"Why don't you join us, Conn?" Fred Karski asked. "All our old gang belong."
"I'd like to, but I'm afraid I'm going to be kind of busy."
Brangwyn nodded. "Yes. You will be, at that," he agreed.
"So I hear," Fred Karski said. "Do you really know where it is, Conn?"
"Well, no." He went into the routine about Merlin being still classified triple-top secret. "But we'll find it. It may take time, but we will."
They talked for a while. He asked more questions about the Home Guard. His father, it seemed, had donated all the equipment. They had a hundred and seventy men on the active list, but they had a reserve of over eight hundred, and combat vehicles and weapons on all the plantations and in all the towns along the river. The reserve had only been turned out twice; both times, outlaw attacks had been stopped dead—literally. The Home Guard, it appeared, was not given to making arrests or taking prisoners. Finally, he parted from them, strolling on along the row of stores and business places, many vacant, under the south edge of the Mall, until he saw a fluorolite sign, WADE LUCAS, M. D. He entered.
Lucas wasn't busy. They went into his consultation office, and Conn took off his gun-belt and hung it up; Lucas offered cigarettes, and they lighted and sat down.
"I see you've started carrying one," he said, nodding to the pistol Conn had laid aside.
"Civic obligation. I'm going to be too busy for Home Guard duty, but if I can protect myself, it'll save somebody else the job of protecting me."
"Maybe if there weren't so many guns around, there wouldn't be so much trouble."