or a
moment. Then he asked:

"Doug, didn't Captain Prestonby tell you to stay with me?"

"Yes--"

"All right. You do just that, because I'm going to help Claire and the
senator. That's who that goon gang's after."

Yetsko considered the proposition for a moment, horrified. Why, this
was the captain's girl's kid brother; if anything happened to him--His
mind refused to contemplate what the captain would do to him.

"No. You gotta stay here, Ray," he said. "The captain--"

Then his eye caught the screen. Ed Morgan must have found a place
where he could run his camera up on an extension rod from behind
something; they were looking down, from almost ceiling height, at the
barricade, and at the Literates' guards who were firing from cover at
it. A sudden blast of automatic-weapons burst from the barricade; more
men in white hoods came boiling up the escalator, and they all rushed
forward. The few Literates' guards skirmishers were overwhelmed. He
saw one of them, a man he knew, Sam Igoe, from Company 5, go down
wounded; he saw one of the white-hooded goons pause to brain him with
a carbine butt before charging on.

"Why, you dirty rotten Illiterate--!" he roared, retrieving his
weighted hose. "Come on, Ray; let's go!"

Ray hesitated, as though in thought. "Ken Dorchin; Harry Cobb; Dick
Hirschfield; Jerry McCarty; Ramon Nogales; Pete Shawne; Tom
Hutchinson--"

"Who--?" Yetsko began. "What've they gotta do with--?"

"We need a gang; the two of us'd last about as long as a pint of beer
at a Dutch picnic." Ray went to the desk, grabbed a pen, and made a
list of names, in a fair imitation of Ralph Prestonby's neat
block-printing. "Give this to the girl outside, and tell her to have
them called for and sent in here," the boy directed. "And see if you
can find us some transport. I think there ought to be a couple of big
'copters finished down at the shops. And if you can find a couple more
Literates' guards you can talk into going with us--"

Yetsko nodded and took the paper without question. He was not, and he
would be the first to admit it, of the thinking type. He was a good
sergeant, but he had to have an officer to tell him what to do. Ray
Pelton might be only fifteen years old, but his sister was the
captain's girl, and that put him in the officer class. A very young
and recently-commissioned second lieutenant, say, but definitely an
officer. Yetsko took the list and looked at it. Like most Literates'
guards, h