"You can't," Lane called. "This girl from Mars is here."
"I repeat, Lane—come out or we'll blast you out."
Lane turned to the girl. "I thought you were important."
She stood there with her hands together, calmly looking at him. "I am. But you are too, to them. Mars is millions of miles away, and you're right across the Square from the Mayor's suite."
"Yeah, but—" Lane shook his head and turned back to the window. "All right, look! Move them boats away and I'll let this girl out!"
"No deal, Lane. We're coming in." The police boats backed away slowly, then shot straight up, out of the line of vision.
Lane looked down at the Square. Far below, the long, gleaming barrel of a blaster cannon caught the dim light filtering down through Newyork's Shell. The cannon trundled into the Square on its olive-drab, box-shaped caterpillar mounting and took up a position equidistant from the bases of the three towers.
Now a rumble of many voices rose from below. Lane stared down to see a large crowd gathering in Tammany Square. Sound trucks were rolling to a stop around the edges of the crowd. The people were all looking up.
Lane looked across the Square. The windows of the tower opposite, the ones he could see clearly, were crowded with faces. There were white dot faces on the balcony that Gerri Kin had pointed out as the Mayor's suite.