form shaft. Cardon's
submachine-gun ceased firing, the action open on an empty clip. He
dropped it and yanked the heavy pistol from his shoulder holster.
Then, from the direction of the freight elevator, reinforcements
arrived, headed by a huge man in the black leather of the Literates'
guard, who swung a three-foot length of fire hose with his right hand
and fired a pistol with his left, and a boy in a black-and-red jacket
who was letting off a burp gun in deliberate, parsimonious, bursts. It
was a second or two before Cardon recognized them as Prestonby's
bodyguard, Doug Yetsko, and Claire Pelton's brother Ray. There were
four Literates' guards and about a dozen boys with them, all firing
with a variety of weapons.

At the same time, others were arriving on the escalators from the
floors below, firing as they came off--Slater's Literates' guards, the
Literates and their black-jacketed troopers of Hopkinson's store
service crew, the fifteen survivors of the twenty riflemen from Macy &
Gimbel's. The attackers turned and crowded onto the ascending
escalator. Most of them got away, the casualties being carried up by
the escalator. Doug Yetsko bounded forward and brought his fire hose
down on the back of one invader's neck. Then, after a last spatter of
upward-aimed shots from the defenders, there was silence.

Cardon stepped forward and yanked the hood from the man whom Yetsko
had knocked down, hoping that he had a stunned prisoner who could be
interrogated. The man was dead, however, with a broken neck. For a
moment, Cardon looked down at the heavy, brutal features of Joe West,
the Illiterates' Organization man. If Chester Pelton got out of this
mess alive and won the election tomorrow, there was going to have to
be a purge in the Radical-Socialist party, and something was going to
have to be done about the Consolidated Organization of Illiterates. He
turned to Yetsko.

"You and your gang got here just in the nick of time," he said. "How
did you get into the store?"

"Through the freight conveyor, into the basement."

"But I thought those goons had both ends of that plugged."

"They did," Yetsko grinned. "But Ray Pelton took us in at the middle,
and we crawled through a cable conduit to get around the gang at this
end."

Cardon looked around quickly, in search of Ray. The boy, having come
out of the excitement of battle, was looking around at the litter of
dead and wounded on the blood-splashed floor. His eyes w