unsure of themselves. They were hopelessly caught in a mire of pretty words, which they seemed to believe themselves. And without their machines they were helpless.

After Lanny and his brother had been in the San Francisco area for nearly two weeks, they were invited to a formal session of the local resistance council, where they were accepted as new citizens of the community. The delegates met at night in the rubble of the old city. A narrow passage tunneled through the ruins to an underground room which had once been the vault of a bank and had, therefore, survived the bombing and the slashing fire of the energy guns.

Gill did not stay with his brother in the rear of the vault. Instead he joined the young hotheads who formed the war party in the local council. At home Gill had dominated the same element.

The men in every treaty area were split between two points of view. One group wanted to organize an immediate attack upon the invader, in spite of the inequality in arms. The others counciled caution, until they had the strength to strike a real blow to free the Earth.

Since men had no weapons and no metals from which to make them, the obvious basis for any successful attack had to be a scheme for seizing arms from the enemy. "We can only destroy the Almost-men if we use their own machines." Again and again the San Francisco war party repeated that fact; it seemed an argument so self-evident that it was beyond any rational challenge. "The machines have no intelligence, no sense of values; they will obey us just as readily as they obey the enemy."

"More so." Gill spoke clear and loud, in crisp self-confidence. "I do not believe the enemy knows how to feel the structure of matter."

This statement created a minor sensation. The heads of the delegates turned slowly toward Gill. Gill was smiling, his mane of blond hair shimmering like gold in the flickering light. Lanny felt, as always, a tremendous admiration for his brother. Gill was so sure of himself, so certain that he was right. Gill's mind would never have been plagued by shadowy fears he couldn't understand.

"I have seen an enemy bleed," Gill went on. "They do not know how to heal a wound."

"That might be true of some," one of delegates answered. "Some of our old ones have forgotten, too. But you spoke as if the individual community of cells could be extended to include integration with all external matter."

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