"I didn't say I found anything." "But you implied it." "Go scratch," said Hardesty in a taunting voice. He wanted the woman to search him. He thought he could take her if she got busy with his pockets. "I could kill you and search you afterwards." "You could, if I didn't hide it where you'd never find it." "Hide what?" the woman licked her lips eagerly. She looked real pretty now. Hardesty had always preferred the mean, hard look to the unctuous one which stamped so many faces these days. The woman took a step toward Hardesty, who tensed himself. It was the little things like this which made life worth living. The cat and mouse game. Personal politics, it was called. It used to be called ethics. The woman put her hand in the pocket of Hardesty's coat, anxiously searching. At that moment, the first wave of jets came over. The sky shook itself, disgorging bombs. A bright flash blossomed beyond the western rim of the crater, and another. Seconds later, Hardesty heard the explosions. The woman had forgotten Hardesty and crouched in terror at the feet of her dead husband, who still stood there leaning forward from the firing post. Had the woman denounced him for some personal reason? wondered Hardesty. It happened all the time. Personal politics. * * * * * The second wave of jets came over, their roar all but drowning out the stacatto pop-pop-pop of the AA guns. The country had used up its entire supply of ground-to-bomber missiles. The enemy had depleted its store of fusion and fission bombs. Everyone settled for ack-ack and TNT. The bombs rained down, exploding like firecrackers on a scale model of the ruined city. It always looked that way to Hardesty. Unreal. He supposed it was like that, unreal, to everyone until the one bomb which was too close and suddenly too real compressed the air before its warhead and shrieked earthward, growing and growing and not cutting off the shriek before the sound of the explosion like kids do when they play war and make vocal bomb sounds but terminating the shriek instantly with the explosion and killing you almost before you heard the sound with concussion or flying masonry or fire. Like that bomb, right now, right there, which picked up a two-story building, uprooting it at the foundation and lifting it slowly into the air in defiance of gravity, then turning it over gently, teaching it tricks before it perished, flipping it carelessly, indifferently, showering a slow downpour of furniture to the ground through the now floorless bottom story and then turning the whole building once more, like a child's block caught in a gale, and suddenly sundering it, breaking the building into large pieces which floated lazily downward, exploding with a paradoxical lack of violence into smaller pieces, and the smaller ones into still smaller, until the whole thing came down, dust and shards now, like a multi-colored snowstorm, beyond the rim of the bomb crater.