I'm free Wednesday evening. But you ask Ellen first. I'll give
you a call tomorrow evening to make sure I won't get a chair thrown at
me when I come in the door."

"Great! I'll let her do the inviting, then."

"Look," Jinks said, "I've got half an hour or so right now. Let me buy
you a beer. Or don't you want to take the baby in?"

"No, it's not that, but I've got to run. I just dropped in to get a
couple of things, then I have to get on out to the plant. Some piddling
little thing came up, and they want to talk to me about it." He patted
the baby's leg. "Nothing personal, pal," he said in a soft aside.

"You taking the baby into an atomic synthesis plant?" Jinks asked.

"Why not? It's safe as houses. You've still got the Holocaust Jitters,
my friend. He'll be safer there than at home. Besides, I can't just
leave him in a locker, can I?"

"I guess not. Just don't let him get his genes irradiated," Jinks said,
grinning. "So long. I'll call tomorrow at twenty hundred."

"Fine. See you then. So long."

The big man adjusted the load on his shoulder and went on toward the
counter.

_[5]_

Two-fifths of a second. That was all the time Bart Stanton had from the
first moment his supersensitive ears heard the first faint whisper of
metal against leather.

He made good use of the time.

The noise had come from behind and slightly to the left of him, so he
drew his left-hand weapon and spun to the left as he dropped to a
crouch. He had turned almost completely around, drawn his gun, and fired
three shots before the other man had even leveled his own weapon.

The bullets from Stanton's gun made three round spots on the man's
jacket, almost touching each other, and directly over the heart. The man
blinked stupidly for a moment, looking down at the spots.

"My God," he said softly.

Then he returned his own weapon slowly to its holster.

The big room was noisy. The three shots had merely added to the noise of
the gunfire that rattled intermittently around the two men. And even
that gunfire was only a part of the cacophony. The tortured molecules of
the air in the room were so besieged by the beat of drums, the blare of
trumpets, the crackle of lightning, the rumble of heavy machinery, the
squawks and shrieks of horns and whistles, the rustle of autumn leaves,
the machine-gun snap of popping popcorn, the clink and jingle of falling
coins, and the yelps, bellows, howls, roars, snarls, grunts, bleats,
moos,