There was a series of heavy explosions on the floor above. Everybody grabbed weapons and hurried outside, crowding onto the escalators. The floor above was a shambles, with bodies lying about, and the descending escalator was packed with white-robed attackers, who had apparently prepared for their charge by tossing down a number of heavy fragmentation bombs. Cardon had a burp gun, this time; he emptied the fifty-shot magazine into the hooded hoodlums who were coming down. Prestonby, beside him, had a heavy sono gun; he kept it trained on the head of the escalator and held the trigger back until it was empty, then slapped in a fresh clip of the small blank cartridges which produced the sound waves that were amplified and altered to stunning vibrations. Still, many of the attackers got through. More were dropping down the lift-platform shaft. Cardon's submachine-gun ceased firing, the action open on an empty clip. He dropped it and yanked the heavy pistol from his shoulder holster. Then, from the direction of the freight elevator, reinforcements arrived, headed by a huge man in the black leather of the Literates' guard, who swung a three-foot length of fire hose with his right hand and fired a pistol with his left, and a boy in a black-and-red jacket who was letting off a burp gun in deliberate, parsimonious, bursts. It was a second or two before Cardon recognized them as Prestonby's bodyguard, Doug Yetsko, and Claire Pelton's brother Ray. There were four Literates' guards and about a dozen boys with them, all firing with a variety of weapons. At the same time, others were arriving on the escalators from the floors below, firing as they came off--Slater's Literates' guards, the Literates and their black-jacketed troopers of Hopkinson's store service crew, the fifteen survivors of the twenty riflemen from Macy & Gimbel's. The attackers turned and crowded onto the ascending escalator. Most of them got away, the casualties being carried up by the escalator. Doug Yetsko bounded forward and brought his fire hose down on the back of one invader's neck. Then, after a last spatter of upward-aimed shots from the defenders, there was silence. Cardon stepped forward and yanked the hood from the man whom Yetsko had knocked down, hoping that he had a stunned prisoner who could be interrogated. The man was dead, however, with a broken neck. For a moment, Cardon looked down at the heavy, brutal features of Joe West, the Illiterates' Organization man. If Chester Pelton got out of this mess alive and won the election tomorrow, there was going to have to be a purge in the Radical-Socialist party, and something was going to have to be done about the Consolidated Organization of Illiterates. He turned to Yetsko. "You and your gang got here just in the nick of time," he said. "How did you get into the store?" "Through the freight conveyor, into the basement." "But I thought those goons had both ends of that plugged."