But I still didn't get the full horror of it until, with shaking fingers, I opened the paper beside my breakfast plate. Hotels sure know how to ruin your appetite!

Front page!

WHIZ KID SUES M.I.W. FOR 500 MILLION!

FIRST SUIT IN UNIVERSITY HISTORY

Alleging that he actually was a student at M.I.W., the attorneys of the Whiz Kid—Boggle, Gouge and Hound—today filed suit against the university for 500 million dollars for defamation of fame with compounded mortal felony.

A stunned nation last night on the prime-time program "59 1/2 Minutes Too Late" beheld the evidence itself.

Never before have the sacred precincts of M.I.W. been breached by the slightest breath of scandal.

A spokesman at Boggle, Gouge and Hound said, "We'll win in a walk. The honor of American youth must be upheld against the denigrating connivings of the pillars of learning. This is a landmark case. We will murder the bums."

The president of M.I.W., who was not called, could not be reached for comment.

In frantic search for opinion, this paper called Supreme Court Chief Justice Hamburger. He stated, "In an unofficial opinion, off the record, justice must always get its just desserts. If called on to review the case, we will consider anything in writing."

(See page 34 for on-the-scene, exclusive riot photos of M.I.W.)

I would have rushed down to get the other papers but I didn't have to. The news vendor, accustomed to my habits by now, had them piled three feet high on a cart. Just as I feared! National coverage!

This Madison was making me nervous. You understand, my faith was not really shattered, it was just wobbled a bit. I realized that it was the size of the suit and that it was the first time anyone had ever dared sue the mighty M.I.W. that was making the news, and I hoped the Whiz Kid would sort of get eclipsed in this.

I would let Madison have his head. Probably some deep-seated strategy lay behind this.

However, the following morning Madison had his front page again!

M.I.W. FIGHTS BACK! WHIZ KID BLASTED!

In an exclusive interview with the president of M.I.W., this paper was entrusted with an exclusive message for the Whiz Kid.

"If," said the president, "Gerry Wister does not drop this suit at once, he will be expelled! Furthermore, we will cancel his Octopus Oil Company Scholarship and fire him from his job as waiter in the college restaurant."

These strong words were uttered with great force. The university means to fight!

The university attorneys—Fuddle, Muddle and Puddle—today filed countermotions in the state court, alleging that the accusations of the said Gerry Wister were false, malicious and unfounded on fact.

(See Photo Section page 19 for full coverage of M.I.W. riots.)

There were TV shots of the riots in most of the news hours. There was also a full-page ad in the papers telling the listening audience to watch "59 1/2 Minutes Too Late" if they wanted to get the news before it happened. They were really crowing over their scoop.

The other papers carried not only the M.I.W.-fights-back story, they also carried editorials on the victimization of American youth in their universities and concluded, by and large, that they ought to be clobbered.

Yes, Madison was coming through. Heller had been dealt another heavy blow, for the press was definitely favoring the universities. They even showed the bodies of some students beaten to death by riot police. A favorable sign.

I might have found even more favorable evidences in my analysis except that that very night, my attention was rudely snapped in another direction.

I might have missed it entirely if I had not been extraordinarily alert. I knew it was important for me to pick up every possible clue I could about Heller. He had an inkling, I am sure, after Connecticut, that I was out to get him and even though I was not moving around much in New York, I didn't want to run the slightest risk of turning a corner and running into him. In fact, every time I rode anywhere near the Empire State Building or the UN area, I scrunched way down in the cab just in case he happened to be on the street.

Thus, I had been making it a habit to rapid-scan the recorded strips of the viewer lately. Ordinarily, I would not have bothered with the night strips due to that strange electronic interference around his suite, but after Gunsalmo Silva had calmly walked up and knocked on my door, I knew I couldn't be too careful.

It paid off!

I was amazed! Apparently Heller's rescue of Izzy had turned his attention to the Observatory of the Empire State Building. I have never seen a man so interested in soot. Who really cared what happened to the atmosphere of this planet? After Lombar had taken over Voltar, he would make very sure there was no population left on Earth: Lombar had enough riffraff at home without a full, additional planet of it to cause him trouble. Probably at the most he'd put in a little colony in Turkey to keep the opium coming. So who cared about the atmosphere of Earth? Let them choke on their own soot or get wiped out with exterminator sprays—who cared?

Yet Heller had begun a routine. Each night he would leave the Gracious Palms dressed in heavy cleaner's clothes, carrying a bucket and broom, and have Bang-Bang drive him down to the Empire State Building Observatory entrance.

The last car went up at 11:30 P.M. He would take it, and with a transfer arrive at the 86th floor.

At that hour the snack bar and souvenir counter would be closed and the place deserted. And who, I suppose, ever stops a cleaner in a New York building?

The snack bar and souvenir counter are housed, with the elevators and staircase, in a structure which stands in the middle of the large platform.

He would go up on the top of this central structure and plant three new wind cones and take the ones left the night before and put them in his bucket.

Although the platform extended out widely all around the central structure and although even the platform edge itself was amply guarded by a ten– or twelve-foot wrought-iron fence, the sight of him teetering around up there, fixing those cones to catch the wind, made me quite giddy.

The area had considerable light, coming up as it did from the city down below and all about and from the aircraft-warning and other lights on the higher tower. But to watch him fiddling with wind cones on those buttresses was a lot more than I could stand.

He was catching soot specimens or spores or something. He was probably analyzing them minutely and making all sorts of valuable conclusions, no doubt, but in my opinion it was just plain silly. Crazy as he was on the subject of height, it was probably recreation.

So tonight, I almost didn't look at the viewer when the time came. But some keen sense that is bred into you in the Apparatus told me that before I went to sleep, I better make sure he was up there again and not knocking on my door.

Yes, he was up there.

He put the old cones in his bucket and put some new ones in place and climbed down to the platform. And then it happened!

Heller was just about to walk down the stairs when an old lady rushed up to him!

She had a huge purse on a strap over her shoulder. She was dressed all in black. She had on a black hat and was wearing a black veil.

"Oh, young man, young man!" she cried in a high falsetto voice. "You must help me! My cat! My cat!" and broke off sobbing.

I went into instant shock. Falsetto or no falsetto, I knew that voice.

GUNSALMO SILVA!

He had used a woman's guise to murder the Director of the CIA and here he was repeating the trick.

It was HELLER who was the million-dollar contract nobody else would take!

Who had offered it? Not Bury: Madison was doing a great job and Bury wasn't even in town!