d gotten out of
Government Center. Not yet, but presently.

He went down the street. He came to a corner and turned it. There were
again a few moving figures in sight. There might be one pedestrian in
a city block. This was how they'd looked in the other part of the
city, seen from a ground car. On foot, they looked the same. Windows,
too, were broken. Doors smashed in. Trash on the streets....

None of the humans in view paid any attention to him at all, but he
kept Murgatroyd out of sight regardless. Walking men who came toward
him never quite arrived. They turned off on other streets or into
doorways. Those who moved in the same direction never happened to be
overtaken. They also turned corners or slipped into doors. They would
be, Calhoun realized dispassionately, people who still considered
themselves normals, out upon desperate errands for food and trying
hopelessly not to take contagion back to those they got food for. And
Calhoun was shaken with a horrible rage that such things could happen.
He, himself, had been sprayed with something.... And Dr. Lett had held
out a plastic container for him to smell.... He'd held his breath then,
but he could not keep from breathing now. He had a certain period of
time, and that period only, before--

He forced his thoughts back to the Med Ship when it was twenty miles
high, and ten, and five. He'd watched the ground through the electron
telescope and he had a mental picture of the city from the sky. It was
as clear to him as a map. He could orient himself. He could tell where
he was.

A ground car came to a stop some distance ahead. A man got out, his
arms full of bundles which would be food. Calhoun broke into a run.
The man tried to get inside the doorway before Calhoun could arrive.
But he would not leave any of the food.

Calhoun showed his blaster.

"I'm a para," he said quietly, "and I want this car. Give me the keys
and you can keep the food."

The man groaned. Then he dropped the keys on the ground. He fled into
the house.

"Thanks," said Calhoun politely to the emptiness.

He took his place in the car. He thrust Murgatroyd again out of sight.

"It's not," he told the _tormal_ with a sort of despairing humor,
"that I'm ashamed of you, Murgatroyd, but I'm afraid I may become
ashamed of myself. Keep low!"

He started the car and drove away.

He passed through a business district, with many smashed windows. He
passed through canyons formed by office build