A foot trampled his shoulder and he rolled away from it. All around him in the dark were trousered legs, stumbling over him. Voices yelled, "Where is he?" They yelled, "Bring the lights!"
The lights, if they came, would mean his death. A mob, even a small mob like this one, was a mindless animal. Wales, floundering amid the dark legs, kept his head. He shouted loudly,
"Here come the Evacuation trucks—here they come! We'd better beat it!"
He didn't think it would work, but it did. In that noisy, scuffling darkness, no one could tell who had shouted. And these people were already alarmed.
The legs around him shifted and stamped and ran away over the pavement. A woman screeched thinly in fear. He was alone in the dark.
He didn't think he would be left alone for long. He started to scramble to his feet, beside the curb, and his hand went into an opening—a long curbside storm-sewer drain.
A building was what he had had in mind, but this was better. He got down on his belly and wormed sidewise into the drain. He lay quiet, in a concrete cave smelling of old mud.
Feet came pounding back along the streets, he glimpsed beams of light angling and flickering. Angry voices yelled back and forth. "He's not here. He's got away. But there must be other goddamned Evacuation men around. They're going to round us up—"
"By God, nobody's going to round me up and take me to Mars!" said a deep bass voice right beside Wales.
Somebody else said, "All that nonsense about Kendrick's World—" and added an oath.