Margot hesitated, and then turned around. "Come on," she said. Silent and curious, they filed inside. Matt spotted Sparks, a sheepish expression on his face, and the two pilots. "Hello," Matt called. "I see you boys are returning to the fold." They grinned but didn't say anything. The children trooped in last, almost a hundred of them. When they were all inside, Matt walked to the door, closed and bolted it. Margot Drake was at his elbow. "What floors do we get?" "Twenty-ninth and thirtieth." "How does it happen no one else is here?" Matt could feel his heart thumping in his throat and his mouth was dry, but he managed to grin. "If you were planning treachery, I'm the only one you'd get." He started for the side of the hall. "I'll call an elevator." Matt could feel his palms sweating. He reached the wall and pressed the button. A bell began to ring in the elevator shaft. Eight of the doors slid open, revealing an ugly machine gun in each car. Matt nimbly skipped into the nearest one. "Get your women against the far wall, Margot Drake," he yelled, "or we'll chop them into hamburger with the guns!" X Summer was on the wane before the last plastic plate was welded in the dome over the fortress, and the work was done. Matt, accompanied by Isaac Trigg, made a tour of inspection from the lowest basement with its water-purifiers to the park atop the roof. They inspected the massive airlock, capable of passing a large freight car, and the hydroponic gardens that occupied the entire seventh and eighth floors. "Not so fast, Matt," Isaac puffed. "I'm not as young as I used to be." Matt grinned, slowing down. "Is Nesbit back from Louisville yet?" "Yes. He thinks the city should be converted into a vast warehouse where we could accumulate spoils from the other cities." "That's not a bad idea," said Matt. "In a few years they won't have to be guarded against anything except the weather. Sawyer was telling me yesterday that he's discovered two hundred and thirty new species of the silicon amoeba." "They adapt fast," Isaac agreed. "We didn't get the fort sealed any too soon. Let's take the elevator." On the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth floors, animals were contentedly munching in stalls or exercising on treads under sun lamps. "I'm sorry about the dogs," said Matt. "I wish to hell we could have saved some dogs." "Too wild," said Isaac. Matt cast a slow glance over the floor before closing the elevator doors. They had trapped cows and pigs, sheep and goats, chickens, ducks, and turkeys, but there had been room for neither horses nor dogs. They looked in at the shops and laboratory, and the school where the children of the Amazons were being put through their lessons. It was dusk when they reached the park on the roof.