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a word: nova. Someone else said: how long? The machines gave the answer.
    Soon.
    Then into the calm pleasant settled life chaos and terror reached like a scythe into grass. Go now, they said. No, not stopping to take anything. No, not to look for children or parents, not to find a lover or a friend.
Now
.
    And if you didn’t, they had no time to drag you.
Go
.
    White-faced officials. Spacemen moving like machines. Machines moving like men in panic, emptying the holds of cargo vessels on a spaceport in darkness. Useless goods being hurled aside, trucks and helicopters moving in with canned and dehydrated foods, medicines, bales of clothing. Diet-synthesizers being charged with trace-elements. All the time, everywhere, screaming, wailing, and sometimes a shout of savage anger begging a moment’s peace and silence. People shoveled like broken toys into the bellies of the shining ships.
    And then the light breaking under the horizon and the knowledge that on the dayside of Zarathustra heat like a torch was shriveling life away.
    Then those who had not acted for themselves or been passive like Ornelle, bewildered into letting action be performed for ‘them,
felt
the truth and came weeping and howling, naked from bed, clamoring like wolves for survival. But the ships were full; the ships were lifting into space.
    In the crowded holds there had been time to think of those who were left at home. There was a terrible oppressive darkness, not physical but in the mind. Later she heard of other ships with which contact had been made, overfilled, where the oxygen was inadequate and the refugees stifled, where the lance of sickness ran through hunger-weakened bodies. But in the ship where she was, there was just enough.
    Not much was learned of other ships, though. For some reason Ornelle didn’t understand, to get clear of the continuum distortions caused by the nova shifting fantastic masses of matter over giant distances at appalling speed, it was necessary to run ahead, under maximum hyper-photonic drive, in whatever direction they chanced to select.
    In fact: into unknown darkness.
    At the season when its sun exploded, Zarathustra hadbeen on the side of its orbit farthest from Earth and most of the other human-inhabited worlds. It was a recently-opened planet—indeed, Ornelle’s own parents had been born on Earth and had emigrated when they were young. The idea of trying to beat back around the nova and approach a settled system had been considered, but it was impossible; their ship was a freighter, not one of the passenger expresses disposing of as much power as a small star.
    Then, pincered between the narrowing jaws of shrinking fuel reserves and the limits of the ship’s internal ecology, the only hope was to find a planet—any planet—with supportable gravity and adequate oxygen. One system in sixty had a planet where human beings could survive; about one in two hundred had a planet where they could live.
    At the end of their resources, they had touched down here to find summer ending. They had no time to determine whether this was a one-in-sixty or a one-in-two-hundred world. At first only the lashing scorn of the few who intended to survive at all costs had driven the majority to behave as though there were hope. They felt themselves not only isolated, but abandoned, even condemned.
    The arrival of a second ship from Zarathustra, that landed on a high plateau inland, was like a new dawn. Abruptly life, not just temporary survival, seemed credible. While with sudden demonic energy the refugees worked to build a crude town of wood, sundried clay and scraps from the ship, a team made its way inland to the site of the other landing to ask news of friends or relations.
    There were none; the other ship was from a different continent on Zarathustra. Still, its mere presence was comforting; a radio link was organized on an agreed frequency and for the rest of the summer and the brief autumn they kept in touch.
    The vicious