earth hid the shattered and
partially melted ruins of long-collapsed buildings. In the center of the
screen was a bird's-eye view of a man holding a rifle. He was walking
slowly, picking his way carefully along the bottom of the shallow gully
that had once been upper Broadway.

"Barbell," the captain said. A throat microphone picked up the words and
transmitted them to the ears of the man in the screen. "Barbell, this is
Barhop. There are no wild animals within sight, but remember, we can't
see everything from up here, so keep your eyes open."

"Right, Barhop," said a rather muffled voice in the captain's ear.

"Fine. And if you do meet up with anything, shoot to kill." There were
plenty of wild animals in the game sanctuary--some of them dangerous.
Not all of the inhabitants of the Bronx Zoological Gardens had been
killed on that day when the sun bomb fell. Being farther north, they had
had better protection, and some of them, later, had wandered southward
to the island. Captain Greer knew perfectly well that Stanton,
bare-handed, was more than a match for a leopard or a lion, but he
didn't want Stanton to tire himself fighting with an animal. The rifle
would most likely never be used; it was merely another precaution.

It would have been possible, and perhaps simpler, to have taken Stanton
to the opening by flyer, but that would have created other
complications. Traffic rules forbade flyers to go over the game
sanctuary at any altitude less than one thousand feet. One flyer, going
in low, would have attracted the attention of the traffic police, and
Stanley Martin wanted no attention whatever drawn to this area. Even the
procedure of instructing the traffic officers to ignore one flyer would
have attracted more attention than he wanted. They would have remembered
those instructions afterward.

Stanton walked.

Captain Greer's eye caught something at the edge of the screen. It moved
toward the center as the floating eye moved with Stanton.

"Barbell," the captain said, "there's a deer ahead of you. Just keep
moving."

Stanton rounded the corner of a pile of masonry. He could see the animal
now himself. The deer stared at the intruder for a few seconds, then
bounded away with long, graceful leaps.

"Magnificent animal." It was Stanton's voice, very low. The remark
wasn't directed toward anyone in particular. Captain Greer didn't
answer.

The captain lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, his eyes on