e'd be a watchman, or a private cop, in the
building on which Ray intended landing. A couple of hundred dollars
would take care of him, and they could leave two of Mason's boys with
the vehicles to see that he stayed bribed.

"Sure we can get in on the freight conveyor?" he asked. "Maybe it'll
be guarded."

"Then we'll have to crawl in through the cable conduit," Ray said.
"I've done that, lots of times; so have most of the other guys." He
nodded toward the body of the truck, behind, where his dozen-odd
'teen-age recruits were riding. "I've played all over the store, ever
since I've been big enough to walk; I must know more about it than
anybody but the guy who built it. That's why I said we'd have to bring
bullet guns; down where we're going, we'd gas ourselves with gas guns,
and if we used sono guns, we'd knock ourselves out with the echo."

"You know, Ray, you'll make a real storm trooper," Yetsko said. "If
you manage to stay alive for another ten years, you'll be almost as
good a storm troop captain as Captain Prestonby."

That, Ray knew, was about as high praise as Doug Yetsko could give
anybody. He'd have liked to ask Doug more about Captain
Prestonby--Doug could never seem to get used to the idea of his
officer being a schoolteacher--but there was no time. The 'copter
truck was already settling onto the roof.

The watchman proved amenable to reason. He took one look at Yetsko,
with three feet of weighted fire hose in his hand, and gulped, then
accepted the two C-notes Yetsko gave him. They left a couple of
Literates' guards with the vehicles, and Ray led the way to the fire
escape, and down into the alley. A few hundred feet away, there was an
iron grating which they pulled up. Ray drew the pistol he had gotten
out of Captain Prestonby's arms locker and checked the magazine,
chamber, and safety, knowing that Yetsko and the other guards were
watching him critically, and then started climbing down the ladder.

The conduit was halfway down. Yetsko, climbing behind him, examined it
with his flashlight, probably wondering how he was going to fit
himself into a hole like that. They climbed down onto the concrete
walkway beside the conveyor belts, and in the dim light of the
overhead lamps Ray could see that the two broad belts, to and from the
store, were empty for as far as he could see in either direction.
Normally, there should be things moving constantly in both
directions--big wire baskets full of parcels f