“Hurry.” Roger, clutching the sponge, extricates himself from the infant’s vehicle, taking it off as if it were a shirt, with what seems to him not unathletic skill.

“Mexico-o-o,” plaintive.

“Right,” Roger blundering up the cellar’s rubble to the outside again, where he beholds the doctor closing in on the dog, net held aloft and outspread. Rain falls persistently over this tableau. Roger circles so as to make with Pointsman a pincer upon the animal, who now stands with paws planted and teeth showing near one of the pieces of rear wall still standing. Jessica waits halfway into it, hands in her pockets, smoking, watching.

“Here,” hollers the sentry, “you. You idiots. Keep away from that bit of wall, there’s nothing to hold it up.”

“Do you have any cigarettes?” asks Jessica.

“He’s going to bolt,” Roger screams.

“For God’s sake, Mexico, slowly now.” Testing each footstep, they move upslope over the ruin’s delicate balance. It’s a system of lever arms that can plunge them into deadly collapse at any moment. They draw near their quarry, who scrutinizes now the doctor, now Roger, with quick shifts of his head. He growls tentatively, tail keeping up a steady slap against the two sides of the corner they’ve backed him into.

As Roger, who carries the light, moves rearward, the dog, some circuit of him, recalls the other light that came from behind in recent days—the light that followed the great blast so seethed through afterward by pain and cold. Light from the rear signals death / men with nets about to leap can be avoided—

“Sponge,” screams the doctor. Roger flings himself at the dog, who has taken off in Pointsman’s direction and away toward the street whilst Pointsman, groaning, swings his toiletbowl foot desperately, misses, momentum carrying him around a full turn, net up like a radar antenna. Roger, snoot full of ether, can’t check his lunge—as the doctor comes spinning round again Roger careens on into him, toilet bowl hitting Roger a painful thump in the leg. The two men fall over, tangled in the net now covering them. Broken beams creak, chunks of rain-wet plaster tumble. Above them the unsupported wall begins to sway.

“Get out of there,” hollers the sentry. But the efforts of the pair under the net to move away only rock the wall more violently.

“We’re for it,” the doctor shivers. Roger seeks his eyes to see if he means it, but the window of the Balaclava helmet now contains only a white ear and fringe of hair.

“Roll,” Roger suggests. They contrive to roll a few yards down toward the street, by which time part of the wall has collapsed, in the other direction. They manage to get back to Jessica without causing any more damage.

“He’s run down the street,” she mentions, helping them out of the net.

“It’s all right,” the doctor sighs. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

“Ah but the evening’s young,” from Roger.

“No, no. Forget it.”

“What will you do for a dog, then.”