"You just moved up to sergeant yesterday !"

Charlie stared hard at Douglas for a long moment.

"Okay, okay, you're a lieutenant," said Douglas.

"Thanks," said Charlie. "What'll we do about my sister? She wants to be part of our army-a special spy."

"To heck with her!"

"You got to admit that's great secret stuff she turned in."

"Boy, Charlie, you sure think of things," said Tom. "Doug, why don't you think of things?"

"Darn it!" cried Douglas. "Whose idea was the graveyard tour, the candy, the food, the chess pieces, all that?"

"Hold on," said Tom. "The graveyard tour, I said that. The candy, yeah, was yours, but I gotta tell ya, the food experiment was a failure. Heck, you haven't said anything new in a coupla hours. And all the chessboards are full of chess pieces again and those old men are busy pushing the pieces-us-around. Any moment now we'll feel ourselves grabbed and moved and we won't be able to live our own lives anymore."

Douglas could feel Charlie and Tom creeping up on him, taking the war out of his hands like a ripe plum. Private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant. Today, lieutenant; tomorrow captain. And the day after?

"It's not just ideas that count." Douglas wiped his brow. "It's how you stick 'em together. Take this fact of Charlie's-it's secondhand. Heck, girls thought of it fi rst !"

Everybody's eyebrows went up.

Charlie's face fell.

"And anyway," Douglas went on, "I'm puttin' ideas together for a real bang-up revelation."

They all looked at him, waiting.

"Okay, Doug, go on," said Charlie.

Douglas shut his eyes. "And the revelation is: Since old people don't look like they were ever kids, they never were ! So they're not humans at all !"

"What are they, Doug?"

"Another race ! "

Everybody sat, stunned by the vast sunburst caused by this explosion, this incredible revelation. It rained upon them in fire and fl ames.

"Yes, another race," said Douglas. "Aliens. Evil. And we, we're the slaves they keep for nefarious odd jobs and punishments!"

Everybody melted with the after-effects of this announcement.

Charlie stood up solemnly and announced: "Doug, old pal, see this beanie on my head? I'm taking my beanie off to you !" Charlie raised his beanie to applause and laughter.

They all smiled at Doug, their general, their leader, who took out his pocketknife and casually started a philosophical game of one-fi nger mumblety-peg.

"Yeah, but . . ." said Tom, and went on. "The last thing you said didn't work out. It's okay to say the old people are from another planet, but what about Grandpa and Grandma? We've known them all our lives. Are you saying that they're aliens, too?"

Doug's face turned red. He hadn't quite worked this part out, and here was his brother-his second in-command, his junior officer-questioning his theory.

"And," Tom went on, "what do we have new in the way of action, Doug? We can't just sit here. What do we do next?"

Doug swallowed hard. Before he had a chance to speak, Tom, now that everybody was looking at him, said slowly, "The only thing that comes to mind right now is maybe we stop the courthouse clock. You can hear that darned thing ticking all over town. Bong! Midnight! Whang! Get outta bed! Boom! Jump into bed! Up down, up down, over and over."

Ohmigosh, thought Douglas. I saw it last night. The clock! Why in heck didn't I say so first?

Tom picked his nose calmly. "Why don't we just lambaste that darn old clock-kill it dead! Then we can do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. Okay?"

Everyone stared at Tom. Then they began to cheer and yell, even Douglas, trying to forget it was his younger brother, not himself, who was saving the day.

"Tom!" they all shouted. "Good old Tom!"

"Ain't nothin'," said Tom. He looked to his brother. "When do we kill the blasted thing?"

Douglas bleated, his tongue frozen. The soldiers stared, waiting.

"Tonight?" said Tom.

"I was just going to say that!" Douglas cried.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

The courthouse clock somehow knew they were coming to kill it.

It loomed high above the town square with its great marble facade and sun-blazed face, a frozen avalanche, waiting to bury the a.s.sa.s.sins. Simultaneously, it allowed the leaders of its religion and philosophy, the ancient gray-haired messengers of Time and dissolution, to pa.s.s through the thundering bronze doors below.

Douglas, watching the soldiery of death and mummification slip calmly through the dark portals, felt a stir of panic. There, in the sh.e.l.lac-smelling, paper-rustling rooms of Town Hall, the Board of Education slyly unmade destinies, pared calendars, devoured Sat.u.r.days in torrents of homework, instigated reprimands, tortures, and criminalities. Their dead hands pulled streets straighter, loosed rivers of asphalt over soft dirt to make roads harder, more confi ning, so that open country and freedom were pushed further and further away, so that one day, years from now, green hills would be a distant echo, so far off that it would take a lifetime of travel to reach the edge of the city and peer out at one lone small forest of dying trees.

Here in this one building, lives were slotted, alphabetized in files and fingerprints; the children's destinies put under seal! Men with blizzard faces and lightning-colored hair, carrying Time in their briefcases, hurried by to serve the clock, to run it with great sprockets and gears. At twilight they stepped out, all smiles, having found new ways to constrict, imprison, or entangle lives in fees and licenses. You could not even prove your death without these men, this building, this clock, and a certificate duly inked, stamped, and signed.

"Here we are," whispered Douglas, all his pals cl.u.s.tered around him. "It's almost quittin' time. We gotta be careful. If we wait too long it'll be so shut up there'll be no way to get in. Right at twilight, when the last doors are being locked, that's when we make our move, right? As they come out, we go in."

"Right," said everyone.

"So," said Douglas. "Hold your breath."

"It's held," said Tom. "But Doug, I got something to say."

"What?" said Doug.

"You know that no matter when we go in, if we go in all together, someone's going to see us and they're going to remember our faces and we're going to get in trouble. It was bad enough with the chess pieces out front of the courthouse. We were seen, and we had to give everything back. So, why don't we wait until it's all locked up?"

"We can't do that. I just said why."

"Tell you what," said Tom. "Why don't I go in now and hide in the men's until everyone's gone home? Then I'll sneak upstairs and let you in one of the windows near the clock tower. Up there, on the third fl oor." He pointed to a spot high up the ancient brick walls.

"Hey!" said all the gang.

"That won't work," said Doug.

"Why not?" said Tom.

Before Doug had time to think of a reason, Charlie piped up.

"Sure it'll work," said Charlie. "Tom's right. Tom, you want to go in and hide now?"

"Sure," said Tom.

Everyone was looking at Doug, still their general, and he had to give his approval.

"What I don't like," said Doug, "is smart alecks who think they know everything. Okay, go in and hide. When it gets dark, let us in."

"Okay," said Tom.

And he was gone.

People were coming out through the big bronze doors and Doug and the others pulled back around the corner of the building and waited for the sun to go down.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

The courthouse was finally completely quiet and the night was dark and the boys climbed up the fire escape on the side of the building, very quietly, until they got up to the third floor, near the clock tower.

They stopped at the window where Tom was supposed to appear, but no one was there.

"Gosh," said Doug. "I hope he didn't get locked in the men's room."

"They never lock the men's room," said Charlie. "He'll be here."

And sure enough, all of a sudden, there was Tom behind the gla.s.s pane, waving to them and opening and shutting his mouth, but they couldn't hear what he was saying.

At long last he raised the window and the smell of the courthouse rushed out into the night around them.

"Get in," commanded Tom.

"We are," said Doug, angrily.

One by one the boys crawled inside the courthouse and snuck along the hallways till they reached the clock machinery door.

"I bet you," said Tom, "this darned door's locked, too."

"No bets," said Doug, and rattled the doork.n.o.b. "Good grief! Tom, I hate to say it, but you're right. Has anybody got a fi recracker?"

Suddenly six hands reached into six dungaree pockets and just as suddenly reappeared with three four-inchers and a few fi ve-inch crackers.

"It's no good," said Tom, "unless someone has matches."

More hands reached out with matches in each.

Doug stared at the door.

"How can we fix the crackers so they'll really do some good when they go off?"

"Glue," said Tom.

Doug shook his head, scowling.

"Yeah, glue, right," he said. "Does anyone just happen to have any glue on them?"

A single hand reached out on the air. It was Pete's.

"Here's some Bulldog glue," he said. "Bought it for my airplane models and because I like the great picture of the bulldog on the label."

"Let's give it a try."

Doug applied glue along the length of one of the five-inchers and pressed it against the outside of the machinery room door.

"Stand back," he said, and struck a match.

With his mob back in the shadows and his hands over his ears, Doug waited for the cracker to go off . The orange flame sizzled and zipped along the fuse.

There was a beautiful explosion.

For a long moment they all stared at the door in disappointment and then, very slowly, it drifted open.

"I was right," said Tom.