He was dialing the guard room on that floor with one
hand as he took off the belt.

"Get a big ambulance on the roof, with a Literate medic and
orderly-driver," he ordered, unbuttoning his smock. "And four guards,
plain clothes if possible, but don't waste time changing clothes if
you don't have anybody out of uniform. Heavy-duty sono guns, sleep-gas
projectors, gas masks and pistols. Hurry." He threw the smock and belt
at the guard. "Here, Pancho; put these away for me. Thanks." He tossed
the last word back over his shoulder as he ran for the escalator.

[Illustration:]

It was three eternal minutes after he had reached the landing stage
above before the ambulance arrived, medic and orderly on the front
seat and the four guards, all in conservatively cut civilian clothes,
inside. He crowded in beside the medic, told him, "Pelton's store,"
and snapped the door shut as the big white 'copter began to rise.

They climbed to five thousand feet, and then the driver nosed his
vehicle up, cut his propeller and retracted it, and fired his rocket,
aiming toward downtown Manhattan. Four minutes later, after the rocket
stopped firing and they were on the down-curve of their trajectory,
the propeller was erected and they began letting down toward the
central landing stage of Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise. Cardon cut in
the TV and began calling the control tower.

"Ambulance, to evacuate Mr. Pelton," he called. "What's the score,
down there?"

One of Pelton's traffic-control men appeared on Cardon's screen.
"You're safe to land on the central stage, but you'd better come in at
a long angle from the north," he said. "We control the north public
stage, but the east and south stages are in the hands of the goons;
they'd fire on you. Land beside that big pile of boxes under
tarpaulins up here, but be careful; it's fireworks we didn't have time
to get into storage."

The ambulance came slanting in from uptown, and Cardon looked around
anxiously. The May-fly dance of customers' 'copters had stopped; there
was a Sabbath stillness about the big store, at least visually. A few
small figures in Literates' guards black leather moved about on the
north landing stage, and several Pelton employees were on the central
stop stage. The howling of the 'copter propeller overhead effectively
blocked out any sounds that might be coming from the building, at
least until the ambulance landed. Then a spatter of firing from below
was audible.

Ca