Pudgy's head bobbed. "Near as I got it, that was it. Kendrick could make a statement kind of throwing doubt on whether Doomsday would happen--and the boobs would decide to stay. But I guess when Fairlie sounded him out a little, Kendrick was horrified at the idea, and Fairlie had to cover up fast and say he didn't mean it." Martha clutched Wales' arm. "Jay, _that's_ why Lee was so terribly worried, so anxious--that's why he wouldn't leave Earth! He was afraid such a scheme was really being planned!" Wales could imagine that. He knew Lee Kendrick, and he knew that even a breath of suspicion of a plan so ruthless and terrible would have had a shattering effect on him. "So," Pudgy finished, "before Kendrick could get too suspicious and start talking, we went to Castletown and grabbed him, and took him to New York. And his disappearance was nearly as good as his statement would have been--the boobs all figured Kendrick hadn't left Earth, so they would not." "But he's alive?" Martha cried. "They haven't killed him." Pudgy shrugged. "Not so far. Fairlie still wants him to make that statement, so all the scum will feel sure it's safe and will stay on Earth till too late." Wales suddenly felt a revulsion from all that he had heard, from the shocking nightmare quality of it. "It's not true, it _can't_ be true!" he exclaimed. "Martha, this man had to tell some story to save his skin, and that's all he's done!" Her face was white in the distant firelight. "Jay, people have done things like that, terrible as it is. They _have_ killed millions, in the past, for just such reasons." He knew that, too, and it was a knowledge he fought against--struggling against a cold conviction that he could not quite down. "If Lee is still alive, Lee could tell us!" she was saying. "If we could reach him, rescue him--" Wales turned back to the sullen-faced Pudgy. "You said that Fairlie and the others were holding Kendrick near New York. Just where?" "Where he's right handy and near, yet where nobody can walk in on him," said Pudgy. "Bedloe's Island, in New York harbor. You know, the old Statue of Liberty island." Wales thought, his mind a turmoil. Now the flames were marching up the hillside streets toward them, and now the sound of drums and distant chanting came from away southward. The Brotherhood were leaving Castletown, on their way to make some other lifeless city a fiery sign of their atonement. "I still," said Wales, "can't believe it. But we'll prove it, one way or another. We'll go back to New York, and see if Lee is really on that island." "You haven't got a prayer!" said Pudgy, his voice rising into a high whine. "They've got him guarded there." "And you," Wales said, "can tell us just where the guards are and how best to pass them. Yes, you're going with us." He ignored the man's frantic objections, and started the car. He headed eastward, to skirt the flaming city at a safe distance.