"And if he doesn't?" McLeod demanded. "Are you going to take a chance and--" "It wouldn't be taking a chance at all," the older man told McLeod. "We could freeze you and box you and ask Wainwright about it later." "You fool! I haven't told Wainwright one way or the other yet." "Then we could unfreeze you and let him decide. Go ahead, George." McLeod could never hope to freeze all three of them before they froze him. Their actions were cut from the same Kantian categorical imperative he had expected of himself and all newspapermen--until today. He felt sorry for himself because it no longer applied, but that hardly helped. "Someone's coming," the voice behind McLeod said. He started to turn and got three quarters of the way around when the parabeam hit him. After that, it was almost like watching a melodrama on television. He could watch the action unfold. His sympathies might be directed first one way, then another, but he had no part in the play. He was a statue, standing upright as the snow drifted down and coated him with white. His body-heat didn't escape the insulined jumper to melt it and in a few moments he was an incredibly manlike snowman with a human face. The last thing he wanted to do was stand there, frozen, and watch. He stood and watched. Half a dozen figures were clustered close by the white columns at the front of Mayor Spurgess' house. Then, as if they were puppets and all their strings had been pulled at once, they darted behind the columns. The _World_ gunmen were caught in the open and knew it. Parabeams hissed as they fell toward the ground and the snow's protection. Only the shorter, heavier man tried to get up, waddling three or four yards on his knees before a parabeam caught him too and froze him. Two figures detached themselves from the white columns and ran across the snow toward McLeod, parabeams ready. "Hey, he looks familiar." "That's Darius McLeod, stupid. Familiar, the man says. They probably caught him and froze him." A beam sucked the sleep from McLeod's limbs and he was soon massaging his arms together. After two freezes in as many evenings, he'd really have a parabeam hangover in the morning. "What about those three people, Mr. McLeod?" the man who had unfroze him asked. "A natural," the other one said. "Here's our accident. Assault and robbery and accidental death. We even have the assailants. Strip these people of their _World_ identification. I'll be right back--with the mayor." * * * * * Newshounds might trick and maim and kill one another, McLeod knew, but never frame other newspapermen for civil crime. You had to keep the public happy with all newspaper people. The police, of course, never investigated very thoroughly these days, since that would be poaching on newspaper territory. They handled traffic very well, though.