They were playing for keeps now, so I ducked behind the low driveway wall, using it like the breastwork of a trench, and found myself between Stantor and Haynes of the Washington Post. In a few words I filled them in; they were furious that I had betrayed such a banner-headline secret first to an AFP man, and crawled full speed back to the hotel, only to return shortly, scowling-the lines were no longer open. But Stantor had managed to buttonhole the officer in charge of hotel defenses and learned from him that planes carrying LTN bombs (LTN: Love Thy Neighbor) were now on their way. Then we were ordered to clear the area, and all the policemen put on gas masks with special filters. We received masks too.

Professor Trottelreiner was, as luck would have it, a specialist in the field of psychotropic pharmacology, and he cautioned me not to use the gas mask under any circumstance, as it would cease to operate at sufficiently high concentrations of aerosol; this would then give rise to the so-called phenomenon of filter overload, and in an instant one could inhale a much heavier dose than if one breathed the air without the benefit of a mask. The only sure protection, he said, anticipating my question, would be a separate oxygen supply; so we went to the hotel desk, managed to catch one receptionist still on duty and found, with his assistance, a storeroom full of fire-fighting equipment, including plenty of oxygen masks: Draeger make, with closed circulation. Thus accoutered, the Professor and I returned to the street, just in time to hear the dreadful, ear-splitting whistle that announced the arrival of the first planes. As everyone knows, the Hilton was accidentally bombed with LTN minutes after the air raid commenced; the consequences of that error were disastrous. True, the LTN hit only the far wing of the building's lower structure, where display booths had been set up by the Association of Publishers of Liberated Literature, and therefore none of the hotel guests suffered immediate injury.