"You're one," the girl was declaring angrily.

"You're another." The boy's voice, laden with accusation.

"Gimme that." Sounds of a physical scuffle.

He lit a cigarette, then found his clothes and began to dress.

In the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, an MV-3 rifle ... he caught sight of it and paused, remembering in a rush everything that the great old weapon had meant. Once, he had been prepared to stand off the Red Chinese

with this rifle. But it had never seen use because the Red Chinese had never shown up ... at least not in person. Their representatives, in the form of Hinkel Radiation, had arrived, however, but no amount of MV-3s doled out to California's citizen army could fight and conquer that. The radiation, from a Wasp-C satellite, had done the job expected and the United States had lost. But People's China had not won. No one had. Hinkel Radiation waves, distributed on a worldwide basis, saw to that, god bless 'em.

Going over, Pete picked up the MV-3 and held it as he had long ago, in his youth. This gun, he realized, is one hundred and thirty years old, almost. An antique twice over. Would it still fire? Who cared... there was no one to kill with it, now. Only a psychotic could find grounds to kill in the nearly-empty cities of Earth. And even a psychotic might think it over and change his mind. After all, with fewer than ten thousand people in all California ... he set the gun back down, carefully.

Anyhow the gun had not been primarily an anti-personnel weapon; its tiny A-cartridges had been intended to penetrate the armor plating of Soviet TL-90 tanks and cripple them. Remembering the training films they had been shown by Sixth Army brass, Pete thought, I'd like to catch sight of a "human sea" these days. Chinese or not... we could use it.