At that point a beeper went off.
"Yours or mine?" Natasha asked. It was a stale joke. There was just the one pager which they took turns minding. At the moment it hung from Boris' belt. He pulled it off and studied the readout. The message was in appearance a phone number, but in actuality a simple look-up code. Though at this point the general
"Who's in trouble?" Natasha wondered. Boris looked again, running through the numbers in his head. There was no mistake. "Looks like we are," he told her.
All at once all through the neighborhood, each of the levitating TV sets comes
on, as if someone had thrown a single
switch.
At first their screens light up
crazily in random, jangling swirls. The glow from the screens plays across the
lawns, gardens, and housefronts.
It touches insensibly the faces of astonished
householders turned out in disbelief.
Gracefully and deliberately, the wheel begins to spin.
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