Fearing the worst, they speeded near and did a fast pass.
THE COACHES WERE EMPTY!
"Oh, Gods," said Flick. "They've escaped inland! We'll never find them in that scrub. Where the Hells is the body-heat detection button?"
"You don't need one," said Madison. He was pointing.
The group wasn't inland. It was down in the surf, Were they fighting?
The Model 99 swooped nearer and landed with a thunk in the sand. Madison leaped out.
Convicts were running everywhere!
"WHEE!" they were shouting. "WHEE!"
Madison caught an arm of a naked woman as she raced by. But she was gone, shouting, "Whee!"
He spotted another one who had stopped to catch his breath and quickly went over. It was one of the cooks/ logistic personnel.
"What's going on here?" demanded Madison of the naked man.
He was catching his breath. He finally said, "I'm afraid it's all my fault, Chief. Your Lieutenant Flick told us we were going to get new clothes tonight so I said, 'Let's throw all these rags away!' I think they got a little enthusiastic."
A voice was at Madison's elbow. The director, naked as the day he was born, said, "Isn't it great? If my cameraman just had a camera, I could really get it in the can. And show it as the 'Rites to the Goddess of the Sea.' Hells, I'll direct it anyway. YOU THERE! GRAB THAT WOMAN AND PITCH HER OFF THOSE ROCKS!"
Madison raced back to the Model 99. It had every known kind of noisemaker: sirens, klaxons, scream-beams, moans and bomb blasts. He pushed them all. A dreadful assortment of sound racketed across the waves and sand. Naked convicts came streaming out of the water and rushing in from the dunes to see what was up.
Madison found a floodlight knob and pushed it. The immediate scene went a glaring yellow.
He was surrounded now by a mob of naked bodies. He rapidly made a count. The last one was just arriving: he now had forty-eight.
"Blast!" cried Flick, above the thunder of the surf, "How we going to do our job with no clothes?"
"You said the job was to get clothes," somebody yelled.
"That's right!" cried another.
A woman shouted, "You can beat us and we won't put those rags back on!"
Madison saw mutiny in the air. He motioned Flick to be silent. "I think you did just great!" he shouted. "Just be sure you don't leave those rags lying around.
People will think somebody has escaped. So gather them up and we'll be on our way."
The throng disintegrated.
Shortly a pile of rags was gathered in one heap just above the water's edge. Somebody got a laser-lighter from an air-coach and touched off a blaze.
That would have been all right but somebody else promptly found some driftwood and piled it on the flame and then somebody else found some more and they had a bonfire. They thought that was great and, grabbing hands, began to dance around it in two rings going opposite ways.
Then, mysteriously, sweetbuns and sparklewater from the lockers of the Model 99 began to get tossed from hand to hand. They had robbed the airbus!
Then they were all sitting, toasting sweetbuns on long sticks and guzzling sparklewater from jugs. And somebody began to sing a song!
And here's a cheer
To the boys in blue
And here's to the cons
They love to screw.
So let's screw the blueboys
Screw, screw, screw.
And chaw on their carcasses
Chew, chew, chew!
Up their butts
And off with their nuts
And here's to a life of crime!
Flick was seething. "Some gang! Lay into 'em, Chief. Kick some sense into their heads. They've got a job to do tonight!"
"You lay into them and kick some sense into their heads," said Madison.
"You're the boss. They've got to learn to respect you."
"You're the lieutenant. You've got to teach them respect for me."
"I'm too disgusted," said Flick. "I'm going over and sit in the airbus."
The sweetbuns had vanished. The sparklewater jugs were empty. They had finished the hot jolt and were smoking the puffsticks.
Madison got up. He said, above the surf, "All right. It's getting late. Let's be on our way."
"Just as soon as we wash this sand off!" somebody yelled.
There was a concerted rush into the sea and then they began a water fight.
A statuesque circus girl, body gleaming in the moonlight, rushed out of the water toward Madison. Three more came whooping on her heels. Madison thought they were just chasing the first girl until she was upon him. She grabbed him with a shout. The others jumped on him.
"Come on in!" they were shouting at him.
They had his clothes off so fast he hardly knew when they had been slipped off. Yikes, these girls were expert!
They bore him straight into the sea and pitched him into the teeth of a towering wave. Madison came up blubbering and blowing.
Something pulled him under. He hadn't taken a breath. Then he was on the surface again and being carried into the air.
Buffeted by the waves, four girls bore him back to dry land. Madison was coughing and sneezing and trying to get his breath.
He was being held horizontally six feet off the ground.
His blurred sight took in faces rushing at him.
They were going to wipe him out!
He stared around anxiously.
In the lights from the bonfire and the car, eyes were glittering. Like wolves?
Suddenly they began to chant, "Hup! Hup! Hup! Hup!" Was this some sort of a convict or guard cry that marched them about?
They were going to the fire. Were they going to throw him in?
They were marching around the fire. Some sort of savage ritual. "Hup! Hup! Hup! Hup!" Like Indians or wild animals!
Then suddenly they all stopped. A male voice-the director's? – began a chant, calling one line and being answered by all the rest.
"Who's the gang?"
"WE'RE THE GANG!"
"Who's the mob?"
"WE'RE THE MOB!"
"Who's the chief?"
"HE'S THE CHIEF!"
And threw Madison in the water!
He came up spluttering.
They paid no further attention to him. They were now trooping off to the air-coaches.
Madison, not knowing how to take all that, but quite certain it was not the kind of respect and image he needed, trudged alone across the sand to where his clothes had been stripped off.
He dried himself with his undershirt and got his clothes back on.
He was glancing around to see if anything had dropped out of his pockets. Nothing lying there. He patted his pockets. He had his identoplate. Then he missed a bulge which should be at his breast. He patted again.
HIS WALLET AND FORTY-EIGHT THOUSAND CREDITS WERE GONE!
He felt himself go white.
He looked at the air-coaches-over there in the moonlight. They were all loaded and waiting to go.
He flinched at tackling that mob again.
That settled it. He would have to work on his own image first. He went over to the Model 99.
"Some gang," muttered Flick. "Bunch of lousy beach (bleepards) out for a holiday."
Madison sank back in the seat. He didn't agree at all. That mob was a bunch of criminals. But he wasn't going to tell Flick they had stolen his wallet-no use to harm his image even more.
When they flew in over the outskirts of Commercial City, it was dark as pitch below. A hill blocked off the moonlight and left the part of the plain they wanted in the deepest shadow.
That was fine by Madison. He couldn't possibly imagine greater folly than using a Model 99,so recognizable, on a robbery job. Not unskilled in the methods of crime-since these often go hand in hand with truly expert PR-he knew you were supposed to steal some cars and, after the heist, abandon them without fingerprints.
A vast factory complex, spreading over possibly six square miles, squatted in the darkness below, all of it, apparently, devoted to just one company, Classy Togs. In daytime it might well be occupied by hundreds of thousands of workers, and a network of monorails led in from the town and curled and swooped all over the plain and mountainside and then went over to another site, a collection of high-rises, a miniature city in itself.