The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"

"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything wrong."

"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in the WSDA!"

Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in those new techniques.

The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my rank if you were convicted of—"

"Do I have to make you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced toward the girl.

"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey! Stop it!"

Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body, and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.

The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it. There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed in on him.

When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."

He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.

Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men to high political positions were women.

Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a 

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