Part 2

Hardesty heard the footfalls pounding behind him. The diggers. He began to run, hurling the basket away from him. He turned around to look and saw four or five shapes sprinting after him. Hardesty raised the shotgun without bothering to aim and fired both barrels. The hag clutched her throat and pitched forward in the snow. One of the men fell with her. Hardesty tossed the now useless shotgun aside and heard something clatter against the wall next to him. Sparks flew. It was a knife. The man's aim had been good, almost too good.

* * * * *

Hardesty circled the block twice, then hid in a doorway. It was a doorway to absolutely nowhere. On one side was the street, on the other was a rubble-filled bomb crater. This had once been a building, but only the doorway stood. Even the door had been blown to bits.

A sign over the door said WAL--RIA. Hardesty thought a hotel had stood here, long ago. He crouched in the doorway and waited, catching his breath. It was so cold, his teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. His lungs, though, were on fire, and his nostrils. He couldn't stay there too long. He would freeze to death. Perhaps they had taken a wrong turn over on Madison Avenue.

Hardesty walked boldly out into the street. No one stopped him.

Ten minutes later, after hiding in a pile of rubble when he saw someone coming down the street, Hardesty found himself passing the stump of the Lever Brothers Building. The girl, he thought suddenly. He had forgotten about the blonde. He shouldn't be passing here. She might be waiting for him.

"Psst! Hey, it's me. I didn't know to expect you or what."

It was the blonde's voice. Hardesty had in mind to run again, but there would be too many people after him, too many people who, out of spite or patriotism, would identify him and denounce him. He would share the executed man's booty with the blonde girl. But not the wristwatch. She had nothing to do with the wristwatch. Maybe, he thought, she even knew of a good warm place to sleep.

"I had a little delay," Hardesty said. He didn't see the blonde anywhere. She was inside the building.

"Well, come on in."

People came from all over Manhattan to see the Lever Brothers stump. Miraculously, some of the green-tinted glass was still whole. No one could explain this except to say it was a freak of concussion, and it _had_ happened, hadn't it? The few panes which remained were almost the only unbroken panes of glass in New York City.

It was green in there, and dim. Looking out through the glass, the snow resembled tons of chopped spinach coming down. The blonde's hair was green. Her skin was green, and her eyes. She had a hard cold look on her face now.

"Well?" she said.

Hardesty began to empty his pockets for the divvy up.

Someone said, "Stop right there! Hold it."

The man was big and had probably used many times with success the gun he carried in his fist. It was the man who had spoken. He covered Hardesty with the gun while the blonde hastily went through the booty they had found.

"You're being held under city ordinance 217," the big man told Hardesty. Ordinance 217 was concerned with gun-jumping or aiding a gun-jumper. The penalty was death.

* * * * *

Not long afterwards, Hardesty was bound to a firing post near the embankment of a crater close to the Lever Brothers stump, but far enough away so none of the glass would be shattered. The firing squad lined up. The blonde girl was third from the right. Hardesty hoped someone would aim for his stomach and the others would miss. If he had to die, he wanted to die painfully.

"Ready!" barked the squad leader. Hardesty wasn't sure, but thought he was the same man who had led that other squad.

"Aim...."

Time was suspended again. Even more for the condemned.

And then, before the squad leader could shout "fire!" Hardesty heard a gunshot. He didn't feel the bullet go in, but as he slumped forward away from the firing post he felt a warm wetness, and no other sensation, in his chest. With a final effort of will he looked up and saw the blonde girl's face. There was a faint smile tugging at the corners of her lips. All at once Hardesty knew. She had probably taken someone in this squad aside, as she had taken Hardesty aside. She had made a deal with him. Meet at the Lever Brothers stump, or someplace else? Divvy up. It was the surest way to catch gun-jumpers. The blonde girl was working for the government and probably collected a healthy slice of the booty.

The last thing Hardesty ever heard was the squad leader's angry voice as the man roared: "Who the hell jumped the gun?"

THE END