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and played out wire to be connected to timing devices.

Ten minutes later all three charges were in place. Yvette passed him, one

by one, the clockwork fuse mechanisms with attached batteries which he

had carefully assembled yesterday for himself and the other

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two teams. Handling each one gingerly, making sure there would be no

premature explosion, Georgos connected the wires from the detonators.

Again he checked his watch. By working fast they had made up some, but not

all, of the lost time.

Ile three explosions would occur, more or less together, eleven minutes

from now. It barely gave Georgos and his woman time to make it back down

the bill to where their car was hidden, off the road, in a stand of

trees. But if they burried-ran most of the way-they would be safely en

route to the city before a response to the massive power failure could

be mounted. He commanded Yvette, "Get going! Move it!" This time she

preceded him through the fence.

It was while Georgos himself was crawling out that he heard the sound of

a car, not far away and ascending the hill. He paused to listen.

Unmistakably it was using the private gravel road, owned by GSP & L,

which provided access to the substation.

A security patrol! It bad to be. This late at night no one else would

come here. As Georgos finished scrambling through and stood upright, he

could see the reflection of headlights on some trees below. The road was

winding, which explained why the car was not yet in sight.

Yvette had beard and seen too. As she started to say something, be

motioned her to silence and snarled, "Over here!" He began runningtoward

the gravel road, then across it to a clump of bushes on the far side. In

the bushes he dropped and flattened himself, Yvette beside him doing the

same. He sensed her trembling. He was reminded of what be forgot

sometimes-that she was little more than a child in many ways; also, she

had never been quite the same, despite her devotion to him, since the

incident of the hand.

Now the headlights were in sight as the car rounded the last bend before

the substation. It was approaching slowly. Probably the driver was being

careful because the service road bad no reflective markers and the edges

were hard to see. As the headlights came nearer, the entire area was

illuminated brightly. Georgos pressed down, raising his bead only

slightly. Their chances of remaining concealed, he calculated, were good.

What worried him was the nearness of the explosion. He checked his watch.

Eight minutes to go.

The car stopped, only a few feet from Georgos and Yvette, and a figure

got out on the passenger side. As the figure moved forward into the range

of headlights, Georgos could see a man in security guard uniform. The

guard had a flashlight with a powerful beam which be directed at the

fence surrounding the substation. Moving the beam from side to side, be

began walking, making a circuit of the fence. Now Georgos could

distinguish the shape of a second man-the driver-who seemed to be staying

in the car.

The first man had gone part way around when he stopped, directing the

flashlight downward. He had found the opening where the fence

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was cut. Moving closer, he used the flashlight to inspect inside the fence.

The light moved over power lines, insulators and transformers, paused at one

charge of plastic explosive, then followed the wires to the timing device.

The guard swung around and shouted, "Hey, Jake! Call in an alarm!

Something's funny here."

Georgos acted. He knew that seconds counted, and there was no alternative

to what had to be done.

He leaped to his feet, at the same time reaching to his belt for a bunting

knife be carried in a sheath. It was a long, sharp, vicious knife, intended

for an emergency such as this, and it came out smoothly. The leap had

carried Georgos almost to the car. One more pace and he wrenched open the

driver's door. The startled occupant, an elderly man with gray hair, also

in security guard uniform, turned. He had a radio mike in his hand, close

to his lips.

Georgos lunged forward. With his left hand be pulled the guard from the

car, spun him around, then with a powerful upward thrust buried the knife

in the man's chest. The victim's mouth opened wide. He began a scream which

almost at once subsided to a gurgle. Then he fell forward to the ground.

Pulling hard, Georgos retrieved the knife and returned it to the sheath. He

had seen a gun in a holster as the guard fell. Now, snapping open the

holster, he grabbed it. Georgos had learned about guns in Cuba. This was a

-38 Smith & Wesson revolver and, in the reflection from the headlights, he

broke the gun and checked the chambers. All were loaded. He snapped the gun

closed, cocked it, and released the safety.

The first guard had heard something and was returning to the car. He called

out, "Jake! What was that? Are you okay?" His gun was drawn but he had no

chance to use it.

Already Georgos had slipped like a silent shadow around the rear of the

car, making use of darkness behind the lights. Now he was down on his

knees, taking careful aim, the muzzle of the -38 cradled on his left elbow

for stability, his right forefinger beginning to squeeze the trigger. The

sights were lined on the left side of the approaching guard's chest.

Georgos waited until he was sure be would hit his target, then fired three

times. The second and third shots were probably unnecessary. The guard

pitched backward without a sound and lay still where he bad fallen.

There was no time, Georgos knew, even to check his watch. He grabbed

Yvette, who had risen to her feet at the sound of the shots, shoving her

forward as they began running. They raced together down the hill, taking a

chance on missing the roadway in the darkness. Twice Georgos stumbled and

recovered; once he trod on a loose rock and felt his ankle twist, but he

ignored the pain and kept moving. Despite his baste he made certain that

Yvette stayed close. He could hear her breath, coming in sobs.

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They were a third of the way down when the sound of an explosion reached

them. The ground vibrated first, then the sound wave followed -a loud,

reverberating cruump! Seconds later there was another explosion, and then

a third, and the sky lit up with a bright, yellow-blue flash. The flash

repeated itself, then the reflection of flames, from fiercely burning oil

from the transformers, lighted the sky. Rounding a bend in the gravel road,

Georgos had a sudden sense of something being different. Then he realized

what it was: His objective had been fulfilled. All the lights of Millfield

were out.

Aware of the urgent need to get clear, not knowing if the security guard in

the car had radioed a message or not, Georgos continued running, leading

the way.

With relief, and both of them near exhaustion, be found their car where

they had left it-in the stand of trees near the foot of the hill. Minutes

later they were on their way, headed for the city, with blackedout

Millfield behind them.

"You killed those men! You murdered them!"

Yvette's voice, from the front seat of the car beside him, was hysterical

as well as still breathless from her exertion.

"I had to."

Georgos answered tersely, without turning his head, keeping his eyes

directed at the freeway which they bad just reached. He was driving

carefully, making sure to stay slightly below the legal speed limit. Tle

last thing he wanted was to be stopped by the Highway Patrol for some

driving infraction. There was blood, Georgos knew, on his clothing from the

man he had knifed, and there would be blood on the knife also, identifiable

by type. He had discovered, too, that he was bleeding copiously

himself-from his left thigh where the wire had penetrated more deeply than

he had realized earlier. And he could feel his ankle swelling from when it

twisted on the rock.

Yvette wbined, "You didn't have to kill them!"

He shouted at her fiercely, "Shut up! Or I'll kill you."

He was thinking back, mentally running over every detail that had happened,

trying to remember if there were any clues left behind which would identify

either him or Yvette. '17hey had both worn gloves at the fence and in

laying the charges. He bad slipped his off to connect the timer, and later

when he fired the gun. But the gloves had been on when he attacked with the

knife, so there would be no fingerprints on the car door handle. Prints on

the gun? Yes, but be had bad the presence of mind to bring the gun with him

and would dispose of it later.

Yvette was sniveling again. "Tbat one in the car. He was an old man! I saw

him."

"He was a dirty fascist pig!"

Georgos said it forcefully, in part to convince himself, because the

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memory of the gray-haired man bad been eating at him too. He bad tried to

push out of his mind the recollection of the shocked, open mouth and stifled

scream as the knife went in deeply, but be bad not succeeded. Despite his

anarchist training and the bombings since, Georgos had not killed anyone at

close quarters before and the experience sickened him. He would never admit

it though.

"You could go to prison for murder!"

He snarled back, "So could you."

There was no point in explaining that be was indictable for murder

already-for the seven deaths resulting from the La Mission plant explosion

and the letter bombs mailed to GSP & L. But he could set his woman straight

about tonight, and would.

"Get this, you stupid whore! You're in this as much as I am. You were

there, a part of it all, and you killed those pigs Just as if you pulled

the knife or fired the gun. So whatever happens to me happens to you. Don't

ever forget it!"

He had got through to her, he could tell, because she was sobbing now,

choking on words, burbling something incoherent about wishing she hadn't

gotten into this. For an instant he felt compassion and a surge of pity.

Then self-discipline reasserted itself; he dismissed the thought as being

weak and counterrevolutionary.

He estimated they were almost halfway to the city, then realized something

he had been too preoccupied to take in earlier. The area they were passing

through, normally brightly lighted and well beyond Millfield, was also in

darkness; even street lights were out. With sudden satisfaction he thought:

It meant that the other freedom fighters had succeeded in their objectives.

The entire battle, fought under his generalship, had been won!

Georgos began humming a little tune, composing in his mind a communiqu6 to

acquaint the world with one more glorious victory by Friends of Freedom.

3

"When the power failure happened," Karen Sloan said from her wbeelchair,

"Josie and I were on our way home in Humperdinck."

"Humperdinck?" Nim was puzzled.

Karen gave him one of her warm, glowing smiles. "Humperdinck is my

beautiful, beautiful van. I love it so much I just couldn't call it van,'