Toughened by his experiences, Baxter subdued the bravo and took his canoe — an absolute necessity in some of the lower passageways. Then he pushed on, paddling all the way to 42nd Street and 8th Avenue before a flash flood drove him to the surface.
Now, indeed, his long-desired goal was near to hand. Only one more block remained; one block, and he would be at the Times Square Land Office!
But at this moment he encountered the final, shattering obstacle that wrote finis to all his dreams.
In the middle of 42nd Street, extending without visible limit to the north and south, there was a wall. It was a cyclopean structure, and it had sprung up overnight in the quasi-sentient manner of New York's architecture. This, Baxter learned, was one side of a gigantic new upper-middle-income housing project. During its construction, all traffic for Times Square was being re-routed via the Queens-Battery Tunnel and the East 37th Street Shunpike.
Steve estimated that the new route would take him no less than three weeks and would lead him through the uncharted Garment District. His race, he realized, was over.
Courage, tenacity and righteousness had failed; and, were he not a religious man, Steve Baxter might have contemplated suicide. With undisguised bitterness, he turned on his little transistor radio and listened to the latest reports.
Four contestants had already reached the Land Office. Five others were within a few hundred yards of the goal, coming in by the open southern approaches. And, to compound Steve's misery he heard that Freihoff St John, having received a plenary pardon from the governor, was on his way once more, approaching Times Square from the east.
At this blackest of all possible moments, Steve felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw that Flame had come to him again. Although the spirited girl had sworn to have nothing further to do with him, she had relented. This mild, even-tempered man meant more to her than pride; more, perhaps, than life itself.
What to do about the wall? A simple matter for the daughter of a bandit chief! If one could not go around it or through it or under it, why, one must then go over it! And to this purpose she had brought ropes, boots, pitons, crampons, hammers, axes — a full complement of climbing equipment. She was determined that Baxter should have one final chance at his heart's desire — and that Flame O'Rourke Steinmetz should accompany him, and not accept no for an answer!
They climbed, side by side, up the building's glass-smooth expanse. There were countless dangers — birds, aircraft, snipers, wise guys — all the risks of the unpredictable city. And, far below, old Pablo Steinmetz watched, his face like corrugated granite.
After an eternity of peril, they reached the top and started down the other side—
And Flame slipped!
In horror Baxter watched the slender girl fall to her doom in Times Square, to die impaled upon the needle-sharp point of a car's aerial. Baxter scrambled down and knelt beside her, almost out of his head with grief.
And, on the other side of the wall, old Pablo sensed that something irrevocable had happened. He shuddered, his mouth writhed in anticipation of grief, and he reached blindly for a bottle.
Strong hands lifted Baxter to his feet. Uncomprehendingly, he looked up into the kindly red face of the Federal land clerk.
It was difficult for him to realize that he had completed the race. With curiously deadened emotions, he heard how St John's pushiness and hauteur had caused a riot in the explosive Burmese Quarter of East 42nd Street, and how St John had been forced to claim sanctuary in the labyrinthine ruins of the Public Library, from which refuge he still had not been able to extricate himself.
But it was not in Steve Baxter's nature to gloat, even when gloating was the only conceivable response. All that mattered to him was that he had won, had reached the Land Office in time to claim the last remaining acre of land.
All it had cost was effort and pain, and the life of a young bandit girl.
Time was merciful; and some weeks later, Steve Baxter was not thinking of the tragic events of the race. A Government jet had transported him and his family to the town of Cormorant in the Sierra Nevada mountains. From Cormorant, a helicopter brought them to their prize. A leathery Land Office marshal was on hand to greet them and to point out their new freehold.
Their land lay before them, sketchily fenced, on an almost vertical mountainside. Surrounding it were other similarly fenced acres, stretching as far as the eye could see. The land had recently been strip-mined; it existed now as a series of gigantic raw slashes across a dusty, dun-coloured earth. Not a tree or a blade of grass could be seen. There was a house, as promised; more precisely, there was a shack. It looked as if it might last until the next hard rain.
For a few minutes the Baxters stared in silence. Then Adele said, "Oh, Steve."
Steve said, "I know."
"It's our new land," Adele said.
Steve nodded. "It's not very — pretty." he said hesitantly.
"Pretty? What do we care about that?" Adele declared.
"It's ours, Steve, and there's a whole acre of it! We can grow things here, Steve!"
"Well, maybe not at first—"
"I know, I know! But we'll put this land back into shape, and then we'll plant it and harvest it! We'll live here, Steve! Won't we?"
Steve Baxter was silent, gazing over his dearly won land. His children — Tommy and blonde little Amelia — were playing with a clod of earth. The US marshal cleared his throat and said, "You can still change your mind, you know."
"What?" Steve asked.
"You can still change your mind, go back to your apartment in the city. I mean, some folks think it's sorta crude out here, sorta not what they was expecting."
"Oh, Steve, no!" his wife moaned.
"No, Daddy, no!" his children cried.
"Go backV Baxter asked. "I wasn't thinking of going back. I was just looking at it all. Mister, I never saw so much land all in one place in my whole life!"
"I know," the marshal said softly. "I been twenty years out here and the sight of it still gets to me."
Baxter and his wife looked at each other ecstatically. The marshal rubbed his nose and said, "Well. I reckon you folks won't be needin" me no more." He exited unobtrusively.
Steve and Adele gazed out over their land. Then Adele said, "Oh, Steve, Steve! It's all ours! And you won it for us — you did it all by yourself!"
Baxter's mouth tightened. He said very quietly, "No, honey, I didn't do it all alone. I had some help."
"Who, Steve? Who helped you?"
"Some day I'll tell you about it," Baxter said. "But right now — let's go into our house."
Hand in hand they entered the shack. Behind them, the sun was setting in the opaque Los Angeles smog. It was as happy an ending as could be found in the latter half of the twenty-first century.
The Victim From Space
Hadwell stared at the planet below. A tremor of excitement ran through him, for it was a beautiful world of green plains and red mountains and restless blue-grey seas. His ship's instruments quickly gathered their information and decided that the planet was eminently suited for human life. Hadwell punched a deceleration orbit and opened his notebook.
He was a writer, the author of White Shadows in the Asteroid Belt, The Saga of Deepest Space, Wanderings of an Interplanetary Vagabond, and Terira — Planet of Mystery!