The screen lit suddenly, and they were looking, Ray over Yetsko’s shoulder, across the devastated expanse of what had been the Ladies’ Frocks department, toward Lingerie and Hosiery, which seemed to have been thoroughly looted, then stripped of everything that could be used to build a barricade.
“… Seems to have been quite a number of heavy ’copters just landed on the east stage, filled with more goons, probably to reinforce the gang back of that barricade. The firing’s gotten noticeably heavier—”
Yetsko had turned from the screen, and was pawing in the arms locker. For a job like this, he’d need firepower. He took the ten-shot clip from the butt of his pistol and inserted one with a curling hundred-shot drum at the bottom, and shoved two more like it into the pockets of his jacket. And now, something to clear the way with. He took out a three-foot length of weighted fire hose.
Then he saw Ray. That kid was pinning him down, here, while the captain was probably fighting for his life! But the captain’d told him to stay with Ray—He dropped the weighted hose.
“What’s the matter, Doug?” the boy asked. “Pick it up and let’s get going.”
He shook his head. “Can’t. The captain told me I had to take care of you.”
The boy opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and thought for a moment. Then he asked:
“Doug, didn’t Captain Prestonby tell you to stay with me?”
“Yes—”
“All right. You do just that, because I’m going to help Claire and the senator. That’s who that goon gang’s after.”
Yetsko considered the proposition for a moment, horrified. Why, this was the captain’s girl’s kid brother; if anything happened to him—His mind refused to contemplate what the captain would do to him.
“No. You gotta stay here, Ray,” he said. “The captain—”
Then his eye caught the screen. Ed Morgan must have found a place where he could run his camera up on an extension rod from behind something; they were looking down, from almost ceiling height, at the barricade, and at the Literates’ guards who were firing from cover at it. A sudden blast of automatic-weapons burst from the barricade; more men in white hoods came boiling up the escalator, and they all rushed forward. The few Literates’ guards skirmishers were overwhelmed. He saw one of them, a man he knew, Sam Igoe, from Company 5, go down wounded; he saw one of the white-hooded goons pause to brain him with a carbine butt before charging on.
“Why, you dirty rotten Illiterate—!” he roared, retrieving his weighted hose. “Come on, Ray; let’s go!”
Ray hesitated, as though in thought. “Ken Dorchin; Harry Cobb; Dick Hirschfield; Jerry McCarty; Ramón Nogales; Pete Shawne; Tom Hutchinson—”
“Who—?” Yetsko began. “What’ve they gotta do with—?”
“We need a gang; the two of us’d last about as long as a pint of beer at a Dutch picnic.” Ray went to the desk, grabbed a pen, and made a list of names, in a fair imitation of Ralph Prestonby’s neat block-printing. “Give this to the girl outside, and tell her to have them called for and sent in here,” the boy directed. “And see if you can find us some transport. I think there ought to be a couple of big ’copters finished down at the shops. And if you can find a couple more Literates’ guards you can talk into going with us—”
Yetsko nodded and took the paper without question. He was not, and he would be the first to admit it, of the thinking type. He was a good sergeant, but he had to have an officer to tell him what to do. Ray Pelton might be only fifteen years old, but his sister was the captain’s girl, and that put him in the officer class. A very young and recently-commissioned second lieutenant, say, but definitely an officer. Yetsko took the list and looked at it. Like most Literates’ guards, he could read, after a fashion. He recognized the names; the boys were all members of the top floor secret society. He went out and gave the list to Martha Collins.
He’d expected some argument with her, but she seemed to accept Ray Pelton’s printing as Prestonby’s; she began checking room charts and class lists, and calling for the boys to be sent at once to the office. He went out, and down to the ’copter repair shop, where he found that a big four-ton air truck that the senior class had been working on for several weeks was finished.
“That thing been tested, yet?” he asked the instructor.
“Yes; I had it up, myself, this morning. Flew it over to the Bronx and back with a load of supplies.”
“OK Have somebody you can trust—one of your guards, preferably—bring it around behind the Administration Wing. Captain Prestonby wants it. I’m to take some boys from Fourth Year Civics on a tour. Something about election campaign methods.”
The instructor called a Literates’ guard and gave him instructions. Yetsko went to the guards’ squad room on the second floor, where he found half a dozen of the reserves loafing.
“All right; you guys start earning your pay,” he said. “We’re going to a party.”
The men got to their feet and began gathering their weapons.
“Mason,” he continued, “you have your big ’copter here; the gang of you can all get in it. I’m taking off in a four-ton truck,
