“In the future there will be more of us and it will be different,” he said at last. “On Earth the Gerns were always stronger and faster than humans but when the Gerns come to Ragnarok they’re going to find a race that isn’t really human any more. They’re going to find a race before which they’ll be like woods goats before prowlers.”

“If only they don’t come too soon,” Craig said.

“That was the chance that had to be taken,” he replied.

He wondered again as he spoke, as he had wondered so often in the past years, if he had given them all their death sentence when he ordered the transmitter built. Yet, the future generations could not be permitted to forget⁠ ⁠… and steel could not be tempered without first thrusting it into the fire.

He was the last of the Young Ones when he awoke one night in the fall of fifty-six and found himself burning with the Hell Fever. He did not summon any of the others. They could do nothing for him and he had already done all he could for them.

He had done all he could for them⁠ ⁠… and now he would leave forty-nine men, women and children to face the unknown forces of Big Winter while over them hung the sword he had forged; the increasing danger of detection by the Gerns.

The question came again, sharp with the knowledge that it was far too late for him to change any of it. Did I arrange the execution of my people?

Then, through the red haze of the fever, Julia spoke to him out of the past; sitting again beside him in the summer twilight and saying:

Remember me, Billy, and this evening, and what I said to you⁠ ⁠… teach them to fight and be afraid of nothing⁠ ⁠… never let them forget how they came to be on Ragnarok.⁠ ⁠…