sic. The broadcasts were off. But the sound of racing vehicles
clamoring for right-of-way grew louder and louder, and more and more
peremptory as it concentrated toward the large open square on which the
Interstellar Embassy faced. From every street and avenue fire-fighting
equipment poured into that square. In between and behind, hooting loudly
for precedence, police trucks accompanied and fore-ran them. Emergency
vehicles of all the civic bureaus appeared, all of them with immense
conviction of their importance.

It was a very large open square, that space before the Embassy. From its
edge, the monument to the First Settlers in the center looked small. But
even that vast plaza filled up with trucks of every imaginable variety,
from the hose towers which could throw streams of water four hundred
feet straight up, to the miniature trouble-wagons of Electricity Supply.
Staff cars of fire and police and sanitary services crowded each other
and bumped fenders with tree-surgeon trucks prepared to move fallen
trees, and with public-address trucks ready to lend stentorian tones to
any voice of authority.

But there was no situation except that there was no situation. There was
no fire. There was no riot. There were not even stray dogs for the pound
wagons to pursue, nor broken water mains for the water department
technicians to shut off and repair. There was nothing for anybody to do
but ask everybody else what the hell they were doing there, and
presently to swear at each other for cluttering up the way.

* * * * *

The din of arriving horns and sirens had stopped, and a mutter of
profanity was developing, when a last vehicle arrived. It was an
ambulance, and it came purposefully out of a side avenue and swung
toward a particular place as if it knew exactly what it was about. When
its way was blocked, it hooted impatiently for passage. Its lights
blinked violently red, demanding clearance. A giant fire-fighting unit
pulled aside. The ambulance ran past and hooted at a cluster of police
trucks. They made way for it. It blared at a gathering of dismounted,
irritated truck personnel. It made its way through them. It moved in a
straight line for the gate of the Interstellar Embassy.

A hundred yards from that gate, its horn blatted irritably at the car of
the acting head of municipal police. That car obediently made way for
it.

The ambulance rolled briskly up to the very gate of the Embassy.