"It isn't interior guard duty," the lieutenant explained. "None of that halt-advance-officer-of-the-day-post-number-four stuff. Just make like a cop and don't let any monkey-business happen. Fire a warning shot if you have to. And, ah—" The lieutenant was embarrassed. "If you have to, uh, shoot at anybody, aim for the legs. Any questions?" There were questions, a world of questions, but Luther wasn't sure what they were. And besides the hardware-lieutenant was in a hurry to get back to Company, where the captain was waiting for an explanation of why the platoon sergeant had been found to have his pockets stuffed with half-pint liquor bottles.
Private Bayswater saw lights and heard a motor running and, in his state of acute disbelief in what was around him, stood stock-still for most of a minute, staring at the vehicle. It was parked at the foot of Wharf Avenue, a panel truck. By and by he made out that it was a radio broadcasting truck, and remembered that the lieutenant had told him it was in the area. Perfectly all right.
He stayed near it; it was less lonesome there. Until by and by Private Bayswater became conscious of a nagging yearning for a smoke.
Luther didn't smoke much, because his mother had proved to him, with graphs and charts and doctors' reports, that terrible things went on in the lungs of men who smoked cigarettes. But he wanted a cigarette bad. And anyway, there wasn't anyone around. Everybody in town knew that the National Guard was patrolling, with orders to shoot if they had to. Nobody would be stupid enough to try anything. Nobody had—and he'd been on duty for nearly an hour.
He leaned against a sagging warehouse-front experimentally, and it didn't sag any more than before. He bounced on the steps, and though they shook it didn't seem likely he would fall through. He stepped inside, closed the door as nearly as it would go, and greedily tore the paper on the pack getting a cigarette out.
Cupping the cigarette, he looked out of an unglassed window and was pleased to find that he could observe the streets as well from in here as from outside. Fantastic! It was the first good chance he had had to look over the damage done to Hebertown. He wondered briefly about what kind of people were crazy enough to build their houses in a place like this, where the water could come up and do what had been done to these, but Luther Bayswater was not much given to worry about other people's troubles—
And besides, he heard a noise.
It sounded like a door slamming. Car door? But he could see the panel truck. Nobody was moving there. The two men were still inside, busy about whatever they had to be busy about, or else just waiting for daybreak and their first direct broadcast. A door in one of the buildings?
Maybe. Luther Bayswater wished he had been listening more attentively. A door slamming in a building—that might be just the wind, of course. But if it wasn't the wind, it was one of the hazy mythological figures called looters that he was supposed to be on the lookout for.
He swore a tepid oath, ground out his cigarette and opened the door. It made a frightful racket; he hadn't noticed anything of the kind when he came into the building.