Mickey Groff looked around; nobody was making a move for the stairs. He stepped over the body of Sam Zehedi and went down. First outside into the drizzle, where water was ankle-deep. He attended to his needs and went back into the store. A bottle of pop caught his eye and he was suddenly burning with thirst. He tore off the cap on a wall opener and gulped it down as fast as the stuff would gurgle from the narrow neck; after a queasy moment he ran for the door and made it in time. The pop gushed up again violently. He sat down, swaying, on the wooden step up to the door and retched a couple of times experimentally. He'd have to be careful eating and drinking for a while. He had got a stiff dose of the fumes. Zehedi's blue-green, well-worn panel truck was just visible down the road in water to the hubcaps, looking bulky and competent. The goddam thing. And there stood the two gas pumps, goddam them too, and if you could only get the pumps to work you could pump gas from their underground tank into the truck and away they'd buzz, getting somehow into town where the old man could be pumped full of penicillin and dosed with oxygen as needed instead of dying like a sick dog in this kennel. He went wearily upstairs and said, "Next." Sharon got up and said, "Excuse me, Arthur." "Keep out of the cash drawer," Mrs. Goudeket said sourly. "Did you leave anything?" Sharon asked, wide-eyed. Arthur Chesbro laughed a laugh which turned hastily into a cough when Mrs. Goudeket glared his way. McCue said suddenly, "I think the rain's stopped." They crowded to the window; he was right. The drizzle had ended and the mist was clearing. "Good," Chesbro said. "They'll be able to get helicopters up. It's only a matter of time now until they spot us." Groff said, "I don't think the old man can wait." Chesbro spread his hands eloquently. "What can we do?" "Pack him in on our backs," Groff said. Chesbro said soothingly, "I don't think that'd be practical, Mickey. We're all exhausted, we've all had a touch of gas poisoning. We know more or less where we are and we know which way the town is, but we don't know what lies between us and the town. We may just circle around until we drop from exhaustion. There's a better chance of us being spotted if we stay in this place." "We're three able-bodied men," Groff said, his temper rising. "We can take turns. A helicopter's just as likely to spot us on a road as it is to spot us here. Chesbro, _I'd_ like to sit here and wait to be rescued too; _I_ don't have a yen to go sloshing through the water with Starkman on my back either. But I don't think he can wait. We've got to do everything we can." "I've got my manuscript to carry," Sharon said apologetically. "We'll _do_ everything we can," Chesbro said reasonably. "But what's the sense of endangering all of us uselessly? The trip wouldn't be good for him. And the women--my wife isn't strong, Mickey, she shouldn't be subjected to--" "Arthur," said his wife. "Shut up."