fingers into the darkening sky.

CHAPTER II

Diane darted from the stream with a glad little cry, shaking the water from her long, tawny hair, the droplets of water sparkling on her bronzed skin like diamonds, the long, lithe lines of her body clothed only in the moisture until she found her buckskin shorts and halter and dressed. Life was comparatively simple and uncomplicated among the Shining Ones, and she, of all their encampment, remembered no other way. The others might look back with bitter longing or curse softly and futilely at the silver patches of skin at elbow and knee which marked them as survivors of the Plague, but not Diane.

So what if they were shunned by others, by the non-afflicted people who clung so doggedly to their mean existence in the small villages? She had but to hunt and fish and evade the bands of roving Robots lest they conscript her in their services. The only other bane in her life was Harry Starbuck and she could take care of herself where he was concerned. She could....

Something stirred in the undergrowth to her left and Diane could barely make out the flash of skin which said it was a man and not an animal. She finished fastening her halter as if she had seen or heard nothing, then abruptly picked up her hunting knife and said, "I hear you in there. I'll count three and then come in after you."

She did not have to count. The bushes parted and Harry Starbuck emerged, his skin scratched by brambles, his boyish face ridiculously out of place atop an over-muscled body, his knees and elbows covered by buckskin guards, an affectation common among the Shining Ones but which Diane had always thought as silly as wearing eye patches because you did not like the color of your eyes.

"You were watching me," Diane said angrily. "I warned you before, Harry."

"There's no law," he boomed sullenly, his deep voice belonging to the over-developed body and not the boyish face. "I can go where I want to."

Diane slapped the flat of her knife against her palm slowly. "Someday," she predicted, "this blade is going to feast on Starbuck. I mean that."

Starbuck roared his laughter. "Then I'll be careful," he promised. "But meanwhile, you realize you can't marry anyone but a Shining One, and who of our people suits you more than...."

"None of them suit me."

"You're 

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