is arms wider, blocking both
of them. Malone edged back against the bar, feeling behind him for a
bottle or maybe a bungstarter. Instead, his hand touched a sleeve.

A voice behind him bellowed: "Cease!"

The two lumpy-faced men goggled. Petkoff did not move.

Malone turned, and saw a tall, thin civilian with dark glasses.
"Cease," the civilian repeated. "It is the girl we are to arrest! The
girl!"

"This is not a girl," one of the lumpy men said. "Sir. We are to
arrest this man. Our orders say distinctly--"

"Never mind your orders!" Petkoff said. "Go and reduce your orders to
shreds and stuff them up your nostrils and die of suffocation! My
orders say--"

"The girl!" the civilian said. "Where is the girl?"

Malone darted forward. Petkoff caught him neatly with one arm as he
went by. "Until we decide what to do," the MVD man said, "you stay
here." Malone bucked against him, but could get nowhere. "Meanwhile,"
Petkoff said, "I am for letting you go."

"I appreciate it," Malone said through his teeth. "How about proving
it?"

"If you let him go," a lumpy man said, "you will answer to our group
head."

Petkoff tightened his hold protectively. Meanwhile, the civilian was
climbing up into a stratospheric rage.

"You are dolts, imbeciles, worms without brains and walking bellies
filled with carrion!" he said magnificently. "I have orders which I am
sworn to carry out!"

"You are not alone," Petkoff said.

Malone took another try at a getaway, and failed.

"We take precedence," a lumpy man said. "We can talk later. Arrest
comes first."

"But who?" the civilian snapped. "I insist--"

"There shall be no arrest!" Petkoff screamed. "No one is to be
arrested at all!"

"I swear by the bones of Stalin that my orders state--" the tall man
began.

"The bones of Stalin are with us!" a lumpy man said. "Go and die in a
kennel filled with fleas and old newspaper! Go and freeze to the
likeness of an obscene statue of a bourgeois deity! Go and hang by the
ears from a monument four thousand feet high in the center of the
great desert!"

Inspired, the other lumpy man screamed "Charge!" and came for Petkoff
and the civilian. Petkoff whirled, letting go of Malone in order to
beat back this wave of maddened attackers, and Malone took the
advantage. He ducked free under Petkoff's left arm and started around
the gesticulating, screaming, fighting group for the door at the back
of the restaurant. He took exactly four ste