who had fallen, she would wait patiently, hopefully. If he ever released his hold on the M-gun—

But if it were Marcia who fell, Slade would yank her to her feet savagely, yelling words which she had heard at first but which after a while, after an eternity of the storm, seemed to merge with the sound of the rain and the far booming of thunder out over the water and then, as if by magic, she was walking again and stumbling along with Slade, drenched and beaten and half-drowned.

She hardly remembered when night came, but presently she was aware of the darkness and the mist over the sea and over the rock and now engulfing them with its white ectoplasmic tendrils. In the mist she knew she could escape Slade, and yet she did not. Without Slade now, now in the middle of nowhere there by the sea on the shores of the young Earth, she would die in the storm. With Slade—at least for now—was life. And she went on.

The thunder followed them—and came closer.

By the middle of the night it sounded like artillery at a distance of half a mile, like a barrage of big atomic shells just out of sight behind a black ridgeline which wasn't there. And through the deeper rain-wet darkness of early morning, through the mist, tearing the mist to tatters, shredding it, came the spears and forks and lances of lightning. It was, Marcia thought, a nightmare of a storm. And she must remember it, for it would make a story, a real story, if ever she lived to tell it.

By morning, the air smelled of ozone. It reeked of ozone and around them as the gray light seeped out of the wet sky and the rain suddenly slackened as if the weak daylight dispelled it, the black rocks were blasted and broken where lightning had struck.

In the dawn's first light another helicopter came.

"Get down!" Slade shouted, and they dropped among the blasted black rocks, hiding there, not moving. The helicopter came on through the slackening rain, buzzing a few hundred feet over them but not circling. It was heading for the abandoned tank, Marcia thought. It wasn't looking for them here—

But suddenly the rain came down in all its savage force again, blinding bounding off the rocks, pounding relentlessly.

Overhead, the helicopter seemed to pause like a bird stricken in flight. The rotors whirled a silver shield against the rain, the great drops splattering off the shield.

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