and in the morning we'll all go to Tareesh."

She smiled--the gentle, childlike smile of the harmlessly mad--and
turned away. The son of Kalvar Dard made sure that she and all the
children were on the way, and then he, too, turned and followed them,
leaving Dard alone.

Alone, with a bomb and a task. He'd borne that task for twenty years,
now; in a few minutes, it would be ended, with an instant's searing
heat. He tried not to be too glad; there were so many things he might
have done, if he had tried harder. Metals, for instance. Somewhere there
surely must be ores which they could have smelted, but he had never
found them. And he might have tried catching some of the little horses
they hunted for food, to break and train to bear burdens. And the
alphabet--why hadn't he taught it to Bo-Bo and the daughter of Seldar
Glav, and laid on them an obligation to teach the others? And the
grass-seeds they used for making flour sometimes; they should have
planted fields of the better kinds, and patches of edible roots, and
returned at the proper time to harvest them. There were so many things,
things that none of those young savages or their children would think of
in ten thousand years....

Something was moving among the rocks, a hundred yards away. He
straightened, as much as his broken legs would permit, and watched. Yes,
there was one of them, and there was another, and another. One rose from
behind a rock and came forward at a shambling run, making bestial
sounds. Then two more lumbered into sight, and in a moment the ravine
was alive with them. They were almost upon him when Kalvar Dard pressed
in the thumbpiece of the bomb; they were clutching at him when he
released it. He felt a slight jar....