in the hole. It broke up the Base Championship Scramble
Finals at Hap Arnold Field to the south, as half the con-
testants had to scramble in earnest to a Red Alert that
was real. It reached to police precinct houses and TV
newsrooms and highway checkpoints, and from there it
filtered into the homes and lives of the nineteen million
persons that lived within a few dozen miles of the Jug.
Riot. And yet, fewer than half a dozen men were ac-
tually involved.
A handful of men, and the enormous bulk of the city-
state quivered in every limb and class. It was like a
quarrel of fleas on the hide of a rhino!
But a flea-bite can kill a rhino with the slow agony of
communicated disease; and the city-state around the
prison leaped in fear. In its ten million homes, in its hun-
dreds of thousands of public places, the city-state's people
shook under the impact of the news from the prison.
For the news touched them where their fears lay. Riot!
And not merely a street brawl among roistering wipes, or
a barroom fight of greasers relaxing from a hard day at
the plantthe riot was down among the corrupt sludge
that underlay the state itself. Wipes brawled with wipes,
and no one cared; but in the Jug all classes were cast
together.
Thirty miles to the south, Hap Arnold Field was a
blaze of light. The airmen tumbled out of their quarters
and dayrooms at the screech of the alert siren, and behind
them their wives and children stretched and yawned and
worried. An alert! The older kids fussed and complained
and their mothers shut them up. No, there wasn't any
alert scheduled for tonight; no, they didn't know where
Daddy was going; no, the kids couldn't get up yetit was
the middle of the night!
And as soon as they had the kids back in bed, most of
the mothers struggled into their own airwac uniforms and
headed for the Briefing Area to hear.
They caught the words from a distancenot quite cor-
rectly. "Riot!" gasped an aircraftswoman first-class,
mother of three. "The wipes! I told Charlie they'd get out
of hand, and Alys, we aren't safe. You know how they
are about Gl women! I'm going right home and get a club
and stand right by the door and"
"Club!" snapped Alys, radarscope-sergeant, with two
children querulously awake in her nursery at home. "What
in God's name is the use of a club? You can't hurt a wipe
hitting him on the head. You'd better come along to Sup-
ply with me and draw a gunyou'll need it before this
night is out!"
But the airmen themselves heard the briefing loud and
clear over the scramble-call speakers, and they knew it
