ts.

Of course there wasn't anybody to send them to, but that didn't stop
the Major. He said with determination: "Nobody's ever going to chew
_me_ out for non-compliance with regulations--even if I have to invent
the regulations myself!"

We set up in a bachelor apartment on Central Park South--the Major had
the penthouse; the whole building had been converted to barracks--and
the first chance we got, Vern snaffled some transportation and we set
out to find an ocean liner.

See, the thing was that an ocean liner isn't easy to steal. I mean
we'd scouted out the lay of the land before we ever entered the city
itself, and there were plenty of liners, but there wasn't one that
looked like we could just jump in and sail it away. For that we needed
an organization. Since we didn't have one, the best thing to do was
borrow the Major's.

Vern turned up with Amy Bankhead's MG, and he also turned up with Amy.
I can't say I was displeased, because I was beginning to like the
girl; but did you ever try to ride three people in the seats of an MG?
Well, the way to do it is by having one passenger sit in the other
passenger's lap, which would have been all right except that Amy
insisted on driving.

We headed downtown and over to the West Side. The Major's
Topographical Section--one former billboard artist--had prepared road
maps with little red-ink Xs marking the streets that were blocked,
which was most of the streets; but we charted a course that would take
us where we wanted to go. Thirty-fourth Street was open, and so was
Fifth Avenue all of its length, so we scooted down Fifth, crossed
over, got under the Elevated Highway and whined along uptown toward
the Fifties.

"There's one," cried Amy, pointing.

I was on Vern's lap, so I was making the notes. It was a Fruit Company
combination freighter-passenger vessel. I looked at Vern, and Vern
shrugged as best he could, so I wrote it down; but it wasn't exactly
what we wanted. No, not by a long shot.

* * * * *

Still, the thing to do was to survey our resources, and then we could
pick the one we liked best. We went all the way up to the end of the
big-ship docks, and then turned and came back down, all the way to the
Battery. It wasn't pleasure driving, exactly--half a dozen times we
had to get out the map and detour around impenetrable jams of stalled
and empty cars--or anyway, if they weren't exactly empty, the people
in them were no long