were still together when sweating volunteers picked them up and carried them back into the town.

Fallon came to before they finished sewing up his back. The emergency hospital was jammed. The staff worked in a kind of quiet frenzy, with a devil's symphony of hysteria beating up against the windows of the wards.

They hadn't any place to keep Fallon. They taped his shoulders into a kind of harness to keep the wound closed, and sent him out.

The girl was waiting for him in the areaway, huddled in a blanket. They had given Fallon one, too, but his cotton trunks were still clammy cold against him. He stood looking down at the girl, his short brown hair unkempt, the hard lines of his face showing sharp and haggard.

"Well," he said. "What are you waiting for?"

"To thank you. You saved my life."

"You're welcome," said Fallon. "Now you'd better go before I contaminate you."

"That's not fair. I am grateful, Webb. Truly grateful."

Fallon would have shrugged, but it hurt. "All right," he said wearily. "You can tell Madge what a little hero I was."

"Please don't leave me," she whispered. "I haven't any place to go. All my clothes and money were in the apartment."

He looked at her, his eyes cold and probing. Brief disappointment touched him, and he was surprised at himself. Then he went deeper, into the clear sapphire eyes, and was ashamed—which surprised him even more.

"What's your name?" he asked. "And why haven't you fainted?"

"Joan Daniels," she said. "And I haven't had time."

Fallon smiled. "Give me your shoulder, Joan," he said, and they went out.

CHAPTER TWO

Catastrophe—or Weapon?

Santa Monica was a city under attack. Sweating policemen struggled with solid jams of cars driven by wild-eyed madmen. Horns hooted and blared. And through it all, like banshees screaming with eldritch mirth, the sirens wailed.

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