er worked with mobs before?"

Bey and Kenny climbed from the plane and made their way at a trot toward
the airport's administration buildings. Abe and Elmer climbed out, too,
and opened the baggage compartment in the rear of the aircraft.

"Well, no," Jake Armstrong said.

"It's quite a technique. Mostly you have to play it by ear, because
nothing is so changeable as the temper of a mob. Always keep in mind
that to begin with, at least, only a small fraction of the crowd is
really involved in what's going on. Possibly only one out of ten is
interested in the issue. The rest start off, at least, as idle
observers, watching the fun. That's one of the first things you've got
to control. Don't let the innocent bystanders become excited and get
into the spirit of it all. Once they do, then you've got a mess on your
hands."

Isobel, Jake and Cliff listened to him in fascination.

Cliff said uncomfortably, "Well, what do we do to get the whole thing
back to tranquillity? What I mean is, how do we end these
demonstrations?"

"We bore them to tears," Homer growled.

They looked at him blankly.

"We assume leadership of the whole thing and put up speakers."

Jake protested, "You sound as though you're sustaining not placating
it."

"We put up speakers and they speak and speak, and speak. It's almost
like a fillibuster. You don't say anything particularly interesting, and
certainly nothing exciting. You agree with the basic feeling of the
demonstrating mob, certainly you say nothing to antagonize them. In this
case we speak in favor of El Hassan and his great, and noble, and
inspiring, and so on and so forth, teachings. We speak in not too loud a
voice, so that those in the rear have a hard time hearing, if they can
hear at all."

Cliff said worriedly, "Suppose some of the hotheads get tired of this
and try to take over?"

Homer said evenly, "We have a couple of bully boys in the crowd to take
care of them."

Jake twisted his mouth, in objection. "Might that not strike the spark
that would start up violence?"

Homer Crawford grinned and began climbing out of the plane. "Not with
the weapons we use."

"Weapons!" Isobel snapped. "Do you intend to use weapons on those poor
people? Why, it was you yourself, you and your team, who started this
whole El Hassan movement. I'm shocked. I've heard about your reputation,
you and the Sahara Development Project teams. Your ruthlessness--"

Crawford chuckled ruefully and h