was not merely a matter of trouble in the wipe quarters.
The Jug! The governor himself had called them out; they
were to fly interdicting missions at such-and-such levels
on such-and-such flight circuits around the prison. So the
rockets took off on fountains of fire; and the jets took off
with a whistling roar; and last of all the helicopters took
off . . . and they were the ones who might actually ac-
complish something. They took up their picket posts on
the prison perimeter, a pilot and two bombardiers in each
copter, stone-faced, staring grimly alert at the prison
below.
They were ready for the break-out.
Butthere wasn't any break-out.
The rockets went home for fuel. The jets went home
for fuel. The helicopters hung onstill ready, still waiting.
The rockets came back and roared harmlessly about,
and went away again. They stayed away. The helicopter
men never faltered and never relaxed. The prison below
them was washed with lightfrom the guard posts on the
walls, from the cell blocks themselves, from the mobile
lights of the guard squadrons surrounding the walls. North
of the prison, on the long, flat, damp developments of
reclaimed land, the matchbox row houses of the clerical
neighborhoods showed lights in every window as the
figgers stood ready to repel invasion from their undesired
neighbors to the east, the wipes. In the crowded tene-
ments of the laborers' quarters, the wipes shouted from
window to window; and there were crowds in the bright
streets.
"The whole bloody thing's going to blow up!" a heli-
copter bombardier yelled bitterly to his pilot, above the
flutter and roar of the whirling blades. "Look at the mobs
in GreaserviUe! The first break-out from the Jug's going to
start a fight like you never sawand well be right in the
middle of it!"
He was partly right. He would be right in the middle of
itfor every man, woman and child in the city-state
would be right in the middle of it; there was no place
anywhere that would be spared. No Mixing. That was the
prescription that kept the city-state alive. There's no harm
in a family fightand aren't all mechanics a family, aren't
all laborers a clan, aren't all clerks and office workers re-
lated by closer ties than blood or skin? But the declassed
cons of the Jug were the dregs of every class; and once
they spread the neat compartmentation of society was
pierced. The break-out would mean riot on a bigger scale
than any prison had ever known. . . .
But he was also partly wrong. Because the break-out
wasn't seeming to come.
The Jug itself was coming to a boil.
