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he hit,” Bodysnatcher said.
    “I say we should leave,” the penguin muttered. Bloat ignored it.
    “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Zelda,” he answered. “I’m the governor here.”
    “I knew that was coming,” the penguin said. It skated away to the back of the crowd. Hardesty watched it, a puzzled look on his face.
    The bodysnatcher snorted. “So much for democracy in action. Why’d you even bother to call us here, Governor? You already knew what you were going to do.”
    “I needed to tell you how important all of this is,” Bloat told her. “Hey, I’m the one who can read minds, after all. I knew what you were thinking. I needed you to hear it so that none of you go off and do anything stupid.”
    From Zelda, there was a sudden, desperate counting in her mind, masking whatever her thoughts might have been. A grudging acceptance radiated from Hardesty and Molly, though Bloat knew they remained unconvinced. Shroud and Kafka also had their doubts, but Bloat knew that they’d follow, whatever he ordered.
    “For the time being,” Bloat said, “I’ll have jokers manning the Wall towers to keep a lookout. I’ll continue to build the defenses around the Rox. We’ll wait until we hear what Hartmann has to say. In the meantime, Shroud can go over to J-town with Charon and contact the Twisted Fists — you can tell them what’s happened and get any new information they have. And the rest of you can wait.”
    Bloat glanced at each of them in turn. Only Zelda held his eyes, and in her mind there was the flak of surface thoughts …hate you… The phrase leaked out from underneath, contemptuous and sinister.
    “This is the Rox,” he told them. His hand waved awkwardly at the Statue of Liberty’s torch on the wall behind him. “Our land and our country. I won’t let them take it away from us. I promise that.”
    Bloat wished he were as confident as he tried to sound.
     
    Ebbets Field had been sealed off and surrounded by troops. The curb was lined with jeeps, supply trucks, and staff cars. A tank squatted right in front of the ballpark.
    The shell left a long shadow on the pavement as it floated silently up the street, past the police barricades. Snug in its claustrophobic interior, Tom swiveled slowly, scanning each of the television screens that lined the curving walls. The soldiers on the street below were pointing and gesticulating. One of them produced a camera and took a few snapshots. Tom figured he must be from out of town.
    He pushed up. The shell rose another fifty feet into the air, moved slowly over the ballpark. Sentries had been posted on the scoreboard. The dugouts were full of sandbags and machine guns. Uniformed men were bustling all over the outfield.
    A miniature Rox had risen on the infield.
    The castle sat on top of the pitcher’s mound. The curtain wall bisected home plate and circled the bases. Everything had been duplicated in astonishing detail. Teams of enlisted men were putting the finishing touches on the huge tactical model, under the supervision of junior officers.
    Near the Dodger dugout, a man in a blue-and-white costume was arguing with General Zappa and a couple of his aides. Even from this height Tom recognized Cyclone. His jumpsuit was shiny sky-blue Kevlar, accented by an oversize snow-white cape that fastened at wrist, ankle, and throat and drooped down behind him. Tom zoomed in. Exterior mikes tracked, locked.
    “…making this much more complicated than it needs to be, General,” Cyclone was saying. “These amateurs are just going to compromise the operation.”
    The general was taller than the ace, dark and saturnine, with a black mustache. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Carlysle, all of you civilians are amateurs.”
    “I don’t consider myself a civilian,” Cyclone said. “I had a special Air Force commission during Nam. General Westmoreland —”
    “General Westmoreland isn’t running this operation, I am,” Zappa interrupted. He was wearing an