no one had heard it. Now the pale young
man was standing in the room with a small, nickle-plated revolver in his
right hand.

The left hand was close down at his side. It was swathed generously in
white bandage.

The young man chuckled. "The last four people in the world were in a
room," he said, "and there was a knock on the door."

His chuckle deepened to one of pure merriment. "Only there wasn't a
knock. A man just walked in with a gun that made him boss."

No one moved. No one spoke. The man waited, then went on: "My name is
Leroy Davis. I lived out west and I always had a keeper because they
said I wasn't quite right. They wanted me to pull out with the rest of
them, but I slugged my keeper and here I am."

"Put down the gun and we'll talk it over," Frank said. "We're all in
this together."

"No, we aren't. I've got a gun, so that makes me top man. You're all in
it together, but I'm not. I'm the boss, and which one of you tried to
cut my hand off last night."

"You tried to break in here yelling and screaming like a madman. I held
the door. What else could I do?"

"It's all right. I'm not mad. My type--we may be nuts, but we never hold
a grudge. I can't remember much about last night. I found some whisky in
a place down the street and whisky drives me nuts. I don't know what I'm
doing when I drink whisky. They say once about five years ago I got
drunk and killed a little kid, but I don't remember."

Nobody spoke.

"I got out of it. They got me out some way. High priced lawyers got me
out. Cost my dad a pile."

Hysteria had been piling up inside of Nora. She had held it back, but
now a little of it spurted out from between her set teeth. "Do
something, somebody. _Isn't anybody going to do anything?_"

Leroy Davis blinked at her. "There's nothing they can do, honey," he
said in a kindly voice. "I've got the gun. They'd be crazy to try
anything."

Nora's laugh was like the rattle of dry peas. She sat down on the bed
and looked up at the ceiling and laughed. "It's crazy. It's all so
crazy! We're sitting here in a doomed city with some kind of alien
invaders all around us and we don't know what they look like. They
haven't hurt us at all. We don't even know what they look like. We don't
worry a bit about them because we're too busy trying to kill each
other."

Frank Brooks took Nora by the arm. "Stop it! Quit laughing like that!"

Nora shook him off. "Maybe we need someone to take us over. It's all