hand on his shoulder.

"Hiya."

He swung around. It was the lean man, Haney, whom he'd kept from being
knocked off the level place two hundred feet up.

Joe said: "Hello."

"I thought you were big brass," said Haney, rumbling in his ear. "But
big brass don't ride the busses."

"I'm going in to try to hunt up the Chief," said Joe.

Haney grunted. He looked estimatingly at Joe. His glance fell to Joe's
hands. Joe had been digging further into the crates, and afterward he'd
washed up, but packing grease is hard to get off. When mixed with soot
and charcoal it leaves signs. Haney relaxed.

"We mostly eat together," he observed, satisfied that Joe was regular
because his hands weren't soft and because mechanic's soap had done an
incomplete job on them. "The Chief's a good guy. Join us?"

"Sure!" said Joe. "And thanks."

A brittle voice sounded somewhere around Haney's knees. Joe looked down,
startled. The midget he'd seen up on the Platform nodded up at him. He'd
squirmed through the press in Haney's wake. He seemed to bristle a
little out of pure habit. Joe made room for him.

"I'm okay," said the midget pugnaciously.

Haney made a formal introduction.

"Mike Scandia." He thumbed at Joe. "Joe Kenmore. He's eating with us.
Wants to find the Chief."

There had been no reference to the risk Joe had run in keeping Haney
from a two-hundred-foot fall. But now Haney said approvingly: "I wanted
to say thanks anyhow for keeping your mouth shut. New here?"

Joe nodded. The noise in the bus made any sort of talk difficult. Haney
appeared used to it.

"Saw you with--uh--Major Holt's daughter," he observed again. "That's
why I thought you were brass. Figured one or the other'd tell on Braun.
You didn't, or somebody'd've raised Cain. But I'll handle it."

Braun would be the man Haney had been fighting. If Haney wanted to
handle it his way, it was naturally none of Joe's business. He said
nothing.

"Braun's a good guy," said Haney. "Crazy, that's all. He picked that
fight. Picked it! Up there! Coulda been him knocked off--and I'd ha'
been in a mess! I'll see him tonight."

The midget said something biting in his peculiarly cracked and brittle
voice.

The bus rolled and rolled and rolled. It was a long twenty miles to
Bootstrap. The desert outside the bus windows was utterly black and
featureless, but once a convoy of trucks passed, going to the Shed.

Presently, though, lights twinkled in the night. Again the bus