"You, Milton--take a dozen men and get around to the back of that hotel. Rest of us will take it from the front." Wales thought that however ignorant he might be in some ways, Lanterman was a born leader. No wonder that people who had been bewildered and lost in doubts followed the red-faced man. Two men with Venn guns hurried into a building at the corner of Liberty. A minute later, from a third-floor window, they suddenly let go. The searchlight went out. "Come on!" yelled Lanterman. They poured out into the wide avenue and raced along it, keeping on the sidewalks on either side. There was, suddenly, a burst of firing from ahead, that sounded muffled and distant. Then silence. They were nearly to the big hotel. "Hold it, Sam!" came Milton's yell from the dark building. "It's all done." Flashlights began to come on, like fireflies waking. There was a sound of women screeching from inside the hotel. Men came out of it, their hands high. One was a burly, shock-haired man who cursed Lanterman when he saw him. "Shot two of my men, you--" "Now quiet down, Bauder," said Lanterman. In the angling flashlight illumination, his face was sweating and exultant. "No call for any more fighting here. Wouldn't have been any, if you hadn't been so big-feelinged when we first came. Pittsburgh's big enough for all of us--long as you know I'm boss." He turned to his men. "Half of you get back over to those bridges--tell 'em we've got Bauder and we've got Pittsburgh. They'll give up. Take them, Milton." Whooping with triumph, the men started after Milton, into one of the dark side streets leading toward the river. Wales started along with them. He half expected Lanterman to call him back, but the leader was too occupied with his moment of victory to remember the suspicions of hours before. It was, Wales knew, the best chance he'd be likely to get to escape from this band. He let himself drop behind the rest of Milton's men as they ran down Ninth Street. Then, passing the mouth of an alley, he dodged into it and ran alone in darkness, cutting south to Sixth. Wales stretched his legs toward the levee. The bridges were impassable to him, and the skiffs were his only chance. He made sure of oars in one of them, then pushed it out onto the dark river. From northward, from the bridges, came the sound of firing. But as Wales rowed, the shots straggled into silence. He guessed that the fighting was over and that Sam Lanterman was master of Pittsburgh. When Wales finally stood on the dark northern shore and looked back, he saw a scattered twinkling of little lights moving amid the towering black structures that once had been a city. He suddenly found that he was shaking, from reaction and despair. "Can anyone--_anything_--save people like that?" To Wales, it suddenly all seemed hopeless--the mission on which he'd come back to Earth. Hopeless, to think that the ignorant, the short-sighted, the fearful, could ever be induced to leave Earth in time.