For all their circling and swooping the Space Patrol and the Air Safety officers couldn't really see what was going on down there. The parade filled the street from one side to the other and was obscured by dozens of gigantic balloons, which hid the people below as well as presenting something of a hazard to the squadron's circling rockets. It looked as though the parade was being led, though: one figure in brilliant colors was moving and gesturing out in front while everyone behind her imitated whatever she was doing.
As they approached the intersection at the end of the street, the parade's leader began a complicated dance: she was waving something around (a flare pistol?) and she began to fire some kind of missiles at the block of buildings that was directly ahead. Long, thin cables drifted behind the missiles and waved in the wind with a festive air.
The leader grabbed one of the cables and started to scale a building at the street's end. Her thousands of followers scrambled for the remaining cable ends and, after a moment of confusion, did the same thing. The parade bunched up in a seething mass while each of the Hoteliers etc. found a cable and began to climb.
Thousands of them swarmed up the walls, spilled over onto the roofs, and spread, like a waterfall in reverse, into the Experimental Research Distric
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