busy as they attended complex machinery. They found
signs of traitorous activities—signs which they had planted
since my escape. They had uncovered a “secret room” and
such nefarious things as a photo-printer and stacks of anti-
Alliance, anti-military booklets I was alleged to have
written with—they pointed out—the aid of Melinda Thaus-
er, who had already been taken into custody. There were
even weapons caches and a small bomb assembly bench. I
was wanted on a warrant for sedition. Very neat indeed.
But there was another warrant as well.
The second one was for murder.
They exhibited, in ludicrous detail, the demolished
howler at the foot of the cliff, the charred corpses of the
men who had been riding in the back of it. They had
fished the detached cab from the sea, and the drivers were
laid side by side, horribly mutilated by the broken wind-
screen and the crumpled roof of their vehicle. According
to the news, I had run the howler off the narrow cliff
road. I had charged it directly, and when it was obvious I
was going to hit them, the drivers of the mammoth rig
had swerved off the road to avoid killing me. Quite gallant
of them.
I waited for the reporter to say how I had managed to
make my escape with still another cop car ahead of me,
but he talked around it without letting the home audience
in on the way I had dived over the cliff myself.
KELLY KILLER, COPS SAY! That was the headline
the papers would carry, surely. Those boys always went for
alliteration.
I spent most of the evening working over a plan in my
head. Just remaining on the loose did not seem enough,
any longer, not while Melinda was in the women’s quar-
ters of the Tombs, down there in dark, cold stones with-
out me.
Somewhere around nine in the evening, my thinking
was interrupted by the whine of sirens and the sinister
rattle of gunfire.
I stood, listening intently, wondering if they were now
surrounding the building, now getting wise to my sudden
disappearance. But they would hardly be firing out in the
streets. And there would be no need for sirens. Indeed,
sirens would warn me, and such a building as this
provided a great many hiding places.
Turning to the broad picture window, I looked down
into the street eight floors below. Three howlers curbed in
front of the building across the street, and uniformed
coppers poured out of them like insects from a broken
hive. From the fourth floor of that building, a number of
men opened fire with small arms, pitifully insufficient
against such organized and deadly police.
What followed was a bloody, desperate battle which car-
ried no reason nor purpose to it, so far as I could see.
Obviously, the people on the fourth floor were considered
enemies of the state, for there was also an army car down
there, with what appeared to be high brass directing the
operation. But why tear gas was not used, why bullets were
chosen instead, I could not understand.
I watched, terrified and fascinated.
In the end, as those on the fourth floor surrendered,
tossing guns and ammunition down to the street, the most
chilling scene of all occurred. Searchlights now illuminated
the rooms beyond the shattered fourth-floor windows,
showed the men and women there, dejected and defeated.
Almost simultaneously, the inside doors to the building’s
corridors burst open, and uniformed coppers stepped into
the rooms. They carried what appeared to be machine
pistols, and they used them expertly, slaughtering the
thirty or so human beings who had already surrendered. A
tall, willowy blonde twirled gracefully and fell across the
windowsill. Her long fingers scrabbled at the wooden
frame, while her mouth went slack and her face contorted
hideously with the knowledge of impending death. Anoth-
er eruption of gunfire behind her sent her lunging through
the window, tearing her arms on projections of broken
glass. She tumbled sixty feet to the street, turning lazily, her
waist-long yellow hair sprayed around her like a halo …
At last I turned away from the window.
What I had just seen was a sample of that “community