CHAPTER 3Dust
The soil was dry and gritty, reduced to a fine dust devoid of any trace of animal or vegetable matter, and holding within itself the seeds of ghastly death. In a sense it was ash, the residue of atomic war-dusts and the searing heat and radiation of liberated energy, dry and powdery, gritty and without cohesion, useless as a medium on which to grow as much as a blade of grass.
Wilson waved with his thick arm and a lumbering machine churned towards him on wide tracks. A wide-mouthed container jerked, settled, and thudded on the sterile soil and like automatons the group of boys and young men began to load it with hand shovels, filling it with poisoned dirt.
Around them dust plumed, covering their face plates and coating their thick protective clothing with a heavy layer of
