Chuck

Please, please.

Something's terribly wrong.

You mean, she said hopefully, we might be in some sort of pocket here on the ridge that doesn't get the gas?

Are you all right, Arthur?

All right.

But in those trips, he brought every bit of food in the house back to the cave.

Some sterno cans and whatever odds and ends he decided they might need.

At 5 a.m., they held what he called a council of war.

There was, Arthur admitted, something going on.

What it was, he didn't know and couldn't guess.

But they were particularly lucky for their hermetically sealed quarters and the oxygen supply.

They ran the radio dial up and down at intervals and found only silence.

Arthur tried Hoskins again on a forlorn chance.

There was no answer.

No operator answered when he dialed the zero.

He admitted.

The first threads of gray were streaking the eastern view when Arthur packed Fran onto the couch with a blanket around her and saw her drift off for a little nap.

He sat at the desk and calculated the two most important items of their lives now, food and oxygen.

We need water.

That's really the most important.