Dark went to the front window and looked across the street at the barber college.
The street was full of men carrying heat pistols, moving restlessly, facing the barber college. Some of them were in police uniform. Squads of them moved about on the college grounds, and a few were in the yards of houses on this side of the street.
Dark watched the roof.
As he did so, from its center a helicopter rose into the air, hovering over the building, moving upward slowly.
So that was the Chief's escape method. He had smuggled a helicopter into the domed city itself! But how was he to get out of the city in it?
The appearance of the copter threw the men outside into confused excitement. They ran about, aiming their short-range heat beams futilely up at the rising copter.
A military tank, undoubtedly the one the Chief had been told about, spun around the corner. It stopped, and its guns swung upward toward the copter. But they remained silent. Heavy heat beams or artillery could puncture the city's protecting dome.
The copter went straight up, gathering speed. Up, and up, and it did not stop!
It hit the plastic dome near its zenith. It tilted and staggered. It ripped through the dome and vanished.
Immediately, sirens began to wail throughout the city. Doors clanged shut automatically everywhere. Lights and warning signs flashed at every street corner, advising citizens to run for the nearest airtight shelter.