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repeated the one word of his scanty English vocabulary which seemed to fit. The word was, "Try! Try!
Try!" He reached around Soames' waist and linked a belt about him.
Soames had the abrupt conviction that he was going mad. He stood, himself, in the studio where the
tumult was now almost ended. But he looked up at himself from the level of his own breast. Also he was
down in the lobby of the Communications Building, mingling with the thinning mob there, allowing himself
to be shepherded out into the street. There he was surrounded by people taller than himself. That part of
his awareness reached the open air and moved swiftly westward. That part of him put his hand in his
pocket but Soames had nothing to do with the action and felt things there. There was a chain with
sharp-edged, faceted things on it. There was a belt with shaped metallic objects fastened to it....
"Try!" cried Fran desperately. "Try!"
And suddenly Soames realized. He heard the street-sounds through someone else's ears. He saw the
street through someone else's eyes. Simultaneously he saw himself in the studio through someone else's
eyes, Fran's. And this explained the behavior of the children with puppies and English lessons and items
of information which all of them seemed to know when one knew. The children were not telepathic. They
could not read each other's minds. But someone or all of the decorative squares and circles on their belts
enabled them to share each other's sense-impressions. They were both broadcasters and receivers of
sensory impressions. And therefore it was because Soames had Mal's belt about him that he could see
what Fran saw, and hear what Fran heard, and also he saw and heard and felt what an oily-haired
member of the Toppers saw and heard and felt with Hod's belt in his pocket beside Linda Beach's
necklace, snatched from her neck even before the camera.
But there was no sign that the oily-haired person saw or heard or felt what Soames did. Perhaps because
he was not wearing the belt, but only had it crumpled together in his pocket.
"Right!" said Soames harshly. "I'll get it back!"
He plunged toward the studio door. There had been Secret Service men assigned to guard the children.
Soames caught one of them by the shoulder.
"The kids have been robbed," he snapped in the Secret Service man's ear. "Secret device! We've got to
get it back! I can do it! Come along!"
The Secret Service man instantly followed him. And Soames tore through the scared people still aimlessly
wandering about. He plunged down the stairs. A squad-car cop moved to check his rush, and the Secret
Service man panted an identification and a need. The cop abandoned all other matters and followed, too.
Soames needed to close his eyes to see what the Topper saw. He blinked them shut while he ran three
paces. The Topper walked, now. He'd been joined by two friends. Soames heard his voice, he even felt
the motions of his lips and tongue in speech. He boasted that he'd snatched the beads off Linda Beach's
neck, and got a fancy belt one of those funny-dressed kids was wearing.
Half a block. Two more of the Toppers joined the bragging snatcher. They also heard of his grand
achievement. The Topper drew his loot partly from his pocket to prove his boast. They looked, and
swaggered, and whooped to others of their fellowship.
Soames pelted around a corner, turning it without warning. The Secret Service man and the cop lost a
dozen paces. Soames raced ahead. There was a cluster of late-teen-age boys on the sidewalk of Eighth
Avenue. They wanted to see the loot.
Soames plunged into them. Without a word, he tackled and bore to the ground the one in whose pocket
Hod's belt and Linda Beach's necklace still reposed.
Their reaction was instant. The Toppers were in a close group. Soames hit it and fell to the ground atop
one of their number. The others instantly attacked him as if by reflex action. They stamped and kicked
viciously.
But there was a cop and a Secret Service man on the way. They struck. The Toppers turned to fight and
fled instead at the sight of two adults already administering punishment to those within reach and coming [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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