The revving of the unseen motor grew louder. Billig leaned over the guard wall and looked thoughtfully at Mitzie, as if he were a cleverer Caligula, a more practical Nero. Then he turned back, and took the figurine of Mitzie out of his pocket, and spoke to Phil.

“Mr. Gish,” he said, “I seriously want to know where the green cat is, or where your Dr. Romadka has taken it. Otherwise, how would you like this to happen to her down there?” And he jerked off a leg of the figurine. Phil could see the twin ragged cones of wax where the leg had parted. “Or this?” Billig jerked off an arm. “Or this or this?”

At that moment an open topped black jeep came accelerating out from under the balcony. Phil saw there were three people in it, though for a moment he couldn’t tell who. But Mitzie darted to the car, calling out excitedly, “Carstairs!” The car came on. “You’re wonderful?’ Mitzie called. But then suddenly the car came forward faster and straight toward her, and she had to dive out of the way to keep from being hit.

The car started to swing around in a great loop. Mitzie picked herself up from the harsh floor.

“Orthis! ” Billig hissed at Phil, and he ripped the figurine apart at the waist, while one thumb made a smashed flatness of the tiny breasts. “Now please tell me where’s this Dr. Romadka.”

“I don’t know!” Phil yelled, struggling to get away from Jack, who maddeningly whispered in his ear, “That’s right, don’t spill a word.”

“I’ll remind you,” Billig continued swiftly, taking something else from under his coat, “that it’s much more worse for her – or anyone – to be hurt by people she idolizes than by people she hates. So tell me about the green cat. Look here, this is an ortho. I can cut down that car any moment you tell me.”

But Phil, like all the others, was watching Mitzie. Having picked herself up, she didn’t move. She simply stayed there, facing the oncoming car. When it was so close that for an instant Phil saw Mitzie’s dark head against its chrome muzzle, it veered and missed her by a breath. Mitzie stood motionless as a statue, though her short skirt whipped out.

Then she turned at the waist and watched the retreating jeep.

“Chicken!” she jeered, loudly.

For an instant everyone on the balcony was very still. Then there was a dull banging, and Phil realized that Moe Brimstine was pounding the railing, and saying, “I tell you, that girl’s good.”

“Yes, she is,” Billig buzzed at him curtly. Brimstine stopped his applause, looking ashamed.

“But,” Billig continued smoothly, turning to Phil, “they’re bound to get her, sooner or later, unless…” And he wiggled the large black gun he held in his small hand. “So you better talk.”

The jeep swung round under the balcony in a much tighter loop and headed back, revving screamingly. Mitzie faced it, grinning, hands as light on her hips as before.

Then, just as – from Phil’s point of view – it had swallowed her up to the waist, she sprang to one side. Phil felt her foot must have brushed the tire. The jeep slammed through the air where she’d been.

“Dumb-bell!” Mitzie screamed.

Brimstine lifted his clenched fists above the railing, glanced at Billig, and with an effort dropped them to his sides. Phil realized his arms were numb, Jack was gripping them so tightly. Beyond Billig, Harris and Dora leaned forward over the guard rail, as abstracted as gamblers.

But Billig himself, though presumably a gambler, was neither still nor intent. “Look, Mr. Gish,” he said rapidly, “I don’t want to see this girl smashed myself, and Brimstine here is figuring on starring her in a knife throwing or dodge-the-car act. This is probably the last chance you have to save her. Where’s Romadka? Where’s the cat?”

A phone-light began to blink on the control panel. Billig ignored it. “Where’s the cat?” he repeated.

But all Phil could think, as the black jeep turned very tightly by the far wall and as Mitzie pivoted to face it – all he could think was that this had happened before, in ancient Crete, where girls as slim waisted and dark haired as Mitzie had faced the black, charging bull and dodged it or vaulted or somersaulted over its cruel horns, their breasts as bare as Mitzie’s, opposing the most tender thing in the world to the most terrible.

The phone-light continued to blink.

The jeep finished its tight turn, Llewellyn and Buck leaning out to balance it like a sailboat while Carstairs stuck steady as death behind the wheel. Then it shrieked toward Mitzie. She waited until it was almost as close as the time before, then sprang toward the left. Quickly, almost as if it were tied to her thoughts, the jeep veered toward the left, too. But Mitzie’s feet, slamming down after that first jump, didn’t carry her farther, but reversed her direction, carrying her back to the spot she’d first occupied.

Again the jeep slammed past her.

“Double dumb-bell!” Mitzie howled.

The jeep, screaming into another tight turn, vanished under the balcony. There was a grating crash, then a sick, rasping sound, as if the jeep had sideswiped the wall but was still going.

At the same moment a dark shouldered but pink topped figure walked out rapidly from under the balcony. It was carrying a black bag. It stopped, leaned over, set the black bag on the floor, and opened it.

The black jeep came out from under the balcony, limpingly but gaining speed.

Something green and small stuck its head out of the black bag and looked toward the jeep.

The jeep didn’t stop, but it slowed, and Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck tumbled out and sprinted away from the green head as if from horror itself.

The jeep continued very slowly and haltingly toward Mitzie, like a blinded, badly injured animal.

The pink topped figure walked rapidly and mechanically back under the balcony, as if it didn’t understand the why of what it had been doing. Belatedly, Phil realized it must be Dr. Romadka.

The phone-light went on blinking.

The green cat leaped out of the black bag and lightly settled itself beside it.

“Stun it!” Billig knifed at Brimstine and Harris.

The green cat twisted its neck and looked up curiously.

Brimstine and Harris looked at Billig and each took a step and peered down over the railing and stopped stock-still. Behind them Dora was as pale and quiet as a ghost.

And then Phil felt it too – the same invisible golden wave of amiability and understanding as had quieted the quarrelers at the Akeleys’, but now in a flood, a spring tide.

“Stun that thing down there!” Billig demanded. The hidden wrinkles were showing themselves twitchingly on his face and he was backing away from the railing as if he couldn’t bear the golden wave.

Brimstine started to reach inside his coat, but instead picked up the phone beside the blinding light. After a moment he said quite casually, “The raid’s begun, just as Greeley told us it would. The FBL are coming in everywhere.”

“Stun it, I tell you! Get it somehow; it can save us,” Billig ordered, frantically fanning the air in front of his face as if to beat off the golden wave.

Harris just looked at him. Brimstine slowly and puzzledly shook his head.

Billig gave a shuddering gasp and clapped his free hand over his mouth and nostrils, as if the golden wave were something breathed in with the air, and fought his way to the railing. With his other hand he raised the big gun until it was high above his shoulder.

A needle of blue light jutted from either end of the big gun and made smoking trenches in the opposite wall of the garage and the wall behind them. Then Billig brought the gun steadily downward, lengthening the forward and rearward trenches. The air smelled acid, as if laced with ozone. The blue beam dimmed the bright lights and made everything shadowy.

The green cat still looked up at Billig curiously. Billig didn’t look straight back at it. The little muscles in his jaw and temple bulged around the hand clamping shut his mouth and nose.