was gone. The four who were left behind
stared at each other.

"What's the matter with him?" demanded Haney blankly.

"He's nuts," said the Chief. "If he was gonna apologize----"

Mike shook his head.

"He wouldn't apologize," he said brittlely, "because he thought you
might think he was scared. But when he'd proved he wasn't scared of a
beating--then he could say he was sorry." He paused. "I've seen guys I
liked a lot less than him."

Haney put on his coat, frowning.

"I don't get it," he rumbled. "Next time I see him----"

"You won't," snapped Mike. "None of us will. I'll bet on it."

But he was wrong. The others went out of the storeroom and back into
Sid's Steak Joint, and the Chief politely thanked the proprietor for the
loan of his storeroom for a private fight. Then they went out into the
neon-lighted business street of Bootstrap.

"What do we do now?" asked Joe.

"Where you sleeping?" asked the Chief hospitably. "I can get you a room
at my place."

"I'm staying out at the Shed," Joe told him awkwardly. "My family's
known Major Holt a long time. I'm staying at his house behind the Shed."

Haney raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

"Better get out there then," said the Chief. "It's midnight, and they
might want to lock up. There's your bus."

A lighted bus was waiting by the curb. Its doors were open, but it was
empty of passengers. Single busses ran out to the Shed now and then, but
they ran in fleets at shift-change time. Joe went over and climbed
aboard the bus.

"We'll turn up early," said the Chief. "This won't be a shift job. We'll
look things over and lay out what we want and then get to work, eh?"

"Right," said Joe. "And thanks."

"We'll be there with our hair in braids," said Mike, in his cracked
voice. "Now a glass of beer and so to bed. 'Night."

Haney waved his hand. The three of them marched off, the two huge
figures of Haney and the Chief, with Mike trotting truculently between
them, hardly taller than their knees. They were curiously colorful with
all the many-tinted neon signs upon them. They turned into a diner.

Joe sat in the bus, alone. The driver was off somewhere. The sounds of
Bootstrap were distinctive by night. Footsteps, and the jangling of
bicycle bells, and voices, and a radio blaring somewhere and a
record-shop loud-speaker somewhere else, and a sort of underriding noise
of festivity.

There was a sharp rap on the glass by Joe's window. He started and
looke