"But I don't believe it," Donaho was saying. "Nobody could travel a mile through that. And the word from Fresno is that the only unoccupied house is two miles off to the side!"

"Never a boy scout, were you?"

"No. Why?"

"We used to hike these hills with thirty pounds of backpack. Still...hmm." He seemed to be studying Donaho's face. "Is Anderson's booth back in operation?"

"Yes. You were right, Captain. It was hooked to the alarm."

"Then we can send the copter home and use that. Listen, Donaho, I may have been going at this wrong. Let me ask you something..."

Most of the police were gone by ten. The body was gone. There was fingerprint powder on every polished surface, and glass all over the living room.

Hennessey and Donabo and the uniformed man named Fisher sat at the dining table, drinking coffee made in the Anderson kitchen.

"Guess I'll be going home," Donaho said presently. He made no reference to what they had planned.

They watched through the window, as Lieutenant Donaho, brilliantly lighted, vanished within the glass booth.

After that they drank coffee, and talked, and watched. The stars were very bright.

It was almost midnight before anything happened. Then, i rustling sound—and something burst into view from upslope; a shadowy figure in full flight. It was in the displacement booth before Hennessey and Fisher had even reached the front door.

The booth light showed every detail of a lean dark man in a rumpled paper business suit, one hand holding a briefcase, the other dialing frantically. Dialing again, while one eye in a shyly averted face watched two armed men strolling up to the booth.

"No use," Hennessey called pleasantly. "Lieutenant Donaho had it cut off as soon as he flicked out."

The man released a ragged sigh.

"We want the gun."

The man considered. Then he handed out the briefcase. The gun was in there. The man came out after it. He had a beaten look.

"Where were you hiding?" Hennessey asked.

"Up there in the bushes, where I could see you. I knew you'd turn the booth back on sooner or later."

"Why didn't you just walk down to the nearest house?"

The lean man looked at him curiously. Then he looked down across a black slope, to where a spark of light showed one window still glowing in a distant house. "Oh my God. I never thought of that."

In its heyday the Club had numbered around ninety, and it was the most exclusive club in the world. Now a third of its members had quit, and a third were in prison or awaiting trial, and the remaining thirty-odd active members had lost a crucial something: confidence, enthusiasm, esprit de corps, call it what you will.

"We always knew it was coming," said Benny Sherman. He was a thick-set man, short and broad, made mostly of black hair and muscle. He waved a big, stubby-fingered hand at the south wall of the main room, where a commentator was spreading news of the outside world across a wall-sized screen. "It was all over that screen, for years. Central Riot Control in Nebraska. Pictures of the building going up. They told us just how it was gonna work. They gave us a completion date. Twenty of us quit that same day."

Nobody said anything. The voice of the commentator came through at low volume, speaking of the rumor that the Soviets had developed a self-teleporting spy cloak. The teevee screen was never off in the Permanent Floating Riot Club.

"That spy cloak," James Get-It-All (Goethals) said wistfully. "That'd be nice to have when a flash crowd goes sour. I wonder what are the chances of stealing one."

"Sure," said Willie Lordon. He was a featherweight, pinchfaced man, all birdlike bones and acid sarcasm. "Cops coming at you from all directions: What do you do? You roll yourself up in your spy cloak, and as soon as it forms a closed surface it's a displacement booth. Where are you now?" He paused for effect. "In a top secret headquarters in the Kremlin! You idiot."

"Better that than Central Riot Control."

Willie snorted.

"I've been there," said Benny Sherman. "Inside it's like a Rose Bowl without seats. Receiver booths, all around ,the lip of the bowl. You try to flick out of a place where the riot control is on, and you wind up dropping out the bottom of the booth. You slide all the way down to the bottom of the bowl, and you wait there with everyone else till the cops get around to you. I got out by the skin of my teeth."

"By throwing away your take," said Willie Lordon. Clearly the idea disgusted him.

"It hurt, too. I had a diamond the size of an almond, if it was real, and a half dozen good watches...and there wasn't any way to tell we'd gone on riot control. I just had to guess the flash crowd had gone on long enough."

"You're a genius," said Willie.

"I'm losing my nerve," Benny said mournfully. "Six times this past year we've flicked into flash crowds, and three times I threw away everything I had because it looked like the cops had time to put us under riot control. Once I was right. Twice I was wrong. That's just not good enough." He braced himself, "I think I'll quit." There, he'd said it.

"Shh," said Lou Garcia, waving them to silence. He turned the volume control louder. The teevee newscaster was saying, "... flash crowd in downtown Topeka seems to have developed due to a heavily advertised sale at Bloomingdale's..."

"Shh, Hell. I quit!" Benny bellowed over the racket. "We made a lot of money the last ten years. I want to stay outside to enjoy it!"

Most of the members were on their feet, eyes on the screen. A flash crowd meant business. James Get-It-All was at the computer terminal getting the numbers of displacement booths in the affected area. An endless strip of paper ran from the slot: thirty-odd copies of the list.

Lou Garcia favored Benny with a sardonic look. "You're giving up your share of the treasury?"

That was a low blow. Benny stood a moment, considering.

Then, "You can have it," he said, and walked out.

He turned for one last look at the Club before going on. It seemed likely that he would never see it again.

The Club was a three story brick building of prestressed concrete made to look like old brick. The brick/concrete was chipped in spots and dark with age: one among several blocks of older buildings. The luxuries were inside: luxuries bought with Club dues.

Now other members were filing out the entrance and dividing there, heading for street-corner displacement booths half a block away in each direction. Willie Lordon was flexing his fingers as he walked. He carried a small electric knife that would slice out the bottom of a citizen's lock pocket, without alerting him if there was sufficient noise and jostling to distract him. James Get-It-All jogged along with the tense, serious look of a player who knows that his team depends on him. Lou Garcia stood at the entrance, grinning broadly as he watched them go.

They filed into glass cylinders with rounded tops, dialed and disappeared, one by one.

Benny watched them wistfully. He had helped to found the Club, and they didn't even know he was gone.

He remembered a September night ten years ago, the night Orrie Black had proposed the idea. He and Orrie and Lou Garcia and some others who had gotten their start when the booths were new. In those days you could get the booth number of a house and just flick into the living room or entrance hall. You could make a strike just by dialing at random until you hit. But the citizens had wised up and started putting their booths outside, and now half a dozen ex-burglars had gathered at a topless beer and pool place.