self and the man in there." He nodded toward the
room where Chester Pelton lay in drugged sleep. "In the squad room, on
the floor below."

"And for the mob below to get up here?"

"Two escalators, sir, northeast and southwest corners of office
country. And we got some new counters that Mr. Latterman had built,
that didn't get put out in time for the sale. We can use them to build
barricades, if we have to."

"How about a 'copter attack on the roof?"

Coccozello grinned. "I'd like to see that, now, Literate. We got
plenty of A-A equipment up there--four 7-mm machine guns, two 12-mm's,
and one 20-mm auto-cannon. We could hold off the State Guard with
that."

"That isn't saying much, but they're not even that good. So it'll be
the escalators. Think, now, sergeant. Fires, burglary, holdups--"

The sergeant's grin widened. "High-pressure fire hose, one at the head
of each escalator, and a couple more that can be dragged over from
other outlets. Say we put two men on each hose, lying down at the head
of the escalators. And we got plenty of firearms; we can arm some of
these clerks, up here--"

"All right; do that. And put out an emergency call, by
inter-department telephone, not by public address, to floorwalkers
from the fifth floor down, to gather up all male clerks and other
store personnel in their departments, arm them with anything they can
find, and rush them to Chinaware. Tell them to shout 'Pelton!' when
they hit the mob, to avoid breaking each others' heads in the
confusion, and tell them they're expected to hold the Chinaware and
Glassware departments themselves, without any help from the store
police."

"Why not?" Claire wanted to know.

"That's how battles come to happen at the wrong time and place,"
Prestonby told her. "Two small detachments collide, and each sends
back for re-enforcements, and the next thing anybody knows, there's a
full-size battle going on where nobody wants to fight one. We're going
to fight our main battle at the head of the escalators from the
twelfth floor."

"You've done this sort of work before, Literate," Coccozello grinned.
"You talk like a storm-troop captain. What else?"

"Well, so far, we've just been talking defense. We need to take the
offensive, ourselves." He glanced around. "Is there a freight elevator
from this block to the basement?"

"Yeah. Wait till I see." Coccozello went to the TV-screen and dialed.
"Yeah, and the elevator's up here, too," he said.

"W