are even quieter than the
night mail delivery for the suburbs. I put a squad on the roof of the
building."

"_You did?_"

"No hopes, Jim. Doesn't mean a thing. I've had the report. But listen,
I've got a civilian here who may be able to help."

With Mosby's words Bennington had felt his hopes rise, fall, and rise
again. "Tell him to start talking."

"Slater, sir."

Bennington choked down his first words.

"I know what you were going to say, sir, and I deserve it, but this
time I think I can help."

"How did you find out about this?"

"I was in a squad car on a drunk and disorderly charge. The story came
over their radio. They brought me here."

"All right, go ahead."

"General Mosby was smart, sir. He brought along some sleep gas."

"So? Not surprising." Bennington knew sleep gas was standard
precaution for riot control.

"The mess hall is the center of the compound. Because of that, in its
cellar are the furnaces which heat the other buildings."

"What does that mean?"

"You have a forced-draft, hot-air system here, sir--"

The telephone rang, the intercom spoke. "Warden, those governors are
on the line."

"Our only chance," Bennington said, "and now is the time. They'll all
be listening to this phone call over there."

He hoped the man with the rifle trained on him was very susceptible to
sleep gas.

* * * * *

"Jim, you haven't lost your touch with a pistol." General Mosby
pointed to his meaning with the toe of his boot. "But you'll need a
new carpet in your office here."

Bennington glanced at the three dead men, the broken window, and added
them to his mental list of things to be done. But he put them among
the minor problems; he had enough major ones already.

The news services were besieging The Cage. A couple of ambitious
photographers had been caught attempting to cross the moat. The
civilian dead in the mess hall had to be identified and the next of
kin notified. His entire staff was disorganized: imprisoned as
hostages, knocked out along with the rioters by sleep-gas, brusquely
revived by Mosby's aid-men--Well, he might be able to get some work
out of them tomorrow.

The rioters still slept, but what to do about those supposedly
conditioned men when the gas wore off ... a new hypno-tech, from
somewhere, by tomorrow morning.

_Add six governors who think I have nothing to do but tell them every
detail_, he thought grimly.

"You had better eat,