alone, as we were, with no one to help. We want to put all men who are still men in
touch with one another, so that they can help each other in trouble, and work together. If
this isn't done soon, everything which makes men different from beasts will soon be no
more."
"He's right. One of us, alone, is helpless," the Reader said. "It is only in the Toon that
there is strength. He wants to organize a Toon of all Toons."
"That's about it. We are beginning to make helicopters like the one Loudons and I
came here in. We'll furnish your community with one or more of them. We can give you

a radio, so that you can communicate with other communities. We can give you rifles and
machine guns and ammunition, to fight the ... the Scowrers, did you call them? And we
can give you atomic engines, so that you can build machines for yourselves."
"Some of our people--Alex Barrett, here, the gunsmith, and Stan Markovitch, the
distiller, and Harrison Grant, the iron worker--get their living by making things. How'd
they make out, after your machines came in here?" Verner Hughes asked.
"We've thought of that; we had that problem with other groups we've helped,"
Loudons said. "In some communities, everybody owns everything in common; we don't
have much of a problem, there. Is that the way you do it, here?"
"Well, no. If a man makes a thing, or digs it out of the ruins, or catches it in the
woods, it's his."
"Then we'll work out some way. Give the machines to the people who are already in a
trade, or something like that. We'll have to talk it over with you and with the people
who'd be concerned."
"How is it you took so long finding us," Alex Barrett asked. "It's been two hundred or
so years since the Wars."
"Alex! You see but you do not observe!" The Toon Leader rebuked. "These people
have their flying machines, which are highly complicated mechanisms. They would have
to make tools and machines to make them, and tools and machines to make those tools
and machines. They would have to find materials, often going far in search of them. The
marvel is not that they took so long, but that they did it so quickly."
"That's right," Altamont said. "Originally, Fort Ridgeway was a military research and
development center. As the country became disorganized, the Government set this project
up, to develop ways of improvising power and transportation and communication
methods and extracting raw materials. If they'd had a little more time, they might have
saved the country. As it was, they were able to keep themselves alive and keep something
like civilization going at the Fort, while the whole country was breaking apart around
them. Then, when the rockets stopped falling, they started to rebuild. Fortunately, more
than half the technicians at the Fort were women; there was no question of them dying
out. But it's only been in the last twenty years that