"I'm all for that," the voice behind the cowboy boots drawled. "What I don't quite understand is why we want to pretend that we thought up the ideas in the first place. Everyone knows that old Uemurea did that work."

"You can't prove that's Uer... Ume... whoever's work," the sales manager said.

"So what? I can sure as hell prove it's not ours. We're not even working in the same area."

Before the four gray-suited managers burst blood vessels, Stan Three Sticks spoke up. "Let's address that question first. What is the advantage, if we claim we came up with the parallel process over giving credit where credit's due?"

"Patents, Mr. Keen. Patents," the general manager exclaimed. They were interrupted by screams and the sound of automatic fire outside the room.

Five gray suits turned toward the door. One pair of cowboy boots disappeared from the boardroom table and carried the owner in a long dive through a window. Five heads swiveled away from the door to look at the shattered window.

The door to the room was broken open and two figures wearing black hard hats peered into the room.

"Nothing but management," said one of the hard-hat wearers.

The other did not say a word. He tossed in a couple of fragmentation grenades and closed the door again. Five figures in gray suits watched fragmentation grenades roll across the room. They died watching.

An hour and ten minutes later, Miss Helen Argue showed the thirty-three pupils in her seventh-grade class into the reception area of Electronic Developments Inc. The students and the teacher were shocked to find that the reception area was decorated with three bullet-riddled bodies. Miss Argue hastily took her pupils back to the bus that had brought them. She had the driver keep them in the bus while she went back to telephone the police.

The police arrived in eight minutes. Miss Argue and four officers were killed when the building blew up. Eighteen pupils were injured, two blinded by flying glass.