The mob went back into action in two task-forces; one dedicated to the extirpation of the BSG-men currently available, the other clustered around the firetruck, thwarting the fire-fighters' efforts to couple their hose to the hydrant. One youngster, wearing the black leather jacket and crash-helmet of a Potlatch Party, ran from the fireworks warehouse with a thermite grenade. Pulling the pin, he tossed the sputtering bomb through a window of the burning building. "Stop him!" the white-helmeted fire-chief shouted. "Stop him, hell!" a consumer replied. "Man, we got a rebellion going. Don't you guys try to throw cold water on it unless you'd like to be squirted solid ice with your own hose." * * * * * The fire-chief, his hands raised in despair, turned to his colleagues. "Stand by, boys," he said. "Nothing we can do till the cops get here to quell this bunch." "Pretty, isn't it?" one of the firemen remarked, dropping the canvas hose. "We never get to see a building burn all the way. Think of all the papers in there, file-cabinets full of government regulations, lists of all our birthdays, quota-forms; all curling up and turning brown and reaching the kindling point. Nice fire, Chief." The fire-chief faced Headquarters, a new look replacing his anxiety. "It is kind of pretty," he admitted. He turned to the consumer ringleader. "OK with you if we throw a little water on the fireworks warehouse?" he asked. "Sure," the man said. "We don't want to blow up the old home-town; we only want to put the BSG out of business." His band of consumers stepped back from the yellow fireplug to let the firemen hook up their hoses, toggle on the pressure, and begin playing water over the blank face of the fireworks warehouse. Captain Winfree was buried in hard-fisted civilians, all seemingly intent on erasing him as the most familiar symbol of the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. Winfree bobbed to the surface of the maelstrom for a moment, waving his saber, and shouted, "MacHenery! Get these jokers off my back before I'm knee-deep in cold meat." He thwacked another of his assailants across the pate with the flat of his blade. MacHenery, using his saber as a lever, pried himself a path through the crowd. As he reached Captain Winfree, he raised his saber. The crowd about the two men retreated. "These folks have suffered a lot from you, Captain," MacHenery said. "Think maybe they're due to see a little bloodshed?" "OK by me," Winfree said, panting, "if you don't mind shedding it." He raised his saber in salute--the only fencing-movement he'd become proficient in--and jumped into a crouch. MacHenery closed, and the two blades met in a clanging opening. Peggy's father, for all his handicap of twenty years, was a fencer; Winfree, in his maiden effort as a sabreur, used his weapon like a club. He allemanded about MacHenery, now and then dashing in with clumsy deliveries that were always met by the older man's blade.