It rained. Dan Forrester saw his path in split-second flashes when the frenetic wipers disturbed the flood of water across his windshield. The rain ate the light of his headlamps before the light could reach the road. Continuous lightning gave more light, but the rain scattered it into flashing white murk.

Rivers ran across the twisting mountain road. The car plowed through them.

In the valleys it must be . . . well, he would learn soon enough. There were preparations he must make first.

Charlie Sharps would know sooner.

Dan worried for Charlie. Charlie's chances weren't poor, but he should not have been traveling with that loaded station wagon. It was too obviously worth stealing. But Masterson might have packed guns, too.

Even if they reached the ranch, would Senator Jellison let them in? Ranch country, high above the floods. If they accepted everyone who came, their food would be gone in a day, their livestock the next. They might let Charlie Sharps in, alone. They probably would not require the services of Dan Forrester, Ph.D., ex-astrophysicist. Who would?

Dan was surprised to find that he'd driven home. He zapped the garage door and it opened. Huh! He still had electricity. That wouldn't last. He left the door open. Inside, he turned on some lights, then set out a great many candles. He lit two.

The house was small. There was one big room, and the walls of that room were bookshelves, floor to ceiling. Dan's dining table was piled high with his equipment. He had bought his fair share of freeze-dried foods while they existed, but Dan had thought further than that. He had carried home far more than his share of Ziploc Bags and salad-size Baggies, insect spray and mothballs. The table was full. He set to work on the floor.

He whistled as he worked. Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes. Presently he got up to put on some gloves. He came back with a fan and set it blowing past his ears from behind. That ought to keep the insecticide off his hands and out of his lungs.

When the pile on the floor got too big, he moved. And when the second pile was as high as the first, he stood up carefully. His joints were stiff. His feet hurt. He moved his legs to build circulation. He started coffee in the kitchen. The radio gave him nothing but static, so he started a stack of records going. There was now room at the kitchen table. He resumed work there.

The two piles merged into one.

The lights went out, the Beatles' voices deepened and slowed and stopped. Dan was suddenly immersed in darkness and sounds he'd been ignoring: rolling thunder, the scream of wind and the roar of rain attacking the house. Water had begun to drip from a corner of the ceiling.

He got coffee in the kitchen, then moved around the library lighting candles. Hours had passed. The forgotten coffee had already been heated too long. Four-fifths of the shelves were still full, but most of the right books were in bags.

Dan walked along the bookshelves. Weariness reinforced his deep melancholy. He had lived in this house for twelve years, but it was twice that long since he'd read Alice in Wonderland and The Water Babies and Gulliver's Travels. These books would rot in an abandoned house: Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat's Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon's Day; The Red Right Hand, The Trojan Hearse; A Deadly Shade of Gold; Conjure Wife; Rosemary's Baby; Silverlock; King Conan. He'd packed books not to entertain, nor even to illustrate philosophies of life, but to rebuild civilization. Even Dole's Habitable Planets for Man . . .

Dammit, no! Dan tossed Habitable Planets for Man on the table. Fat chance that the next incarnation of NASA would need it before it turned to dust, but so what? He added more: Future Shock; Cults of Unreason; Dante's Inferno; Tau Zero . . . stop. Fifteen minutes later he had finished. There were no more bags.

He drank coffee that was still warm, and forced himself to rest before he tackled the heavy work. His watch said it was ten at night. He couldn't tell.

He wheeled a wheelbarrow in from the garage. It was brand-new, the labels still on it. He resisted the temptation to overload it. He donned raincoat, boots, hat. He wheeled the books out through the garage.

Tujunga's modern sewage system was relatively new. The territory was dotted with abandoned septic tanks, and one of these was behind Dan Forrester's house. It was uphill. You can't have everything.

The wind screamed. The rain tasted both salty and gritty. The lightning guided him, but badly. Dan wrestled the wheelbarrow uphill, looking for the septic tank. He finally found it, full of rain because he'd removed the lid yesterday evening.

The books went in in handfuls. He pushed them into the aged sewage with a plumber's helper, gently. Before he left he broke open an emergency flare and left it on the upended lid.

He made his second trip in a bathing suit. The warm lashing rain was less unpleasant than soaked and sticky clothes. The third trip he wore the hat. He almost fainted coming back. That wouldn't do. He'd better have a rest. He took off the wet suit and stretched out on the couch, pulled a blanket over himself . . . and fell deeply asleep.

He woke in a pandemonium of thunder and wind and rain. He was horribly stiff. He got to his feet an inch at a time, and kept moving toward the kitchen, talking encouragement to himself. Breakfast first, then back to work. His watch had stopped. He didn't know if it was day or night.

Fill the wheelbarrow half full, no more. Wheel it through slippery mud, uphill. Next trip, remember to take another flare. Dump the books by armfuls, then push them down into the old sewage. Unlikely that anyone, moron or genius, would look for such a treasure here, even if he knew it existed. The smell hardly bothered him; but these hurricane winds couldn't last forever, and then the trove would be doubly safe. Back for another load . . .

Once he slipped, and slid a fair distance downhill through the mud with the empty wheelbarrow tugging him along. He crossed just enough sharp rocks to dissuade him from trying it again.

Then: last load. Finished. He wrestled with the lid, rested, tried again. He'd had a hell of a time getting it off, and he had a hell of a time getting it back on. Then downhill with the empty barrow. In a day his tracks would be flooded away. He thought of burying the last evidence of his project-the wheelbarrow-but just the thought of all that work made him hurt all over.

He dried himself with all the towels in the bathroom. Why not? He used the same towels to dry the rain gear. He got more from the linen closet. He stuffed hand towels into the boots before he put them in the car, with the raincoat and the hat and more dry towels. The old house leaked now; he wondered if the old car would too. Ultimately it wouldn't matter. Ultimately he would have to abandon the car and set out on foot, in the rain, carrying a backpack for the first time in his life. He'd be safe, or dead, long before this rain began to think about stopping.

Into the car went the new backpack he'd packed day before yesterday, including a hypo and some insulin. There were two more such medical packages elsewhere in the car, because someone might steal the whole backpack. Or someone might steal the hypos . . . but surely they would leave him one.

The car was an ancient heap, and nothing in it would attract thieves. He'd included a few items to buy his life, if and when it could be bought. There was one really valuable item; it would look like trash to the average looter, but it might get him to safety.

Daniel Forrester, Ph.D., was a middleaged man with no useful profession. His doctorate would never again be worth as much as a cup of coffee. His hands were soft, he weighed too much, he was a diabetic. Friends had told him that he often underestimated his own worth; well, that was bad too, because it restricted his bargaining ability. He knew how to make insulin. It took a laboratory and the killing of one sheep per month.

Yesterday Dan Forrester had become an expensive luxury.

What was in his backpack was something else again. It was a book, wrapped like the others: Volume Two of The Way Things Work. Volume One was in the septic tank.