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again." The lines indicated were a part of the pattern of the flutes
arrangement of the ventilators. Without a word of objection Diddy walked
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across to the other side. Just for a moment then, he hesitated, half
minded to make a run for it to the safety of a building thirty feet
away. He changed his mind They could blast him before he could go ten
feet.
Dutifully, he came back, as he had been told to do.
A score of men were coming along the street. As the: came near, Diddy
and the two Yevd drew aside to let then pass. Diddy watched them
hopefully. Police? he wondered He wanted desperately to be sure that all
that was happening was suspected. The workmen trooped by, walked noisily
across the barrier and disappeared behind the nearest building. "This
way, kid," said the Yevd. "We've got to be careful that we're not seen."
Diddy wasn t so sure of that, but he followed them re luctantly into the
dark space between two buildings.
"Hold out your hand."
He held it out, tense and scared. I'm going to die, he thought. And he
had to fight back the tears. But his training won out, and he stood
still as a needle-sharp pain jabbed his finger. "Just taking a sample of
your blood, kid. You see, the way we look at it, that suction system out
there conceals high-powered air hypodermics, which send up bacteria to
which the Yevd are vulnerable. Naturally, these air hypo. dermics send
up their shots of bacteria at about a thousand miles an hour, so fast
that they penetrate your skin without you feeling them or leaving a
mark. And the reason the sue" tion ventilators keep pulling in so much
air is to prevent the bacteria from escaping into the atmosphere. And
also the same culture of bacteria is probably used over and over again.
You see where that leads us?' Diddy didn't, but he was shocked to the
core of his being. For this analysis sounded right. It could be bacteria
that were being used against the Yevd. It was said that only a few men
knew the nature of the defense projected by the innocent- looking
barrier. Was it possible that at long last the Yevd were finding it out?
He could see that the second Yevd was doing something in the shadowy
region deeper between the two buildings. There were little flashes of
light. Diddy made a wild guess, and thought: He's examining my blood
with a microscope to see how many dead anti-Yevd bacteria are in it. The
Yevd who had done ad the talking so far said: "You see how it is, kid,
you can walk across that barrier, and the bacteria that are squirted up
from it die immediately in your bloodstream. Our idea is this: There can
only be one type of bacteria being sent up in any one area. Why?
Because, when they're sucked down, and sent back to the filter chambers
so they can be removed from the air and used again, it would be too
complicated if there were more than one type of bacteria. The highly
virulent bacteria that thrive in a fluorine compound are almost as
deadly to each other as to the organism which they attack. It's only
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when one type is present in enormously predominant amounts that it is so
dangerous to the Yevd. In other words, only one type at a time can kill
a Yevd. "Obviously, if a Yevd is shot full of immunization against that
particular type of bacteria why, kid, he can cross the barrier at that
point as easily as you can, and he can then do anything he wants to
inside The Yards. You see how big a thing we're working on." He broke
off, "Ah, I see my friend has finished examining your blood. Wait here a
moment." He moved off to where the other Yevd was waiting. There were
tiny flashes of light from the darkness, and Diddy remembered tensely
that Yevd communicated with each other by light beams and light energies
that operated directly from a complex interrelation of organic prisms,
lens, mirrors, and cell transformers. The conference, whatever its
nature, lasted less than a minute. The Yevd came back. "O.K., kid, you
can scoot along. Thanks a lot for helping us. We won't forget it." Diddy
could not believe his ears for a moment. "You mean, that's all you want
from me?" he said.
"That's all."
As he emerged from the dark space between the two buildings, Diddy
expected somehow that he would be stopped. But, though the two Yevd
followed him out to the street, they made no attempt to accompany him as
hi started across it toward the barrier. The spokesman called after him:
"There's a couple of other kids coming up the street. You might join
them, and the bunch of you can look for the sound together." Diddy
turned to look, and as he did so, two boys came darting towards him,
yelling: "Last one over is a pig." They had the momentum, and they were
past him in a flash. As he raced after them, Diddy saw them hesitate,
turr slightly, and then cross the barrier at a dead run over the
ventilators which he had tested for the two Yevd researchers
They waited for him on the other side.
"My name is Jackie," said one. .- "And mine is Gil," said the second
one. He added, "Let's >stick together."
Diddy said: "My name is Diddy."
Neither of the two boys seemed to think the name unusual There were
separate sounds, as the three of them walked, that drowned out the
sound. Discordant noises. Whirring machines. An intricate pattern of
clangorous hammerings. Rippling overtones from the molecular
displacement of masses of matter. A rubber-wheeled train hummed towards
them over the endless metal floor that carpeted The Yards, and paused as
its electronic eyes and ears sensed their presence. They stepped out of
the way, and it rushed past. A line of cranes lifted a hundred ton metal
plate onto an antigravity carrier. It floated away lightly, airily, into
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the blazing sky. Diddy had never been on the "Way" at night before, and
it would have been tremendously exciting if he had not been so
miserable. The trouble was, he couldn't be sure. Were these two
companions Yevd? So far they had done nothing that actually proved they
were. The fact that they had crossed the barrier at the point where he
had tested it for the two Yevd could have been a coincidence. Until he
was sure, he dared not tell anyone what had happened. Until he was sure,
he would have to go along with them, and even if they wanted him to do
something, cooper- ate with them. That was the rule. That was the
training. He had a picture in his mind of scores of image-boys crossing
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