First their minds had to accept these conditions, and now their bodies were coming around slowly— getting hardened, leaner, toughened. They moved out at sunup and were constantly on the move till sundown, when they lit a fire and made a stew of whatever was available, which they ate with flat cakes of unleavened bread, their only food at times other than the evening meal. Each night they slept where they could and woke shivering from cold before dawn. Yet all three of them were having a great time. The professors of the Nanticoke Institute had chosen well. The three men now worked as a close-knit team, an outcome that would have surprised many at the beginning of their journey. After Sayad Jan’s three-man escort had passed them on to another group, and that group to another, Winston and Baker had impressed Turner with their military analyses of each group’s standing against the Russians. Turner saw that these two men, whatever their other faults, had brains and could see things with their trained minds that even he, a combat-hardened veteran, had missed.
