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aled beneath my blouse. The car shot with rapid acceleration down the narrow tunnel. The tubes in which these magnetic cars (which slid along a few inches above the floor of the tunnel by localized repeller rays) ran were very narrow, just the width of the car, and my only danger would come if on catching up to another car its driver should turn around and look in my face. If I kept my face to the front, and hunched over so as to conceal my size, no driver of a following car would suspect that I was not a Han like himself. The tube dipped under traffic as it came to a trunk line, and my car magnetically lagged, until an opening in the traffic permitted it to swing swiftly into the main line tunnel. At the automatic distance of ten feet it followed a car in which rode a scantily clad girl, her flimsy silks fluttering in the rush of air. I cursed my luck. She would be far more likely to turn around than a man, to see if a man were in the car behind, and if he were personable--for not even the impending doom of the city and the public demoralization caused by the "air balls" had dulled the proclivities of the Han women for brazen flirtation. And turn around she did. Before I could lower my head she had seen my face, and knew I was no Han. I saw her eyebrows arch in surprise. But she seemed puzzled rather than scared. Before she could make up her mind about me, however, her car had swung out of the main tunnel on its predetermined course, and my own automatically was closing up the gap to the car ahead. The passenger in this one wore the uniform of a medical officer, but he did not turn around before I swung out of main traffic to the little station at the head of the shaft. This particular shaft was intended to serve the very lowest levels exclusively, and since its single car carried nothing but express traffic, it was used only by repair men and other specialists who occasionally had to descend to those levels. * * * * * There were only three people on the little platform, which reminded me very much of the subway stations of the Twentieth Century. Two men and a girl stood facing the gate of the shaft, waiting for the car to return from below. One of these was a soldier, apparently off duty, for though he wore the scarlet military coat he carried no weapons other than his knife. The other man wore nothing but sandals and a pair of loose short pants of some heavy and serviceable
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