Gale, Asher, Vixen and Marvel returned to Center, to be greeted with a mix of cheers and envious looks. Several Capitolite reporters were waiting. "Is it true that you captured an escaped elephant?" a woman asked.

"I don't know," Asher said. "Is there anything else that's got gray, wrinkled skin, tusks and a trunk?"

"Were any of your party in danger?" another reporter asked.

Asher nudged Gale forward, and held back Marvel. "I was in the tunnel, recovering the sole survivor of a dog pack that had engaged an unknown exotic, when the elephant charged me," Gale said. He held up the nipper, still in his arms. "It charged me, and knocked itself out cold against a ladder. Then we tied it up, tranquilized it and waited for a pickup."

"Any words for the Capitol?"

"Yeah... Don't buy an elephant," Gale said. That got people chuckling.

"Is there anything you would like to say to anyone at home?" The Tributes were not allowed mail privileges until after their third month.

"Well, a lot of my friends are here with me," Gale said. "But for my mom, Hazelle, and my brothers and sisters..." He took Vixen's hand. "Mama, Rory, Vick, Posy... this is Vixen. We work together, we've gotten to be good friends, and yesterday... we got married." In a cottage with one of twelve working TV sets in the East Village, two miners caught Hazelle Hawthorne as she fainted. Then he added, "There's one other thing. I came here with another boy named Logan Hawthorne. No relation, far as we could figure out. We got the same assignment, but he died on his first day of work. It would be nice if I could know why."

There was a long, awkward pause. Marvel opened his mouth to speak, just when there was a shriek from the female reporter. Cameras promptly went off, as a cry went up: "Rats!"

"Rats in a sewer," Asher said dryly. "Whoda thunk it? Boys and girl... lock and load."

While the sewer lines ran all over the city, the major functions were centralized in Precinct Seven itself: administation, water purification, toxic waste storage, and research. The ragged column of rats making a beeline through HQ clearly came from an area used by the research department, which was mainly responsible for pest control. Gale's team followed the trail, and an adventurous pair of journalists followed behind. The reporter intermittently asked semi-intelligent questions. "Is it true that the rats have mutations for intelligence?"

Asher deigned to answer, "The sewer rats are their own species. They're bigger than other rats, so they of course, they have bigger brains, and size does matter. So, yeah, they're smarter than other rats."

"What about the so-called `rat-kings'?"

"They exist, of course. They're in the museums. I've seen a few alive in the wild. Again, they're smart- compared to other rats."

"But how smart are they? Do you think they might approach a human level of intelligence?"

"Don't know," Asher said. "How smart are people, really? Why ask me? I just work here."

"Can you comment on reports of the so-called `rat kings' organizing the other rats?"

"Rats are social animals," Asher said. "Their instinct is to follow a dominant rat, and a rat with a bigger brain can do the job at least as well as a rat with bigger teeth. Doesn't mean they actually- Shit!"

The best method for catching rats alive was with powerful vacuums, normally mounted on tank trucks. The research staff had set up a holding area with larger tanks to receive the rats the trucks brought back. The rats were dropped into holding tanks by the same kind of vacuum hoses that collected them, with some sorting by size. Each tank was about twenty feet high and thirty wide with nearly frictionless sides. As an extra precaution, every tank was covered by an inverted funnel six feet high, about four times the length of a large rat's body.

In one overfilled tank, the rats had managed to overcome these obstacles. Hundreds had assembled into a pyramid thirteen feet high, tall enough for the others to leap for the dangling hose and scramble for the rim of the funnel. Not all made it, but it was enough to sustain a steady stream of escapees. The nipper, went into furious barking, straining to escape Gale's arms. When the dauntless ratter finally got free, it ran the other way. "There's a king in there," Gale said, "or there was."

"No shit," said Asher. He drew his air rifle, with hands trembling, and plugged a rat as it pulled itself over the rim. It dropped with a prolonged squeal, and the rest of the rats took up a skirling cry of vengeance. Asher kept plugging away, and Gale joined in. "Don't look at me like that," Asher said to the reporters as he circled to cover the far side of the tank. "They eat their wounded! These bastards eat anything- and anybody!"

"So, they're rat bastards?" Vixen mused.

"Well, their mommies and daddies can't very well go to the rat priests to marry them," Marvel said.

Asher scrambled up a ladder and tried to push the air hose out of the way. He gave a cry and came away with a rat hanging on his sleeve. "Damn it to all hells, are they still dropping 'em in here?" He caught the rat by the scruff of its neck and held it up. "I oughta cut you and drop you in! You can act like you've got solidarity in the horde, but you all know what happens at the first whiff of blood!" Despite his talk, he unfolded a collapsible live trap and shoved the rat inside. Then he took out a flare pistol, loaded a canister and secured his gas mask.

"Cover your mouth and nose!" Gale warned the reporters. Asher leaned over the edge of the funnel and fired a gas grenade. There was a loud bang, and an opaque cloud filled the holding tank, brimming over the edges of the funnel. There were squeals of rats in distress. Asher resumed firing on the rats that reached the funnel top, while Gale looked for any signs of rats breaking away from the main group of escapees. "There!" Gale pointed to a score of rats moving in a tight group along the floor of the holding area. One of them was white.

"They're headed for the control room!" Vixen said. The three followed the rats to a stairway that led up to the overhead catwalks and a second-story foremen's chamber in the corner. The rats climbed a support beam up to the open control room window.

Somehow, the control room door had been locked from the inside. Gale took care of it with one slam of his forearm. Rats retreated with squeals, but quickly rallied. Just as he entered, the white rat surveyed the big control console, and went straight for a switch marked "AIR FLOW". Its two paws were gripping the switch when Gale pressed the muzzle of his rifle to the rat's skull. "I think you can understand this," he said. The white rat went upright and raised its paws.

All around Gale, rats hissed, and a second, younger white rat- a prince for the king- came out bristling. The king gave a series of squeaks, and the other rats actually backed away. Only then did Gale realize that the reporters were filming him from the nearest catwalk. "Back up," he said. "Let the rest go. It's what he wants." The king squeaked again, and the prince gave a defiant hiss before bounding out the window.

An hour later, Asher was staring coldly at the king in the live trap on the table. "It went for the air flow switch," he said. "You're absolutely sure of that? It went straight for the one switch that would either shut the vacuum off or actually reverse the flow and start pulling rats back out. Of course it would. Damn you all!" He stormed right out of the room.

Gale leaned in, looking intently at the rat as it gazed right back. Vixen looked at them both from where she sat with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. "This is Rattacus," she said. Gale looked at her in surprise. "The one we saw before is Socrates, and it fits because he's a philosopher. That's why he didn't bust himself out- he'd rather stay with us, and learn more about us. But this one wants to be free, so he's Rattacus. You know, after Spartacus. Haven't you heard of him?"

Gale shook his head. Marvel laughed. "Of course he hasn't," he said. "I'm surprised you have, either, Foxface. Spartacus was a gladiator, back in the old old days. They say he and a bunch of other slaves rebelled, and some people say he tried to free the rest of the slaves. Then there was another guy, not long ago at all, who called himself Spartacus. But I'm sure neither of you have heard of him. Right?"

Vixen shook her head before Gale did, and he could tell, she was lying.