Front matter (continued 2)

He shifted and roared into the right turn up the hill. "Where does this take us, Henry?" he snapped, as from the bridge to the chartroom.

The burgess smiled in the dark. "I don't know, Arthur," he said. "How little we know our land...."

"Eh?" The old man was tired and rambling. Too bad; now it was all on his shoulders. But when he got at him later he'd remind him that he had, in a way, saved his life, that he didn't expect anything for himself, but that he wanted to do something for the community—

"There's a light!" screamed Mrs. Chesbro.

It seemed to be a filling station; there were the pumps and there was a two-storey frame building behind them. One of those crossroads groceries, Chesbro thought as they swept past.

"But aren't you going to stop, Arthur?" she asked.

"Nonsense, dear," he grunted. "We started for Hebertown and that's where we're going."

How little we know our land, thought the burgess again. For there, ahead in the twin beams, was a sheet of muddy water. Their speed was such that they plowed into it with a tremendous gush of spray. "We'll make it," Chesbro cried. Water rose chillingly inside the car to their calves as they plowed heavily forward and then lurched to a stop.

Chesbro said between his teeth: "Like last time." He ground the starter three times; the fourth time he tramped on the button nothing happened. The battery was shorted out.

"Here we are," Mrs. Chesbro said inanely.

Chesbro tramped on the dead button again and again.

"It's rising, isn't it?" said the burgess. "Let's get out and wade before we have to swim."

Hating him, his wife and himself, hating the car and the water, Arthur Chesbro opened the door; more water swirled in, seat-high. "Let's go," he said gruffly. "Five minutes and we'll be in that filling station, grocery, whatever it was."

He gingerly lowered himself into the water; it came to his waist and chilled the bone. "I'll lead," he said. "Come on."

Surprisingly there was a strong current; he had thought it would be a sort of pond. Instead it was a temporary catch basin for the living water that was thundering down from the heavens on its way to the river and finally the sea. They were simply in a low spot where water was detained for a while before rushing on. The same cubic yard of water could wash out a power line running along a high ridge, wash out a dirt road lower down on the hill, pour through a farmhouse lower down smashing the windows and depositing stinking mud on the floor, short his battery here, trapping the three of them, and still rage on with a long career of ruin before it. It was the secret of the flood's destructiveness.

Chesbro inched his way forward, taking care to keep the current abeam of him, feeling for the hardtop with his feet. The burgess and his wife held the skirt of his raincoat, one to a side.

He stepped on something slippery and crashed face-forward into the muddy water; it was the burgess who, with unexpected wiry strength hauled him upright again while he floundered.

"Fish or something," he sputtered.

They trudged forward, dead-tired after fifty feet of it, the current and the sullen resistance of the water itself, but the level was dropping about them as they climbed the rim of the basin in the land.

In ten minutes they kicked through inch-deep water to the road surface, wet only with the pelting rain. Silently they splashed along the road.

"Wait," the burgess said abruptly. They stopped. He still had Chesbro's lighter; he crouched and snapped it alight. "The water's still rising," he said. "Following right along behind us." As they stood there it lapped at the soles of their shoes.

Ten more interminable minutes—hard walking, their weight increased fifty per cent by their sodden clothes—and Mrs. Chesbro said: "There's the light."

They shambled into a trot by unspoken agreement. It suddenly seemed very important to them all that they should get to a warm, dry place, shed their clothes, eat, sleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sharon Froman shepherded the woman from the car, this Mrs. Chesbro, into the back room—a queer one, she was, but that could wait. "Take off what you can spare and hang it up," she said briskly, efficiently, and headed back for the front room. There had been something when the woman's husband and Mickey Groff met. Sharon Froman wanted to see.

They were comparing notes on the flood, and that was all right. If you didn't have an ear skilled in detecting the grace notes of conflict it might have sounded like any other strangers in common trouble, but Sharon's ear caught resonances beyond that. Take the woman's husband, for instance. He was chattering away to, of all people, sick-pup Dick McCue; but his eyes kept wandering to Mickey Groff.

Mrs. Goudeket scolded: "Sharon! The blanket for Mr. Starkman, you forgot it?"

"He can take mine," Sharon said—she didn't want to go back to the storeroom just then. She handed the holed, grease-spotted rag to the old man, then remembered and carefully draped it around his shoulders. "They stink," she told him cheerfully. "And I think they've got bugs; but they're better than pneumonia." She grinned at Mickey Groff.

"Thank you, Miss," said Henry Starkman. He had not failed to notice that the girl was playing up to Groff. Gold digger, he diagnosed, archaically and without passion. He was waiting for Chesbro to switch his attention from the kid to Groff. Starkman had sat enough hours in the law-offices of county politicians to smell the beginnings of a deal before it really existed. Chesbro wasn't ready yet; he hadn't even made up his mind to offer something to Groff—quite. But it was in the air. Pretty soon Chesbro would turn to the manufacturer and say something bluff and hearty like, "Well, I see we're going to be chewing each other's ears off in the ring tomorrow," and then, if Chesbro could find a private place to do it, the two of them would be talking quietly for a while....

Starkman hugged the smelly blanket around him. Shivering, he thought querulously: What's the matter with Bess? I want my cocoa.

He shook his head to clear it, and got up to look at the rain outside. He shouldn't be here at all, of course; what had the people made him burgess for, at that fat and sought-after salary of two hundred dollars a year, if not to be on hand when the community was in trouble? And if a flood wasn't trouble—

A sort of choking sound from Mrs. Goudeket made him turn around.

The Chesbro woman was standing in the doorway to the storeroom. In the light from the candles she had no eyes, the ragged blankets she wore were robes, she was blindly staring marble. She had swept the blankets spirally around her body and over her wet hair; a hobble skirt at one end and a turban at the other. She was striking, and she stood for a moment posed as though she knew it.

Mrs. Goudeket made a tongue-smacking sound. Artie Chesbro looked around vaguely. "Oh, hello, honey," he said. "Now, this thunderstorm we had in Summit in forty-six a couple of cellars were flooded all right, but—" Dick McCue nodded mechanically, his eyes fixed on the woman.

She came over to Starkman and sat down next to him. At close range, the costume didn't seem as extreme as half-lit by the candles, but the burgess felt uneasy. She was too close to him, that was it; she was sitting on the floor, looking up at him.

"I'd better get you something to sit on," he said, and escaped.

They managed to build a fire in the storeroom—there were a couple of sheet-metal soft-drink signs; they raised one, punctured for draft, on a row of bottles and placed another one underneath to catch the hot ashes. It worked. Mickey Groff had placed his bet on the normal air leakage around the window frames carrying off the worst of the smoke, and so it did. It didn't pay to sit too close to it. You had to watch it minute by minute to keep it fed and keep it from setting fire to the shack. But it served to dry out their clothes, and besides it felt more cheerful.

The men settled among themselves a plan for rotating guard duty—guarding against fire and flood. Sam Zehedi and Dick McCue took the first shift, one to keep the other awake; they sat and looked at each other. They had nothing to say; and besides, it was hard enough for the others to sleep without their talking.

Artie Chesbro, sharing a double pad of newspapers with his wife, schemed feverishly: He hasn't said a word, he's waiting for me to make the first move. How much should I cut him in for? Or for that matter, do I have to—?

Well, yes. He'd seen enough of the burgess by now to know that the deal he had optimistically outlined in the newspaper was out. Starkman wouldn't cave in; you could use the anti-outsider theme just so far, and then you had to come across with something tangible for Starkman himself, or for the borough of Hebertown. On the other hand, what about this: Suppose Groff cooled off on the location after being stuck in this crazy flood they had down here? Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to convince him Hebertown was a lousy idea—maybe even, this was a chance to do something with the old Ackerman tract north of Summit. He doubted that; Groff would know a swamp when he saw one; but suppose, an hour and eight minutes from now, when they went on guard duty together as he had carefully arranged, he merely suggested it to the manufacturer and made it sound good.... He wished his wife would stop that damn humming in his ear. God, why couldn't they at least be home, where they could be decently asleep in their own individual rooms?

Asleep, Mrs. Goudeket's face was curved in a smile. She was dreaming of 1926, a bride, the rooming house at Brighton Beach. Between her and Mickey Groff, Sharon's face was smiling too, sweetly and trustfully, as she nestled obliviously against the manufacturer, but of course she wasn't asleep.

Sam Zehedi sat torpidly over the fire, waiting for the last of it to burn itself out. He'd nearly dropped off three times, and he and McCue, consulting, had decided it was more dangerous to leave it burning than to put it out. It did stink pretty bad, he thought fuzzily; putting water on it had been a mistake. It smelt a little oily.

He swallowed and rubbed his stomach. That lousy candy bar, he didn't like it, he didn't want it, why had he eaten it? He wistfully turned his thoughts to pickled mussels wrapped in grape leaves, now farther out of reach than ever, and a nice, plump black-eyed girl to serve them.

McCue had dozed off, he noticed. A kid. Well, let him sleep. What difference did it make?

Funny, he thought dizzily, not even broiled lamb seemed attractive right now. He shouldn't have drunk that cream soda either—he gulped and wrenched his thoughts away from that cream soda. The smell of the dying fire was getting pretty strong and he felt nauseous, as if the floor were moving about underneath him.

Now the sleepers were turning and coughing. There was something wrong, Sam Zehedi fuzzily thought. He swayed to his feet and lurched toward the door. Clear the air, he thought. The last embers of the fire winked out and he thought for a vague moment that he had lost his eyesight. He flung the door open with his last strength and took a deep sobbing breath. Images of white-tiled walls, green-painted corridors swirled through his head; he was ten again and they were wheeling him along the green-painted corridors to have his tonsils cut out, Morrisania Hospital—

He fell heavily across the restless, coughing shape of Mickey Groff.

Groff sat up slowly, choking. His head thudded as if with the hangover to end them all.

Gas.

"Get up!" he cried, swaying. "Get up!" Around him they stirred and coughed.

"Gasoline fumes!" he yelled. "Get up! Up the stairs! Move!" He staggered through the dark room, kicking at them and yelling. The stairs were in back—back. And this was—a wall. He leaned against it. It would be good to slump down and rest for a moment, just a moment—

He lurched along the wall to the corner, to the open stairway that let to the upstairs room. "Over here!" he choked at them. "I'm standing by the stairs. Come on! Come on!"

One by one they stumbled to the sound of his voice and began to drag themselves up the shaky stairs.

One. Two. Three.... Four.... Five....

"Come on! I'm standing by the stairs. The stairs. This way. This."

Two more to come. Two. More. Some fool was striking a light, a blue-green light to blow them to hell. But no; it was his eyes, glazed and burning, that made the light. Two more to come.

His raw throat and bursting lungs silenced him. He lurched across the floor and stumbled over something soft. He knelt, took it under the armpits and dragged it to the wall, followed the wall to the corner, to the stairs. Feet on the stairs.

A young voice in the darkness choked: "Mr. Groff. Come up. I'll get him. Can you make it?" Young McCue. Strong arms took his burden over and it bumped up the steps. That was seven. One to go. He headed back into the thick sweetness of the fumes and crashed to the floor. He never felt McCue come to his aid and heave him up the steps, but through it he was muttering: "One more."

They were a sick lot when he awoke an hour later.

In the dark upstairs, cluttered with boxes and cans Mrs. Goudeket was saying: "The water, it seeped into the gas tanks underground, it must be. The gas floated up and all around us on top of the water. God be thanked, nobody lit a match and the fire was out. As it was we were almost poisoned in our sleep, thanks to that Arab." There was hatred in her voice, fifteen centuries of it.

Burgess Starkman's voice emerged from an attack of coughing. "He's dead, Mrs. Goudeket. You shouldn't—" He broke into coughing again.

Mickey Groff grunted, trying to talk. It was important to clear that up. His head was pounding, but Mrs. Goudeket didn't understand. "He was a Syrian," he croaked. "A civilized Christian people."

"Mr. Groff!" said Mrs. Goudeket. "You're better! We were afraid—You're a hero, Mr. Groff. You saved our lives. Except—"

"Zehedi?" he asked.

He knew that she was nodding in the darkness, just as he knew that she was bitterly ashamed of her outburst. "Too late," she sighed. "Ai, too late. Dick went down with the handkerchief around his mouth and pulled him up the stairs. His heart was going, and then it wasn't. Maybe fifteen minutes. Too late."

A plump arm slid around him and Sharon Froman's voice said in his ear, "Try to sit up. We all felt better after we sat up." She supported his back and eased his trunk upright; he thought his head would explode. He leaned against her dizzily and felt her cool palm against his forehead. "Better," he grunted. "Thanks."

The burgess's old voice said abruptly, "Sing a psalm for Sam Zehedi, the sad Syrian. Bess? Bess?"

"He's wandering," Sharon said very softly to Mickey Groff. "He won't sleep."

Mrs. Chesbro moved across the floor to the sound of the burgess's voice.

"Where are you going, Polly?" Arthur Chesbro snapped.

"To the poor old man," she said. "Maybe I can talk him into signing the lease before he takes wing."

Now, what did she mean by that? They didn't have a pen, there would have to be witnesses, Groff was right there to break things up if they tried to pressure him, it wouldn't work in a million years. The stupidity of that woman was sometimes absolutely astounding.

She found the bony bundle that was Burgess Harry Starkman. "How little we know ..." he was mumbling. "I was at Belleau Wood, you know. Leatherneck couple wars back. They poured gas shells in for forty-eight hours, but the leathernecks didn't have gas casualties. Court-martial for gas casualties. Not like the doughboys, threw away their masks. Got through Belleau Wood and here I am a gas casualty anyway, thirty-seven years later. Ambushed in Hebertown Township. The boys at the Legion'll get a kick out of that." He sat up abruptly and anxiously called out: "Bess?"

She soothed him and urged him down. "Rest," she said. She felt and unbuttoned his shirt, loosened the blanket around her and spread it over the two of them, pressing herself against his bare chest.

"I remember," he said. "King Solomon. Old reprobate. But don't go away, child." He fell into an uneasy doze, his breath rattling in his chest. She pressed herself against him and lay still and silent.

Dick McCue said, "I wonder if it's safe to smoke."

Mrs. Goudeket snapped: "In a situation like this you don't take chances."

Groff said slowly, "I think it's all right. Gas fumes are heavy; they hug the ground. If we hadn't been sleeping on the floor—"

"I guess I'd better not," McCue said uncertainly. "You can't smell much up here but—I wonder where the water level is now."

"We'll know in the morning," Chesbro said. "Couple of hours. My God, who would have thought it yesterday?"

Sharon Froman said, "It's bad, Mr. Chesbro. It means a permanent loss of industry—unless we move fast."

"What permanent loss?" Chesbro snapped. "We shovel out the mud, we replace the machines, we get going again. The government'll help any sound business in a case like this."

"I am thinking," she said, "of the South."

"The South? What's the South got to do with this?"

"This is the godsend they've been waiting for! Think, Mr. Chesbro! They've spent millions on advertising and promotion to attract industry—to steal it, if you like. Tax exemptions. Rent-free plant. This flood is worth a billion dollars to them, Mr. Chesbro. If it's as big as it looks from here, it's worth all the sixteen-page ads they'll ever run in the Sunday Times. Believe me, I know. There are going to be task-forces from the Bureau of Industrial Development of every southern state calling on every manufacturer and distributor in this area. 'Frightful about your tragedy,' and 'Us Delta folks want to he'p you any way we can,' and 'Don't get us wrong, friend, we ain't out to steal industry from the No'th at a time like this, but—' And then it starts. They'll woo them with sites, with tax write-offs, with cheap labor rates. They'll strip the area of industry, clean as a whistle. Unless."

"My God!" said Chesbro, appalled.

He had never considered the angle but she was, God knew, dead-right.

Nor, he reflected self-pityingly, would he get any such offers. What did he have that would attract a Mississippi chamber of commerce? It was all intangibles that his fortune was going to come from—was almost coming from already, he assured himself panickily. He had come pretty close; it was only a question of time until the legislature authorized the trotting track, until the money borrowed from his wife's father and invested in that promising Geiger-positive tract north of Summit turned up real pay dirt, until—

Until never, now. Not if this frighteningly plausible young woman was right. And she sounded right.

He said slowly, "You're a very smart young woman, Miss Froman. Have you had any experience in this field?"

She smiled candidly. "Only enough to get the feel of it, Mr. Chesbro. I'm a writer. You might say I've made a study of everything." (And besides, I typed Hesch's thesis for him, didn't I? The War Between The States, Round Two: A Study in Industrial Dynamics.)

He nodded. "You said 'unless.' Unless what?"

She said composedly, "Unless we get there first. Unless we form an organization immediately—on a regional basis—to hammer home our side. Skilled labor that's been through the birth-pangs of organizational strikes. They're the roughest kind, and they still lie ahead for the South. Access to the markets. A good life for the management and supervisory workers. Bracing climate. Sound Republican territory."

She had him. She could feel it, and she was never wrong. Let him nibble at the bait a while; let him taste it and want it, and bite down into it all by himself—bite down on that buried "we" that would hook him, deep and clean and gasping.

It had looked like a mighty dull autumn, but things were looking better, thought Sharon Froman contentedly. True, if she was going to help this interesting Mr. Chesbro with the curious wife it would mean deferring work on her novel again. Too bad. But she didn't mind the sacrifice. She had made it often enough before.

Regional organization. Hammer hard. Grants from the government? Sure. Tax breaks from the northern states, panicky attempts to match whatever the South might offer? Sure, thought Artie Chesbro; he could arrange that easily. And then?

No more waiting for the legislature to approve or for the assayers to report or for any of the other soul-killing delays that had been the sum of his life; he would be in, he would be at the top of something big. Where he had always wanted to be. Where he deserved to be.

He looked across to where his wife had gone. And her, he thought, satisfied, she would learn at last! Everything he had had to put up with from her, over. Just because her father had a little money she'd thought she owned him—him! Artie Chesbro!

He cleared his throat. "We'd better get some sleep, Miss Froman," he told the girl. "We've got to talk about this in the morning. I think there's a good deal in it—for both of us."

Mrs. Goudeket almost pounded the floor with her fists. Again on her feet! Always this Miss Froman would land on her feet! Without hard work, without virtue, always by black magic being in the right place, always by the smiling face and the straightforward look fooling the one person she had to fool. And this time it wasn't one man, it was two. So let Mickey Groff slip through one snare, she had Artie Chesbro caught in another. God, you call this fair? she demanded.

Better she should have left her at Goudeket's Green Acres. What could she have caught there? That star of stage and screen and brissim, Dave Wax? The horse-wire expert, Mr. Semmel? But no! She had to throw the girl out—into this!

Mrs. Goudeket moaned and put her fingers in her ears to shut out the maddening words.

CHAPTER EIGHT

That star of stage, screen and brissim shouted fuzzily at the door: "Go to hell! Let me sleep!"

"Dave!" It was Mr. Semmel's voice. "There's some men here. They want to talk to you."

Dave Wax made an obscene suggestion to Mr. Semmel. He was a tummeler, not the manager of the hotel; let Mrs. Goudeket come back and talk if somebody should do it—"Wait a minute. What'd you say, Semmel?"

The concessionaire repeated it. "The flood's over?" demanded Dave Wax. "The roads are dry?" He staggered over to the window to see the miracle for himself.

Semmel let himself in. "They came in a boat."

"Oh." But it was no surprise. It was still raining. "All right. I'll come down."

He found himself hurrying in spite of himself. It was only a couple of minutes before he was hurrying through the lobby. He saw with a shock that the sofas and chairs in the lobby were occupied—guests too panicky to sleep in their rooms, too exhausted to stay awake; they were sprawled and snoring.

The men from the boat were in the kitchen drinking coffee that the cooks had somehow contrived to make. "I'm Brayer—Hebertown police chief. You people all right here?"

"All right?" You call a hundred and sixty scared, sore guests all right? You call wondering if the whole damn place is going to float away all right? "I guess so," Dave Wax said slowly. He was almost afraid to ask: "How—how is it outside?"

The man rubbed at his mustache. "It's a flood," he said succinctly. "Ask me in the morning. Anyway, we're beginning to get a little organized." His voice took on a mechanical, rehearsed quality. "Don't let anybody drink water unless it's been boiled for ten minutes. Use up everything you can that's in the refrigerators tomorrow morning. What's in the freezers ought to be good till tomorrow night, if you don't open them too often. What you don't eat by then, don't eat. Throw it away. You probably don't have any water pressure, do you? Your own electric pump, I guess? All right; you'll have to set up latrines—use chamber pots if you have to. Dump them in the river to empty them—you're far enough away from everything here."

"Wait a minute." Dave was a little slow to grasp the implications of it. "You mean even by tomorrow night we won't have the power back?"

"I'll consider us very lucky," the police chief said heavily, "if Hebertown ever has power again."

He got up. "They say that by daybreak the weather will be clear enough for helicopters. If you need anything—a doctor if there's an emergency, anything like that—hang a white sheet out of a window and keep somebody standing by. When a helicopter or boat patrol comes by they'll see it and investigate; then you wave another sheet at them and they'll see that somebody gets here."

Dave Wax and Mr. Semmel watched Brayer and his boatman chug away. "Hebertown Chief of Police," said Wax. "Isn't he a little out of his jurisdiction?"

"He said they were looking for somebody. Wanted to know if we'd picked up any refugees. God forbid." Mr. Semmel shook his head firmly. "A mess. Now, in New Hampshire there would never—"

It was cracking daylight when Brayer got back to Hebertown. He sat down in the police station, now an emergency shelter with men, women and children sprawled all over everywhere, and dazedly pushed away the coffee somebody offered him. He hoped he would never see another cup of coffee again.

He said heavily, "Henry'll turn up. I have a lot of confidence in Artie Chesbro's instinct for self-preservation; he'll find a place to hole up in."

"Sure, Red." The head of Hebertown's Civil Defense Squad, an organization with an honorable history extending back nearly four hours, dug his fingers into the bags under his eyes and tried to stay awake. He owned a ready-to-wear establishment on North Front, and he had once allowed the Red Cross to use his second-floor storeroom as a fund-drive headquarters, a record of achievement which had done very little to fit him for staying up all night. "I went down at eleven o'clock to look at the water," he said meditatively. "I didn't want my cellar flooded again, like in thirty-nine, so I shoveled dirt up against the windows, and then I went home to bed." He laughed. He had gone by his store again two hours later—in a boat—and had had to bend down to look through the windows of the loft the Red Cross once had used. "I heard on the radio a list of all the cities that were hit—the worst ones. They didn't even mention Hebertown.... Say, what are you going to tell Bess Starkman?"

CHAPTER NINE

Gray light filtered through the dirty panes of the second-floor window. Arthur Chesbro woke slowly, aching in every bone. When he opened his eyes stickily and peered across the grimy little room he could not at first believe what he saw.

"Polly!" he choked, amazement and outrage blended. His wife, apparently unclothed, was snuggled close to old Harry Starkman, under a single blanket.

She looked up, smiling. "Hush," she said. "I finally got him to sleep. His chest sounds terrible and he has a fever, but if he sleeps he can't be too bad—for now."

She got up gracefully, managing to swirl the blanket around her without showing, Chesbro hoped, too much. Then he noted that the youngster from the hotel was gawking. He cleared his throat loudly and the kid looked away.

Mrs. Goudeket grunted to her feet. "Fever?" she asked. "Let me." She went to the sleeping old man and felt his forehead. "He's burning up," she announced grimly. "An old man to walk through the rain and then he got his lungs full of gasoline fumes. I suppose it's pneumonia."

They were silent.

"Excuse me," said Mrs. Goudeket. "I'm going downstairs, nobody should follow me until I come back."

Mickey Groff thought: sensible woman. Somebody had to speak up. He stood for a moment over Sam Zehedi. The poor guy had died hard, fighting it; his eyes were ugly and his mouth contorted. His face in the dim light was bluish, the hue of a swimmer's lips when he's been in too long on a cool day.

Groff went to the window. Some time during the night the rain had lightened; it pattered now instead of drumming. There was mist. He struggled with the window and managed to inch it open against the swelling of its frame and old incrustations of paint. Fresh air swept gratifyingly through the storage room—and then he thought of the burgess.

Sharon Froman understood his glance. She threw her blanket over the old man and said, "He'll be all right." She stretched stiffly. "The old woman's taking forever," she said.

Arthur Chesbro said firmly, "Mrs. Chesbro will be the next to go downstairs. To find her clothes and put them on."

Polly Chesbro grinned amiably. "This thing is scratchy," she said.

Groff leaned out and peered through the mist. All he could tell was that there was water below; how much of it the enigmatic surface did not say.

Mrs. Goudeket puffed up the stairs, a big carton in her arms. "Cheese wafers," she announced. "Somebody open them."

Polly glided to the door, sculptural in her improvised robe, and went down the stairs.

McCue, with the appetite of youth and an athlete, tore open the corrugated cardboard and began gobbling wafers from the first carton he came to.

"Manners, Dickie." Sharon Froman smiled. He swallowed his mouthful convulsively and eyed her.

"Help yourself," he said coldly. "You're no cripple."

"Why Dickie," she purred. "After all we've been to each other!"

Mrs. Goudeket looked up. "What's this?" she snapped.

Sharon looked amused and said nothing.

"I don't know what she's talking about," McCue said. The tone automatically indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced him for unlawful cohabitation. "I'll talk to you later," Mrs. Goudeket promised grimly.

Dick McCue found the cheese wafers were ashes in his mouth. He chewed mechanically and wondered how he had managed to get simultaneously on all these s.o.b. lists when all he wanted was a little innocent fun for free—

He glanced at Sharon sullenly and saw she was chatting animatedly with Chesbro about a publicity campaign enlisting all media, the possibility of newspaper and magazine space and radio-TV time being donated if they played their cards right. "Tear their heartstrings out," she urged. "Get editorials; I've got some contacts in New York. You'd be The Man Who Saved the Valley, Mr. Chesbro."

"Call me Arthur," he said. "We're going to be working closely together; I can see that. My prestige and your ideas—"

Polly Chesbro came upstairs in her suit and raincoat; they were wrinkled and damply steaming out the smell of wool but they were no longer sopping. She was carrying her blanket; she draped it over the sighing form of the burgess. His breathing was almost a crow. "He'll never make it without penicillin fast," she commented, helped herself to a box of the wafers and began to eat methodically.

Mickey Groff looked around; nobody was making a move for the stairs. He stepped over the body of Sam Zehedi and went down. First outside into the drizzle, where water was ankle-deep. He attended to his needs and went back into the store. A bottle of pop caught his eye and he was suddenly burning with thirst. He tore off the cap on a wall opener and gulped it down as fast as the stuff would gurgle from the narrow neck; after a queasy moment he ran for the door and made it in time. The pop gushed up again violently. He sat down, swaying, on the wooden step up to the door and retched a couple of times experimentally. He'd have to be careful eating and drinking for a while. He had got a stiff dose of the fumes.

Zehedi's blue-green, well-worn panel truck was just visible down the road in water to the hubcaps, looking bulky and competent. The goddam thing. And there stood the two gas pumps, goddam them too, and if you could only get the pumps to work you could pump gas from their underground tank into the truck and away they'd buzz, getting somehow into town where the old man could be pumped full of penicillin and dosed with oxygen as needed instead of dying like a sick dog in this kennel.

He went wearily upstairs and said, "Next."

Sharon got up and said, "Excuse me, Arthur."

"Keep out of the cash drawer," Mrs. Goudeket said sourly.

"Did you leave anything?" Sharon asked, wide-eyed. Arthur Chesbro laughed a laugh which turned hastily into a cough when Mrs. Goudeket glared his way.

McCue said suddenly, "I think the rain's stopped." They crowded to the window; he was right. The drizzle had ended and the mist was clearing.

"Good," Chesbro said. "They'll be able to get helicopters up. It's only a matter of time now until they spot us."

Groff said, "I don't think the old man can wait."

Chesbro spread his hands eloquently. "What can we do?"

"Pack him in on our backs," Groff said.

Chesbro said soothingly, "I don't think that'd be practical, Mickey. We're all exhausted, we've all had a touch of gas poisoning. We know more or less where we are and we know which way the town is, but we don't know what lies between us and the town. We may just circle around until we drop from exhaustion. There's a better chance of us being spotted if we stay in this place."

"We're three able-bodied men," Groff said, his temper rising. "We can take turns. A helicopter's just as likely to spot us on a road as it is to spot us here. Chesbro, I'd like to sit here and wait to be rescued too; I don't have a yen to go sloshing through the water with Starkman on my back either. But I don't think he can wait. We've got to do everything we can."

"I've got my manuscript to carry," Sharon said apologetically.

"We'll do everything we can," Chesbro said reasonably. "But what's the sense of endangering all of us uselessly? The trip wouldn't be good for him. And the women—my wife isn't strong, Mickey, she shouldn't be subjected to—"

"Arthur," said his wife. "Shut up."

She smiled pleasantly at the gathering. "Who's going to be the first to pack him?"

Naturally that's me, of course, Dick McCue thought sourly, sliding in the mud. I'm an athlete, so they figure I'm Superman or somebody. He missed his footing and nearly fell. They might just as well have carried him pickaback as on this door, wrenched out of the upper rooms.... From behind him Mickey Groff called: "Time for you to take over, Chesbro."

McCue relinquished his end of the improvised stretcher to Artie Chesbro. His arms felt wrenched out of their sockets, and they had covered five hundred yards, at the most.

The rain hadn't really stopped, not quite. There was still water to be wrung out of the scudding stratus, and it came down in little bursts of droplets. Polly Chesbro stumbled along beside the sick man, trying to keep the rain off him when it came, ready with a smile when his eyes jolted open and, for a moment, he stared wonderingly about him.

It was going to be a long trip. They had had to skirt around a sort of contour line instead of following the road. Polly wondered briefly if there would come a point where the road dipped down into the streaming water, and there wasn't any useful hill handy. She didn't know this road at all; had seen Hebertown only once or twice before last night; had only the vaguest impression of what the terrain might be like. For that matter, none of them knew much about the country they were hiking across. On this Day, her mind inscribed in a crabbed hand, our Party suffered the Loss of Its two Aboriginals, reposing our Destiny to the care of the Greatest Guide of All.

Mickey Groff was remembering the Ligurian coast of Italy. The American bombers had smashed it flat from Anzio to Genoa, and Groff had thought proudly, a little selfishly, that no such destruction could ever come to his own country. But this was as bad, at least as bad. They had come across few houses, but there were ominous objects sailing down stream that once had been houses and barns and all the other structures man builds and his enemies sweep away. He tried to reconstruct the terrain as it must have been before the flood, but there was a rightness about the broad sheets of water that made it impossible. They were there; they must always have been there. Why did people build their homes down near the water, anyhow? Was a burbling brook in the back yard worth having if suddenly, unpredictably, it could destroy your home?

He wondered if the War Department was able to look itself in the face that morning, remembering the careful charts the colonels had shown him that called for dispersal, concealment, removal of such essential industries as his own. Suppose, they had said gravely, New York should take a bomb; you'd be out of commission; you must move out of the city to where you can be safe, since the production of your shop is of great importance to the country's defense. And they had showed him the maps, marked "Secret," of the instrument plants in Connecticut, the explosives factories in the Delaware valley, the electronics laboratories along the Jersey streams.

Two-forty-eight, two-forty-nine, two-fifty. "All right, Dick," he told the golf pro, "you can take over for a while." He surrendered the back end of the stretcher and looked around.

"Wait a minute!" he ordered sharply. "What's that up there?"

There was a private dirt road slanting down toward them, and something was moving. They all set up a waving and bellowing, and a group of horsemen appeared on the rim of the highway and came toward them, three or four of them, picking their way through the mud.

"The United States Cavalry," said Polly Chesbro clearly, "is charging to the rescue."

Two of the riders were men in chaps and sombreros and the third was a thirteen-year-old girl. They goggled unbelievingly at the litter bearers. They were from a dude ranch up in the hills, and they were on their way to Hebertown to complain because their lights and phone were off.

"Jesus! We knew there was some rain last night, but we never had any idea—" The cowboys stared at each other.

"How about giving us a hand?" Mickey Groff requested. "This man's in bad shape. If we don't get him to a doctor I don't think he'll make it."

The cowboys scratched their heads for a while, and finally Mickey Groff showed them how to sling the stretcher between two of the horses. "Hold them tight and walk them slow," he ordered, putting a cowboy at the head of each horse. "The ladies can take turns riding the other horse, I guess."

But he got no customers for that; Mrs. Goudeket was scandalized, and the young girl was too excited, and Polly Chesbro wouldn't get that far from the sick man. Finally Artie Chesbro said off-handedly, "Hell, no sense in wasting the horse." He was in the saddle before anybody could object.

It didn't make things good, but it made them better. Mickey Groff, walking ahead, reasoned that he had disposed his forces well. According to the cowboys, they had a good three miles to go on the road—if they could follow the road even approximately. An hour and a half—double it because of the weather—maybe double it again, he thought worriedly, if there were too many detours. He looked back at the motionless figure between the horses. That was stretching it, but there was a chance the old man might hang on that long.

Maybe the cowboys' first idea—slinging the old man across a saddle bow and galloping away—was the right one after all. But no; they had to stick together, at least until they found out if the road would take them all the way. And besides, thought Mickey Groff, aware of his limitations but also aware that he had succeeded to the command of the party, you have to make up your mind and stick to it.

The girl came prancing up beside him. "You look like a good guy," she commented. "Here."

He took the bottle from her; it was a pocket-sized half-pint of whiskey. It was like a gift from God. He took two measured swallows and put the cap back on; he could feel it biting in his throat, invading the back of his nose, spreading warmly through his chest.

"God bless you," he told the girl sincerely.

"Sure. But don't tell on Charley, will you? I knew he had it, but if Mrs. Koontz ever finds out she'll pulverize him." He started to hand the bottle back to her. "No, you keep it. You might want some more, and if Charley gets his hands on it again, good-by whiskey."

"Thanks." He slipped it into his pocket; then, remembering the rest of the party, turned and glanced at them. McCue was plodding along head down; Chesbro was glaring at him; Mrs. Goudeket was watching but she caught his eye, smiled faintly and shook her head. Good enough, thought Mickey Groff; we'll save what's left. He tried to remember what the current position was on giving liquor to old men dying of pneumonia. If it looks bad enough, he decided, we'll try giving him a shot; otherwise better not.

The girl was chattering: "Won't the old lady plotz when she hears about all this? That joker on the horse back there says he thinks the whole town's washed away."

"I doubt it."

The girl was disappointed. "Well," she said, "I bet there's going to be plenty of excitement in Hebertown, anyway. I always wanted to be a nurse—you know, not in a hospital, a Red Cross nurse or something like that, going away in the wars and all like that. My sister was a nurse's aide, only they wouldn't let me in because I was too young."

"Eh? Nurse?" He glanced at her quickly. "Know anything about pneumonia cases?"

"Sure. Penicillin, keep them warm, bed rest—"

"That's enough. Thanks." It had been a hope, but looking at her killed hope.

They plodded on and came to a blacktop. "I know where we are," one of the phony cowboys said. "Straight on in to Hebertown, two miles. It's a ridge road; it ought to be clear sailing."

A car was buzzing in the distance; frantically they flagged it down as it closed up on them. It was a late-model suburban with a New York plate in the rear, man and wife in the front seat, three kids rioting in the back. They all looked very strange to Mickey Groff, and he realized at last what the strangeness consisted of. They were clean, fed and rested.

"What do you want?" the man asked from behind the wheel, a little nervously.

What did they want. Penicillin. Beds. Warmth. Coffee.

"Take us into town, will you?" Mickey Groff said wearily.

The man hit the lock button on his door and cranked the window up a little. "It's only a little way on," he said evasively. "We aren't going any place special, we just heard about it on the radio and thought we'd come and see what was up—"

He hit the gas and the car zoomed on.

"Sightseers," Mrs. Goudeket said, wide-eyed. "God in Heaven, sightseers."

Mrs. Chesbro was swearing.

Arthur Chesbro was swearing and trying to remember what the license-plate numerals were.

After a while they trudged on, there being nothing else to do.

A helicopter came from the west as they marched, dipped low above them and hovered for a moment while they yelled and waved. The pilot pointed back into the body of the chopper with big exaggerated gestures after they had pointed at the burgess on his litter. Then he buzzed on eastward.

Mickey Groff said: "I guess he was telling us he was full up." He rubbed his back for a moment. "Maybe he meant he'll be back for us." But he didn't really think so, and the helicopter didn't come back their way.

CHAPTER TEN

When they topped the rise and stood overlooking Hebertown there was a moment of silence and then a groan of horror burst from them all.

"Gutted," Arthur Chesbro said succinctly. "Not a thin dime left in town; not a nickel."

The true flood crest which they had missed in the hills had left a plain wake through the town. It was dark brown and even from their height they could smell its stink. Sewage, chemical waste, mud churned up from river bottoms where it had been rotting for a century. The brown smear lay over two-thirds of Hebertown, and there was something worse at its center, a long streak scores of yards to either side of the river. It seemed almost to have been bulldozed clean.

The river still boiled many feet above its normal height, and flotsam rolled past, dotting its swell. There were tree trunks, chicken houses, timber and swollen things you didn't want to guess at. The bridges were out, the stout PWA bridge and the two rickety county bridges.

Chesbro studied the view. "Gramatan Mills are wrecked," he said. "They'll never come back. They rebuilt on the river in ninety-seven right where the old waterpower mill was. Half their plant's—torn away."

"Let's get on down," Groff said.

McCue volunteered: "I'd try the school—if it's standing. That's where you always set up cots and aid stations."

Chesbro said: "The junior high's standing. Built well on the outskirts. Lucky it's on this side of the river."

They started down the hill. The stink grew worse.

First they came to frame houses with picket fences and vegetable gardens in the back. The porches were full; exhausted people looked dully at them. At the third or fourth house a man came to his gate to watch them pass.

Groff said, "We've got your burgess here. He seems to have pneumonia. Can we make him comfortable in your place and get a doctor for him?"

The man said tiredly, "There's no room in my place. I have twenty-five, thirty people. And the doctors won't make house calls, not today. All three of 'em are down at the school. Take him there."

Mrs. Goudeket said, "Could you maybe put me up, mister? We've been walking and walking—?"

"No room," he said. "I'm full up. Everybody's full up. Go to the school. They got stretchers there. The Air Force dropped 'em in the athletic field. I hope Henry gets better. Go down to the school. They'll take care of you there."

"For ten dollars, maybe—" Mrs. Goudeket began.

"Money's no good," the man said. His voice began to rise hysterically. "Nothing's no good. I work at the Gramatan Mills and look at it. I worked there twenty-seven years, I was going to get my pension in 1958, and now the mill's gone. My father drove down into town before it hit to see if he could help and he isn't back yet and I don't know if he's alive or dead." He took sudden hold of himself. "I have to go and tend the cookstove. You have to boil your water now. Thirty people drink a lot of water, we keep boiling it all the time. Take care of Henry." He went back up his path and inside.

Past the rustic houses on the fringe they came to a belt of substantial older places, the homes of the borough petty aristocracy. Here the smear of brown had reached; the horses picked their way uncertainly, fetlock-deep in stinking mud. A mad-eyed woman in a housecoat was on one of the handsome porches shoveling and shoveling; the silt plopped into the silt that covered her lawn.

They passed a house with a broken back. A towering poplar, surely the pride of the owner once, had stood in his front yard. The flood water had come; it had loosened the soil to the consistency of porridge; the tree had tilted a little, leaned; its wide shallow root system had given way and the trunk had crashed across the roof, caving and crumpling it in.

There was a house with black, dead eyes. Somehow fire had started; candles, or a fireplace carelessly laid for warmth when the electrically fanned oil heater clicked silent. The innards of the house had burned, and the fireman had not come. There was a pathetic pile of furniture outside, but where the people were you couldn't tell.

There was a house that, in all that chaotic destruction, had survived unscathed. Its windows had their glass, its doors were neatly locked, there were two spindly iron chairs on the porch. And then you looked and saw that it rested in the middle of a road, where the water had let it drop.

But it was the smell that hurt. You could imagine a hurt town mending itself and growing again. But this stench from the river bottoms was the stink of death. "I'll bet," said Artie Chesbro with a dreamer's eyes, "you could pick up any mortgage in town for five cents on the dollar today."

Dr. Soames was the town's only specialist. He had built a white Georgian house and a three-car garage out of something less than a quarter of a cubic foot of the human female anatomy. He was an expert on every fold and canal from the labium minus to the hydatid of Morgagni, and of the hundred and four babies born in the borough of Hebertown and surrounding territory in the past twelve months, he had delivered ninety-three. They told scandalous anecdotes about his extra-official life—"Mrs. Hoglund? Hoglund? Oh, I didn't recognize you with your pants up"—and there had been a suggestion at the County Medical Association that some of his most profitable pregnancies were not permitted to come to term. But there was no human being in Hebertown and environs who doubted that Dr. Soames was the greatest doctor on earth.

And what good was he doing now, he demanded silently, swabbing alcohol on the morning's twenty-fifth rump to ready it for the needle.

He sighed and jabbed home the needle of yellowish fluid. The kid jumped and howled; Dr. Soames's hand was not as dexterous with injections as it might once have been. They were working themselves into a coma, all three of the doctors, with routine shots against typhoid and penicillin to keep the sniffles of the kids from getting worse; but any ambulance driver could have done as much. What these people needed—homes; help; money—was not in their little black bags.

"Dr. Soames!" Chief of Police Brayer was coming into the school's gym. The tired old face looked worried—almost panicked; Soames had thought the time for panic was over. "They're bringing Henry in, Doctor. He looks bad."

The burgess came in, under clean blankets, on an aluminum-frame stretcher at last. Soames took a quick look. Fever; coma; and the unmistakable racking, hard-fought breaths. Pneumonia? "Wake up Doctor Brandeis," he ordered; but he found a hypodermic and loaded it without waiting.

The other doctor's eyes were bleary when he staggered in, but there wasn't much doubt. "Pneumonites, all right," he said, auscultating the burgess's chest. "We ought to have oxygen, Frank." Chief Brayer listened to the doctors. He cut in, "Don't we have any oxygen?" Soames shook his head; and Brayer remembered. The oxygen was there, all right, in the firehouse, where it was handy for the pumpers to take along in case of drowning or asphyxiation or any of the other things Hebertown called out its fire department for; but it wasn't handy at all in case of floods, since the firehouse was in the Borough Hall. You couldn't even see the roof yet, though the water had gone down.

He blundered out of the room and buttonholed one of the other volunteers. "Who've we got who can swim underwater?" he demanded. "We have to get the oxygen out of the firehouse—Henry needs it."

They found a couple of high-school kids, on the swimming team, and they went down to survey the drowned-out hall. The water had slowed enough to put a boat out; they rowed down Front Street, over the back yards of the cottages, into the River Road. "Must be around here," Brayer said doubtfully, staring at the muddy water. "Some of the houses got moved, I guess...."

It wasn't there. One of the boys eventually went down, but only for a moment. He came up sputtering and grunting, his eyes squeezed tight; when they got him into the boat and he could talk coherently again he said, "Sorry, Mr. Brayer. Maybe there's still some of the firehouse down there. But that isn't water, it's plain mud. Even if I had a face mask, I couldn't see—and I don't have a face mask." They took him back to the school to have his eyes looked after. Chief Brayer leaned dizzily against the door frame, watching Dr. Brandeis bathing the kid's eyes. What, he wondered, was Hebertown going to be like without Henry?

Mickey Groff woke up. They must have given me a shot of something, he thought clearly, and sat up.

A girl in a white uniform with gold bars at the collar leaned over him and said, "You ought to go back to sleep. You've only had about two hours."

He shook his head. "How's the old man?"

"Which one?"

"Starkman—the burgess." But she didn't know the name. Groff stood up and staggered to a chair. What was an army nurse doing here, he wondered. Wings and a bar; maybe they'd flown in help from outside.

Somebody helped him to a garage, empty of cars, with duckboards laid over the mud on the floor; there was a sort of emergency feeding station organized there and he got hot coffee laced with thick canned milk, syrupy with sugar. He went out in the sunshine and drank it gratefully.

Sunshine!

He slowly accepted the fact that it wasn't raining any more. The sky was spotty with clouds, but there was a lot of blue.

"Mr. Groff." He tried to get to his feet; it was Artie Chesbro's wife. She stopped him.

"Where's everybody?" he asked.

"Sleeping, mostly. Except my husband, who is out looking for orphans to rob. Have you seen Henry?"

He blinked. "Henry?"

"The burgess. Mr. Starkman." He shook his head. She said gently, "I've been with him all morning. If they don't get help for him soon—"

He noticed that her eyes were unaccountably filled with tears. "I thought I saw an army nurse—"

"Yes. But they didn't have oxygen, and that's what he needs. It's on its way, I guess, or anyway they say it is." She looked at the coffee. "Wait a minute. I want some of that."

Mickey Groff looked after her and sighed. Now, why was she mothering the old man? And what was that "orphans to rob" remark? It had been fairly obvious that she and her husband were not cut from the same bolt, but was it possible for her to see her husband that clearly, and keep on living with him?

He was beginning to wonder whether he shouldn't get up and start somehow helping out when she came back and sat beside him. She was humming to herself, he noticed, and glanced at her curiously; evidently she wasn't so upset after all.

"I knew," she said, dreamily swirling the coffee around in the mug to stir it, "that two of us would go. It is the difference between six and eight."

"The what?"

She laughed as if a child had done something clever. "I knew you weren't a student of the Great Science," she said cheerfully. "There are perfect numbers, and imperfect numbers; the imperfect numbers are—imperfect, and the worst of them are the deficient ones. Eight is an imperfect number, you see." She grinned at him. "You think I've flipped," she commented.

"Well, I wouldn't say—"

"But you'd think it. No matter, Mickey—do you mind if I call you Mickey? I'm quite sane—I have the advantage of you, you see, because I have my diploma to prove it." She sipped her coffee. "That's what makes Artie so mad," she said pleasantly. "He got me committed to the Haven, and they kept me there for nearly a year; and now when he threatens to tell people I'm crazy I don't have to worry, because six perfectly fine psychiatrists agree that I'm not."

Mickey Groff said weakly, "That's very nice, Mrs.—Polly, I mean."

She said seriously, "You mustn't think that the Great Science is one of these crackpot cultist affairs. I know gematry has a bad name, but you'd be astonished at the great minds that have worked on it. Fermat, Bachet—back as far as Diophantos, in fact. Why, if you'd just—oh, please, Mickey." She touched his arm as he started to move. "I'll stop. This isn't the time to talk about important things."

"Important."

"This," she said, "is a time for shallow, surfacy affairs, a time when distractions come crowding in and cannot be ignored. One such distraction is that Mr. Starkman is dying and needs oxygen."

"I have an idea," he said. "Come on."

There was a boy of fourteen standing by with a handkerchief tied around his left arm, an improvised brassard. "Son," Groff said, "do you go to the junior high?"

"Yes."

"The burgess, Mr. Starkman, needs oxygen and they can't get at the firehouse tanks. It occurred to me that there might be some in the school—those little tanks they call lecture bottles that they use for demonstrations in chemistry classes."

"I haven't taken chem yet, mister, I don't know," the boy said unhappily.

"Are there any teachers here?"

"Yes sir! Mr. Holtz the math teacher's making the coffee back there."

Groff approached Holtz, a small, harried man. Holtz listened and said: "Not in the junior high, no. No lecture demonstrations, just recitation and lab. But the senior high across the river would have some. My good friend Mr. Anderson lectures there and he believes in making it spectacular. Yes; they would have lecture flasks. I'd guide you there if I weren't assigned. Perhaps you can find somebody—"

Groff decided he would not. These people were working at top capacity now. He could do the job on his own.

Groff and Polly picked their way through the silt to the river bank. A rowboat manned by two husky youngsters with the improvised brassards was unloading a weeping woman and a silent child.

"Get to the school," one of them told her in an important, basically uncertain voice. "They'll take care of you there. They've got nurses and everything."

She walked off clutching the child's hand, still weeping.

The kids looked after her, round-eyed. They told Groff: "That's Mrs. Vostek. Her husband drowned. We just found her sitting on her porch crying. Maybe she's gone crazy."

"Can you get us across the river? We want to get into the high school and look for oxygen bottles. The sick cases need it."

"That's what we're here for, mister!"

Good kids....

On the other bank, perilously attained, the kids pointed Groff and Polly in the right direction and took aboard two grim brassarded men who carried a limp, moaning girl of ten between them.

The other side of the river was the older part of town; the inevitable slum had grown up there. Here in the streets and on the steps they saw drunken men and women with blank despair in their eyes tilting bottles skyward. One of them drained his bottle and yelled: "To hell with it!" and hurled the empty through the plate-glass window of a silt-choked little magazine-and-candy store. A man, not young, sitting in the store came charging out with a sawed-off ball bat in his hands, swinging. "You cheap rotten bum!" he yelled. "Things aren't bad enough, you have to make them worse!"

While the drunk stared stupidly, Groff rushed between them and caught the wrists of the man with the bat. "Easy," he said. "For God's sake, you'll kill him with that thing."

The drunk came to life. "Let him kill," he yelled. "What's the damn difference now? No job, no house, no furniture. Let him kill!" But he reeled off down the street while Groff held the furious man.

"Stupid bastard," the proprietor swore. "I'll give him bottles. Three-fifty he owes me, I'll give him bottles!" Then the fight suddenly evaporated out of him. Groff let go and they walked on, looking back to see him shamble into his store again and sit down with the bat across his knees.

They passed a bar, and there was no nonsense about that. Two men who looked like brothers stood grimly at the door. Each had a shotgun over his arm. When Groff and Polly walked by they shifted the guns a little and said nothing.

A corner grocery had become a sort of involuntary relief station. There was a long unruly line leading to the door. The grocer stood there; behind him in the store his wife was bringing up canned goods, bottled pop, everything. The grocer, sweating and afraid, was handing out the food and drink to the sullen people as they passed.

"Please," he was saying, "I haven't got time to write this down. Please remember what you take and come around and settle when things clear up."

After a fashion he was avoiding the sack of his store.

The high school was an old red brick building, smaller than the new junior high across the river. Groff marched up the steps and tried the door. "Bloody hell," he said. "Locked, of course."

She pointed. "There's an open window."

They climbed in and found themselves in the principal's office. Three men with sledge hammers and crow-bars were knocking the knob off the safe. They turned menacingly.

"Go ahead." Groff shrugged. "I can't stop you."

"Get the hell out of here," one of them said.

"We came to get some oxygen," Polly said. "For the sick people across the river."

"Sick people? Okay."

They went into the corridor and wandered from room to room; on the second floor they found an old-fashioned lecture theater, bowl-shaped with steep rows of seats focusing on a laboratory bench piped for water and gas. There was a promising-looking door behind it.

It was locked. Groff kicked at the door and swore with pain; the building was old-fashioned brick and its woodwork was old-fashioned golden oak, the stuff you can hardly drive a nail into. He trudged down to the office again. The three men were gone; the door of the safe swung open. They had left one sledge; somehow he had expected to find all the tools dropped, but apparently they were going to work their way methodically through every safe they could find.

He returned with the sledge and bashed at the golden-oak door until its latch sprung and it swung open. It was the storeroom for lecture supplies and the gas flasks were neatly stacked on the top shelf. There was a complete carton of a dozen twelve-inch cylinders marked O₂ and another carton with eight cylinders.

"Thank God," he said. "Let's go."

The things were horribly heavy.

As they retraced their way to the river bank they were stopped three times by loungers collected in groups of half a dozen and had to show them the cartons' contents and explain that it was for the sick people across the river.

There was a long wait before they could hail one of the boats passing back and forth; finally a rowboat with a roaring outboard motor pulled up. Two men with American Legion caps manned it. They explained their mission and were taken aboard. One of the Legionnaires asked: "How are things in Old Town?"

"Breaking up fast," Groff said.

The man understood perfectly. "The goons," he said, nodding. "There's talk about sending in the National Guard," he said. "Meanwhile I guess it's our problem."

He took the heavier carton from Groff when they reached the river bank and Groff took Polly's; together they walked to the gymnasium where Harry Starkman lay.

One of the doctors—Brandeis?—looked at the lecture bottles dully, took one and shambled over to the burgess's litter. He drew the blanket over Starkman's face, slipped the bottle under and cracked the needle valve for a few hissing minutes, then checked the old man's pulse.

"Very good," he said at last to Groff and Polly. "There's something to hope for now. Now clear out, you two. Find something useful to do."

"There's going to be trouble in Old Town tonight," Groff said. "And it may spill over here."

Polly, preoccupied, said, "The number is still imperfect. Two of us will have to go. I do hope it won't be you, Mickey."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was a solid line of cars, bumper to bumper, on the northbound side of the highway. It ended against a roadblock consisting of two state troopers, one standing in the middle of the lane with a double-barreled shotgun over his arm, the other by the roadside where he could look into the cars. Their patrol car was pulled over on the soggy shoulder, its motor idling.

A new Lincoln with a middle-aged man at the wheel was next.

"Why do you want to get through, mister?" the trooper demanded. He had long ago given up the time-consuming request for registration and operator's permit.

The man was flustered. "I have some friends in Newtown," he said. "I thought maybe there was something I could do for them—"

The trooper glanced into the back of the car. Empty. "You haven't got anything they need," he said. "Turn around and go home."

Meekly the man U-turned around the trooper in the road and sped south.

The next car was a tired, top-down convertible with two young couples who might have been high-school seniors, college freshmen or young working stiffs. The driver explained, too glibly, indicating the girl by his side: "Her mother lives in Bradley, so she got me to drive her in. You know the railroads and buses aren't running, officer."

But the girl giggled.

"Where does she live in Bradley?" asked the trooper. The girl hesitated and took a deep breath before beginning to lie. The trooper gave a weary shushing gesture. "Skip it," he said. "Turn around and go home. This is no circus."

The driver began to bluster. "I've got a license, I can drive where I want—"

"Turn around and go home," the trooper said. "If you keep arguing I'll run you in for obstructing traffic. If you're stupid enough to proceed down that road, Schultz there will fire one warning shot and will then blow your goddam head off. Move."

The boy roared his motor spitefully to say the things he didn't dare say, let up suddenly on his clutch and spun around the patrolman with the shotgun in a U-turn.

The next car was black and driven by a man in black. Its rear and the seat beside the driver were filled with cartons; the trunk lid was half-up, tied by a rope to the bumper over more cartons.

"I'm from the Beaver Run Meeting of the Society of Friends," the man said quietly. "We've gathered some things they may need in there. Medicine, bandages, Sterno, flashlights."

The trooper hesitated. "We're supposed to accept contributions and turn you back, then a truck comes and takes them in. But I haven't seen any truck and I don't know whether there's going to be one or if it was just talk. You look as if you can take care of yourself, mister. Go on in and don't get hurt." He called to the trooper in the road: "Let him through."

"Thank you," said the Quaker, and drove on at a careful thirty-five miles per hour.

Down the southbound lane, the deserted left strip of the highway, a big car purred, slowing obediently to a stop at the outraged shout of the trooper. The old man who was driving said nothing; the young woman with him put out her head and called, "Dr. Buloff, Factoryville, New York. Are there any instructions?"

The trooper backed around the car and read the New York plates. The second two characters were MD. He said to the old man, "Just go in and free-lance, doc. They can use you."

"Thank you, officer," the old man said with a good trace of German accent, and the car purred on.

In rapid succession three imbeciles followed the doctor's example of using the southbound lane. All were sightseers, and all were turned back with curses.

The next car in line was a '39 Ford driven by a white-faced young man with the jitters and a narrow mustache. He had identification papers ready in his sweating hand. "John C. Barshay," he said precisely. "As you can see from the address on this envelope I live at 437 Olney Street, Newtown. I work in New York City and come home weekends. My wife—I haven't been able to get through on the phone." His voice was rising hysterically. "I demand to be let through, officer!"

"Calm down," the trooper said gently. "Of course you can get through. We're not here to stop people like you. I hope everything's all right."

The young man fought his way back to composure. "Thank you, officer," he said precisely, and drove on.

Then there was a phenomenon, a car coming from the flooded area. It was coming fast until the driver, presumably, could see that the hassle up ahead was a roadblock and then it stopped and began to wheel around.

"Hold 'em, Schultzie!" the trooper yelled at his partner with the shotgun. He leaped into the idling patrol car, spun its wheels for an instant in the soft shoulder and then zoomed free down the highway. The other car had barely finished its turn; he had it crowded off the road in seconds. He got out with his gun drawn and a casual bead on the head of the unshaven, slack-jawed man in the driver's seat. "Get out with your hands up," he said, his body shielded behind the front of his car.

The driver got out, dull-eyed.

"Turn around."

He did, and the trooper frisked him. There were things in his pockets, none of them gun-size. The trooper, from behind, pulled out watches, a costly new spinning reel and some rhinestone rings and necklaces.

The back of the car was filled with new suits and dresses, some crumpled and mud-stained. The trooper lifted the trunk lid and found shiny new appliances—a pressure-cooker, a steam iron, a handsome floor fan, a sandwich grill, a rotisserie.

"Is this car yours?" the trooper asked interestedly.

"No," the man mumbled.

"You'll be sorry for this day's work, boy," the trooper promised. "Keep your back turned."

He rolled up the windows, took the car keys from the ignition and locked it up. With the man beside him he drove back to the roadblock and prodded him out with his gun.

"Looter," he said to his partner. "Stolen car locked up down there, full of plunder. Watch him." To the man he said: "Stand over there and don't try to run or you'll get killed. Now, who's next?"

"Press," said a jaunty young man in a convertible, showing a card quickly.

"Do that again," the officer requested. Reluctantly the young man did. The officer read aloud: "The Zeidler News Service requests that police and fire officials extend all press courtesies to its representative George E. Neumann." He grinned. "Back to Pittsburgh, Mr. George E. Neumann."

The young man shrugged and wheeled his car around.

The next two cars were, or appeared to be, driven by legitimate relatives of people in the flood area; at least they were filled with sensible supplies. The trooper passed them. The next was a year-old Dodge sedan with an oldish driver and a youngish passenger. "Haggarty," the driver said. "New York Daily Globe. This is Vince Ruffino, my photographer. The press card." It was a little green folder with picture—an embossed city seal through it—thumbprint, description, and the signature of the police commissioner. "Fire badge," said Haggarty, flipping open a leather folder. "Okay?"

"Okay," the trooper said, and waved them on.

The line of waiting cars was beginning to break up. The number of people turned back and the sour replies they had called as they passed those still in line explained it.

Another vehicle coming away from the flood area, fast. It had a cardboard sign with a red cross on it stuck in the windshield. A station wagon, full.

The trooper at the checkpoint paused to watch. The driver of the station wagon stopped by the trooper with the shotgun, spoke to him for a minute, nodded and slid into gear again. The trooper at the check point stared at the faces inside the station wagon, some drawn, some nervously exuberant, as it went past.

The trooper with the shotgun was walking down the road toward him. "Transients," he said. "They're getting them out."

The other trooper said hesitantly, "Did—did you ask—"

"Yeah. They haven't found anybody answering your wife's description, not that the driver knew about anyway. She'll be all right."

"Sure. Thanks." The trooper with the shotgun turned and walked back. His partner sighed and moved on to the car at the head of the line. It was stretched out of sight again.

"You want me to stop for any of this?"

The photographer said, "Nope. I'll wait until we get in the town. But jeez, it's pretty beat up, isn't it?"

Jay Haggarty nodded and concentrated on his driving. One of the beat-up elements of the landscape was the road they were on. Water had scoured gravel out from under the surfacing in places, and there were potholes; water had rushed across the road in a flood in other places, and left mud and debris.

A man in a leather windbreaker yelled at them to slow down, and Haggarty obediently put his foot on the brake. He followed the man's instructions and they crawled across what had recently been a four-million-dollar toll-bridge. It seemed to be vibrating as they crossed it, Haggarty had to remind himself that they wouldn't have been allowed on it if it weren't safe. The river was within two feet of the surface of the roadway, and there was an uneven thudding as flotsam rammed into the accumulated tangle on the upstream side.

They passed between the empty toll booths and headed for Hebertown.

Haggarty said, "I was here just before the war, Vince. Nice, quiet little town. It doesn't look as if it's been built up much since then."

Ruffino said, "Who the hell would want to build a house around here? You wake up some morning and you're under water. Give me Passaic."

There was a second roadblock just before the sign that said: Entering Hebertown. Haggarty showed his card and leaned out of the window to ask where the emergency relief headquarters was. The directions turned out to be pretty complicated: It's straight down Center Street, only you can't get through there—trees across the road. So turn left on Maple, but you won't be able to take the bridge at White Street because it's blocked off; go three blocks further and cross on the highway bridge. Then you'll have to watch out for soft pavement on Locust....

Ruffino said, unbelievingly, "Jeez, Jay, it's worse here than it was down by the river. Do you mean that little creek had enough water in it to do all this?" He stared at the little gray stream that flowed under the highway bridge, and at the twisted, half-collapsed warehouses and storefronts that were easily five feet above water level.

"It's the little streams that do the damage," Haggarty told him. "Once the water gets into the rivers it's all right. It can flow away. But you see how close these buildings are set to the creek here? As soon as the water came up a couple of feet it clobbered them."

He stopped, because the photographer was opening the door of the parked car and no longer listening. It was as good a place to get started as any. Haggarty pulled over to the curb, locked the ignition and got out.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Mrs. Goudeket caught up with Polly and Groff. "So long I slept," she said, panting. "They wouldn't wake me up. How's Mr. Starkman?"

"They think he'll be all right for a while, anyway," said Mickey Groff. "There's a whole field hospital coming in, somebody said. If he holds out until then he's got a good chance."

"Thank God," said Mrs. Goudeket, beaming. "And Mr. Chesbro?"

Polly Chesbro said cheerfully, "I haven't seen him all day."

Mrs. Goudeket looked at her appraisingly. All she said was, "I guess he's pretty busy."

Mickey Groff coughed. "Uh, the diner up the hill is in business, Mrs. Goudeket. We were just about to go up and get something to eat. Would you like to come along?"

"Why not? Then I got to find a car to get back to the hotel. Imagine," she laughed. "One hundred and sixty guests, and the only one there to keep an eye on them is Dave Wax. Believe me, Goudeket's Green Acres is one place they'll never come back to again!" She was very gay about it, Groff thought.... If you didn't look too closely. He had a sudden picture in his mind of what the last twenty-four hours meant to Goudeket's Green Acres and to Mrs. Goudeket herself. One hundred and sixty guests. At, say, five dollars per day per head. Over eight hundred dollars a day; and out of that you could pay for the putting green and the swimming pool, pay the salaries of the cooks, trumpet player and chambermaids and busboys, pay the installments on the mortgage and the electric bill. And squeeze out a profit; enough to keep you for a year on what you made in a summer. But, although your one hundred and sixty guests could cancel themselves out overnight, reservations or no reservations, you couldn't cancel the trumpet player or the mortgage or the putting green....

They had to wait in line, but they finally got a booth in the diner. The menu was soup, sandwiches, and stew—apparently slapped together in a hurry out of what would otherwise have spoiled in the refrigerator. There still was no power; evidently the diner was operating its stoves on bottled gas.

But it tasted good to all three of them. Outside the diner again, with coffee in cartons for Groff and Polly Chesbro for them to drink at their leisure, Mrs. Goudeket said, "Listen, what are you going to do now? You still have business here, Mickey?"

Groff shrugged. "That's what I came up for. But I doubt I can do anything about it today."

"So stay overnight at Goudeket's Green Acres," she said hospitably.

"You think we can get back there?"

"Must be somebody with a car. I can pay."

Groff looked around. There were a lot of cars, and not many of them were going. As he watched, a big sedan chugging down the road with a load of dirty-faced children coughed and stopped. A man in a Legion cap, red-eyed and bearded, got out and wearily opened the door for the kids. They apathetically began to trudge down the hill to the temporary hospital.

"Out of gas," Groff said. "They're all running out of gas."

And then one car that was not out of gas, a low-slung sports job, came rocketing along the road, took a turn too fast and skidded on the mud-slick street. Its fishtail swerved left into a fire hydrant with a crash that made the dishes behind the diner counter rattle. On the rebound the car's remaining energy sent it nosing to the right through the plate window of a clothing store. By then it was burning fiercely from the tail. Two figures, dark in the glare of burning gas, spilled frantically from the bucket seats and flailed their way through the smoke and jagged glass.

"Come on!" Groff yelled, a general invitation to perhaps half a dozen weary, red-eyed men standing about with coffee cartons of their own. They ran for the smoky blaze; it beat fiercely against Groff's forehead and cheeks. He found himself almost racing crazily into the flames before he stopped. Groff peered into the holocaust and saw nothing.

A man tugged his arm, drawing him back a couple of yards. The man said, preoccupied: "That was Ed von Lutz's little car. A Porsche. Ed's got a garage, he had that thing for advertising."

Groff said, watching two people die, "Why's he racing it around town?"

"Oh, that wasn't Ed," the man told him. "Ed got killed in his garage hours ago. Water undermined the sills and footing, he was in there trying to straighten up and then the floor gave way and his air-compressor storage tank rolled over him. That wasn't Ed. That must of been some crazy kid that's been hanging around thinking about the little sports car ever since he got it in, and he thought this was his chance for a free ride. I guess that was his girl with him."

The quick, fierce gasoline flame was burning itself out; now the blaze had passed to the clothes on display, the fixtures, the shelves. The building was a long brick row, not battered by the worst of the current but horribly soiled. The clothing store was the central one of seven shops; there were apartments upstairs.

"Let's get the burning stuff out before it spreads," Groff said grimly. He walked into the smoke and, holding his breath, came out with a smoldering armful of suits off a rack. He dumped them in the gutter, where they charred and stank.

"Axes," a man sighed. "Hardware store around the corner."

"I'll get 'em," shouted Mrs. Goudeket, trotting off. "Save the man's stock. Don't let the fire spread."

The next half hour was a nightmare of chopping and prying at burning wood, dashing out for smokefree air when you had got a little ahead of the flames. Groff burned his left forearm when he brushed once against the still-blistering frame of the car. Midway through the job somebody covered the two charred figures from the car with a pair of topcoats each and they carried them out and laid them on the curb. Later they were gone; somebody, Groff never knew who, had taken them to the temporary morgue in the M.E. church basement.

He woke once from his daze of chopping and prying to find Polly Chesbro pulling on him. "They're stealing everything, Mickey," she said insistently. "Can't you stop them?"

Groff looked around. The store was gutted, the fire only an evil smoulder here and there. He coughed and walked out, sidling around the twisted, blackened little car with the bashed-in tail. He breathed fresh air outside; to his surprise it was late afternoon.

The pile of clothes from the store was dwindling before his eyes. People were picking it over and grabbing; Mrs. Goudeket was screaming at them: "Leave the man's stock alone! I'll—I'll—" She took an axe and made a feeble pass at a man in mechanic's coveralls. He shoved her hard and sent her sprawling. Polly Chesbro began to curse the man fluently; he ignored her as if she were a buzzing fly. Groff went and picked up the gasping old woman. "You hurt?" he asked.

She rubbed her behind and shook her head, glaring murderously. "Loafers," she said. "Bums without brains to run a business themselves. Look at them!"

Groff looked at them. From the wrong side of the tracks—river in this town. Sick, neurotic faces, shrill neurotic voices as they squabbled over tidbits like carrion crows. Feeble slum types, most of them, but a few of the gorillas that every slum produces in defiance of malnutrition. Men, women and gorillas, there were about a dozen of them. This was his cue to deliver a ringing oration on the rights of property and shame them away from the only chance most of them would ever have at an eighty-five dollar suit or topcoat.

He took up Mrs. Goudeket's axe and walked purposefully toward the carrion crows. "Break it up!" he yelled hoarsely. "If you can't do anything useful you can go home and not make any more trouble."

The gorilla who had shoved Mrs. Goudeket looked at him appraisingly, picked up the bundle of clothes he had neatly laid aside and walked off with them in his arms. There was a nice charcoal-gray single-breasted suit on top.

"Put those down!" Groff snarled. The man just kept walking. There was a crackle of laughter from the others around the pile. Where were the decent people, Groff wondered angrily. They were on the fringes and they were waiting. Their world was balanced on a razor's edge, and they dared not breathe. Let it tip one way and looting would tilt again to law and order; let it tip the other and looting would tilt over into murder.

Groff balanced the doubled-bitted axe in his right hand and hurled it at the departing gorilla. It flew like an arrow; its flat top thudded into the small of the man's back. He fell, howling, on the soft bundle of clothes he embraced. Groff walked up to him and rolled him over with his foot. The man cursed him and Groff drew back his foot for a kick at his bullet head. The man stopped instantly, glaring. "Go home," Groff told him.

The decent people on the fringes had come to life. They cried to the carrion crows: "Go home. Leave the man's stock where it is. Get back where you belong."

And it worked, because it was still daylight.

On the way back to the school, the GHQ of the town, Groff and Polly Chesbro and Mrs. Goudeket saw again the ruin and the despair, and something new: hatred. A couple railed at a man standing on his porch that he had plenty of room, that they had to have a place to sleep, they knew he had plenty of room—but the man grinned hatred at them and calmly shook his head.

"That," said Polly Chesbro in a low voice, "could be the paying off of an ancient score. The couple in the mud could be Mr. and Mrs. Town Banker, suddenly poor because they haven't a bed, and the man on the porch could be the village bum, owes everybody in town, brink of financial disaster, but suddenly rich because he has a bed. This is the day of jubilee, Groff, the day of leveling."

They passed a house canted off its foundations; they saw a man calmly building a rubbish fire against one corner of it and almost went on, so natural did it seem. His eyes were bright when he looked up, and he seemed only a little offended when they kicked his fire apart.

"It's the insurance," he explained. "Twelve thousand dollars, fire with extended coverage. You know what it'll cost me to get this straightened up? Rent a crane, a big gang of men with hydraulic jacks, a week's work easing the house back on the footings, and then everything will be sprung, the whole house'll have to be replastered. Five thousand dollars, easy, and I haven't got it. So I figured, we're covered for fire, make a clean start, the kids are grown now and we don't need a place this size—" Of the adjoining houses he had not thought at all.

They walked him down to the school; he chattered volubly all the way, quite unhinged. Polly efficiently vanished in search of a doctor with a needleful of morphine, and eventually she led one of the army medics toward them.

The arsonist snapped to and said crisply, "Sir, these civilians tried to prevent me from carrying out my mission. If you ask me, they're Krauts."

The medic led him away, protesting.

Artie Chesbro said worriedly, "Sharon, are you sure Akslund's coming here? None of these dopes seem to know anything."

Sharon Froman said, "Positive. This is the only road in from the north. He'll have to stop at the check point even if he is a congressman." She paused, added, "The captain who told me was the detachment communications officer. He got it right off the radio himself." She gave Chesbro a smile of good fellowship. It never hurt to remind a man how helpful you were being.

Chesbro sighed, "I'm getting tired of waiting here, all the same. These tinhorn heroes are getting under my skin. The next idiot that wants to know if I'll help out with the salvage squads or let them take this car for emergency duty gets a tire-iron across the face."

Sharon said sympathetically, "You'd think they'd know enough to leave you alone, wouldn't you?" There was a siren scream from down the road, and they both sat up straight to look. But it was only an ambulance; it slowed briefly at the roadblock, the troopers waved it by and it sped away.

Sharon took out a cigarette and pressed the dashboard lighter; then she remembered it didn't work and lit the cigarette with a match. It wasn't much of a car they were in; but it was the best car Chesbro had been able to rent for what money he had in his pocket. And naturally he wouldn't have been able to do it by himself, she thought comfortably. She was the one who had learned that Representative Akslund was coming into the disaster area on an inspection tour; she was the one who had located the car; and she was the one who had put the idea in Chesbro's head of meeting the congressman and riding with him. Nicely done, Sharon, she told herself; and the best part of all was that she had succeeded in making him think it was his own idea.

"I wonder how Polly's making out," Chesbro said.

Sharon permitted herself a frown, her face turned away. She said gaily, "Probably loving every minute of it, Arthur. It must be pretty exciting for her. Anyway," she added blandly, "Mickey Groff's probably taking good care of her."

"Mickey Groff?" He looked at her with surprise. "Polly?"

Sharon said, "Well, he did seem rather interested—"

Chesbro shook his head. "Oh, no. You don't know Polly. Believe me, men aren't her—" He hesitated, and said, "Believe me, she has too much sense to get involved with a two-bit operator like him. She's loyal, Sharon. Absolutely loyal to me." He was silent for a moment and then, without looking at the girl, he said, "Polly's a funny kid. She isn't, uh, normal, if you know what I mean, like you'd think a wife would be—but she's loyal. Absolutely."

Sharon Froman took a deep, quiet breath. Ah-ha, Mr. Chesbro, she thought to herself with satisfaction, the wife isn't quite normal, eh? Somehow or other she doesn't respond when you get that urge, and the years go by, and then you notice that you aren't getting the urge as often—as far as she's concerned at any rate. So after a while you don't even worry when she's off with another man.

Sharon nodded wisely to herself. Just the way it had been with Hesch and his first wife. She'd made a man out of Hesch, even if he had finally let her down, and she could make a man out of this unpromising lout too—

The unpromising lout sat up sharply. "Hey," he yelled, "something's coming! It's got a state-police escort. Maybe it's Akslund!"

The congressman was on the best of terms with the Air Force—possibly because he held appointments on three appropriations committees. The Air Force had been delighted to fly him up from Washington that morning, and had been eager to fly him right into the disaster area in a helicopter; but Representative Akslund himself had put his foot down about that. Transport planes were one thing; helicopters were something else. So the last fifteen miles of his trip were in a car furnished through the courtesy of the state police.

"Unbelievable," he murmured—but enunciating every syllable crisply and clearly. "It looks as if a war had been fought over every inch of this lovely countryside. I estimate the damage I have already seen is in the millions." Out of the corner of his eye he observed that the AP man who had tagged along wasn't writing anything down. Disappointing; but Akslund was too old a hand to try to hint about it. The AP man would be with him for a good many hours yet. There was plenty of time for direct quotes.

The police car ahead sounded its siren. The congressman craned his neck.

"Road block," the driver explained. "They'll pass us right through, sir."

But they didn't. The driver of the car ahead stuck out his arm and semaphored a stop; the congressman's chauffeur braked sharp and smooth, and stopped a yard away from the other car's bumper.

A state trooper on point duty walked over and said, "Sorry to hold you up, sir. You can pass, of course, but there's a man here who says he—"

Artie Chesbro appeared, panting. He stuck his hand in the open window. "Good to see you again, Halmer," he said. "I'm Artie Chesbro. State delegation. Perhaps you remember our little chat at the Waldorf last year—the fund dinner."

Representative Akslund opened the matchless filing case in his head and riffled through the cards. He remembered. "Glad to see you again, Chesbro. Are you in this mess?"

"Up to my eyebrows. From the very start. There were eight of us trapped in a building all night long; one was killed by gasoline fumes, another's in the hospital with pneumonia this minute. But that's not the point. I've been thinking heavily about relief and reconstruction, Halmer, and I've developed some ideas I'd like to share with you. Mind if I come along?"