They started off again. "Wait!" shouted Flick. "One more thing: Don't nobody, and I mean nobody, go into ANY upper floor. You birds stay on this level, the seventy-sixth. If you go up above, it would be cheating! We got to plan how to rob the upper floors, so don't go jumping the gun! Got it?"

They all did, or so they said, and got busy.

Madison wandered off.

He seemed to be walking through doors that didn't open or close and he found it a bit disconcerting, but he supposed he could get used to it. Walking down a passageway he found that every hundred or so feet there was a tube which evidently went down to street level: they were just polished, rectangular shafts and he wondered if he would get nerve enough ever to simply step into empty space and hope he didn't fall 912 feet. He had put a bottle of soap in his pocket at the Beauty store: he took it out now and tossed it in a shaft, wondering what would happen.

It went down at an alarming rate. He listened for a far-off crash.

Suddenly the bottle reappeared, coming up to his level. It simply stopped there in midshaft. It must have gone to the bottom, hadn't gotten out onto the street as expected and had been brought back up to the floor again.

Madison reached into the shaft and retrieved the much-travelled bottle. He put it in his pocket, wondering if he would ever have the nerve to use these elevators. He decided he would specialize in airbuses.

He began to look into rooms. They seemed to be the sort of salons and sleeping quarters one might expect the very conservative rich to have in such a culture as this: posh, but a bit on the military side, even stark. It was sort of as if someone had put together a monastery out of the most expensive materials. Nothing warm or homey about it. However, he felt he could make good use of all this: there was lots of it. He found quantities of potential office space. He found an imposing apartment for himself with huge windows which gave a fantastic view of Joy City and the Homeview complex.

Down a hall where the beautifying supplies had been stacked, he could now hear running water and yells.

He became aware, suddenly, there was someone in the room behind him. He turned.

It was one of the circus girls, the one named Trotter. She was tall and statuesque, a brunette, quite handsome. She was wearing a sleeping robe and it was open widely all the way down the front from bare breasts to bare toes and she had on nothing else.

Madison flinched. "Get on some clothes!" he said.

"You ordered us to pick up working clothes!" said Trotter. "These ARE my working clothes. What's wrong?"

"Please leave," said Madison.

"Captain," said Trotter, "I just came to warn you about these other hussies. You have a tendency to be careless and you shouldn't trust them. Do you know that some of them are criminals?"

Madison backed up. They were ALL criminals and that included Trotter. And she was an imposing chunk of woman, an awful threat!

"Now me," said Trotter, moving sensuously closer to him, "I'm different. And I'll prove it."

Madison could not back up any further unless the window opened up. Yet she came on. She had already bathed and perfume engulfed him. She was reaching out her hand.

Then he felt something in his palm! It was not her fingers!

He looked down hurriedly.

HIS WALLET!

He gawped at her. Then he hastily looked into it.

"You see?" said Trotter. "You can trust me. I didn't want anyone to rob you when we grabbed you on the beach so I just slid your wallet in between my legs. That isn't all you can slide there, hmmm?"

Madison checked the cards; they were all present. He counted forty-eight thousand credits: it was all there!

"Th-thank you," he said.

She was sliding up to him closer and she was too close already. "You just shouldn't leave valuables lying around with a gang like this. The only lying around that should be done is on beds, hmmmm? I spotted right away how cute you were and knew I'd better defend you. So why don't I make up that bed over there for you and why don't we just climb into it. I think a favor like I just did you is worth a little piece, don't you? Hmmm?"

Oh, this was an emergency with Madison. Her bare breasts were touching his jacket as her robe swung even wider. He thought fast.

"Trotter," he said with his best sincere-and-earnest look, "you are so devastatingly beautiful, that I had my eye on you from the very first moment. You are so tall, you are so handsome, you walk with such a wonderful grace, that you cause the heart to stir in even the coldest and most indifferent of men."

Her eyes began to glow. Her bare breasts heaved with a shuddering sigh of delight.

"So therefore," said Madison, praying that his pitch would work, "I am saving you as the star of the very first porno movie that we make."

"A bare-(bleep) movie?" said Trotter.

"Yes, indeed," said Madison, "with men climbing all over you and with the very best angles. A whole mob of them, fighting amongst themselves to be the first to get you, while you stand proud and stately, pushing them off with your feet until at last, you drop a golden robe, baring yourself totally to the camera and then, disdainfully with scornful finger, point to the one you will take and you do it then on a silken bed while the others grovel weeping on the floor."

"Hot Saints!" said Trotter. "And I'm the star?"

"Yes, indeed!" said Madison.

"Oh, blazing batfish! I can't wait to tell the girls!"

She rushed out, robe flying. Madison quickly figured out how to lock the door.

This life was not without its perils. But he felt a surge of confidence. She had bought the image he had built and swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. PR had triumphed once again. But he felt no surprise. After all, it was his trade and he was a master of it!

The movies he was going to make had nothing to do with Trotter. They would have everything to do with creating a brand-new image for Heller, one that would be stamped forever on men's minds: an outlaw! Hunted and chased by everyone! Famous beyond belief!

He turned back to the window. I wonder, he thought sadly, where Heller-Wister is right now. Already wanted on a general warrant, he was probably alone and shivering in some dark cave, unknown and depriving posterity of his potential notoriety. Well, he thought, with a confident smile, I can remedy that. With this crew I can do anything!

Oh my, won't Mr. Bury be proud! What a triumph for good, plain, old-time Earth PR! What an opportunity to show what he could really do!

The crew were all bedded down, they had been bathed and fed. Being convicts, they did not care what the time of day was: it was always night in the Domestic Confederacy Prison.

Thus, quiet reigned throughout the nearby halls of floor seventy-six. A weary Flick was just reporting all was well. Madison lay back on his own austere but ample bed.

"They're all asleep, sir," said Flick. "You certainly got them under control, and we've got quite a gang. When I've had some rest myself, I can get busy and begin the plan how we're going to rob the upper floors. Oh, sir, you have no idea," concluded Flick in an emotion-choked voice, "how wonderful it is to have a dream like that come true."

Madison nodded. He had his own dream. He could be tolerant.

Flick gave Madison a single, cross-arm salute and turned to go to his own rest.

A wail was coming from somewhere.

It got louder.

Someone was shouting a single word. And shouting it with panic that held the raw screech of terror!

It wasn't a word Madison knew. It was being repeated over and over.

Pounding feet raced toward them. A single man flashed by Madison's open door, screaming that word loud enough to hurt the ears!