A brittle voice sounded somewhere around Haney's knees. Joe looked down, startled. The midget he'd seen up on the Platform nodded up at him. He'd squirmed through the press in Haney's wake. He seemed to bristle a little out of pure habit. Joe made room for him. "I'm okay," said the midget pugnaciously. Haney made a formal introduction. "Mike Scandia." He thumbed at Joe. "Joe Kenmore. He's eating with us. Wants to find the Chief." There had been no reference to the risk Joe had run in keeping Haney from a two-hundred-foot fall. But now Haney said approvingly: "I wanted to say thanks anyhow for keeping your mouth shut. New here?" Joe nodded. The noise in the bus made any sort of talk difficult. Haney appeared used to it. "Saw you with--uh--Major Holt's daughter," he observed again. "That's why I thought you were brass. Figured one or the other'd tell on Braun. You didn't, or somebody'd've raised Cain. But I'll handle it." Braun would be the man Haney had been fighting. If Haney wanted to handle it his way, it was naturally none of Joe's business. He said nothing. "Braun's a good guy," said Haney. "Crazy, that's all. He picked that fight. Picked it! Up there! Coulda been him knocked off--and I'd ha' been in a mess! I'll see him tonight." The midget said something biting in his peculiarly cracked and brittle voice. The bus rolled and rolled and rolled. It was a long twenty miles to Bootstrap. The desert outside the bus windows was utterly black and featureless, but once a convoy of trucks passed, going to the Shed. Presently, though, lights twinkled in the night. Again the bus slowed, in column with the others. Then there were barrackslike buildings, succeeding each other, and then there was a corner and suddenly the outside was ablaze with light. The busses drew up to the curb and stopped, and everybody was immediately in a great hurry to get out, shoving unnecessarily, and Joe let himself be carried along by the crowd. He found himself on the sidewalk with bright neon signs up and down the street. He was in the midst of the crowd which was the middle shift released. It eddied and dispersed without seeming to lessen. Most of the figures in sight were men. There were very, very few women. The neon signs proclaimed that here one could buy beer, and that this was Fred's Place, and that was Sid's Steak Joint. Bowling. Pool. A store--still open for this shift's trade--sold fancy shirts and strictly practical work clothes and highly eccentric items of personal adornment. A movie house. A second. A third. Somewhere a record shop fed repetitious music to the night air. There was movement and crowding and jostling, but the middle of the street was almost empty save for the busses. There were some bicycles, but practically no other wheeled traffic. After all, Bootstrap was strictly a security town. A man could leave whenever he chose, but there were formalities, and personal cars weren't practical.