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For athe patroller&039;s unconscious body into the shadows behind the pillars that lined the main hall, but there was obviously no tied onto the raht and ware motif

Valona said anxiously, "Coht her elbow

He was s, but his voice was hard and low He said, "Don&039;t run Walk naturally and follow me Hold on to 111k Don&039;t let hi through glue Were there sounds behind theination? Terens did not dare look

"In here," he said The sign above the driveway he indicated flickered a bit in the light of afternoon It didn&039;t compete very ith Florina&039;s sun It said: Ah a side entrance, and between incredibly white walls They were blobs of foreign lassiness of the corridor

A wo at thean to approach Terens did not wait for her He turned sharply, followed a branch of the corridor, then another one They passed others in uniforine the uncertainty they aroused It was quite unprece dented to have natives wandering about unguarded in the upper levels of a hospital What did one do?

Eventually, of course, they would be stopped

So Terens felt his heartbeat step up when he saw the unobtrusive door that said: To Native Levels The elevator was at their level He herded Rik and \Talona within and the soft lurch as the elevator dropped was the hiful sensation of the day

There were three kinds of buildings in the City Most were Lower Buildings, built entirely on the lower level Workers&039; houses, ranging up to three stories in height Factories, bakeries, disposal plants Others were Upper Buildings: Sarkite homes, theaters, the library, sports arenas But some feere Doubles, with levels and entrances both below and above; the patroller stations, for instance, and the hospitals

One could therefore use a hospital to go from Upper City to Lower City and avoid in that ht elevators with their slow movements and overattentive operators For a native to do so was thoroughly illegal, of course, but the added cri patrollers

They stepped out upon the lower level The stark aseptic walls were there still, but they had a faintly haggard appearance as though they were less often scrubbed The upholstered benches that lined the corridors on the upper level were gone Most of all there was the uneasy babble of a waiting roole attendant was atte poorly

She was snapping at a stubbled oldster who pleated and unpleated the wrinkled knee of his raveling trousers and who answered all questions in an apologetic monotone

"Exactly what is your co have you had these pains? Ever been to the hospital before? Now look, you people can&039;t expect to bother us over every little thing You sit down and the doctor will look at you and give you more medicine"

She cried shrilly, "Next!" then e timepiece on the wall

Terens, Valona and Elk were edging cautiously through the crowd Valona, as though the presence of fellow Florinians had freed her tongue of paralysis, hispering intensely

"I had to coht you wouldn&039;t bring hiet to Upper City, anyway?" de natives to either side

"I followed you and saw you go up the freight elevator When it came down I said I ith you and he took me up"

"Just like that"

"I shook hiroaned Terens

"I had to," explained Valonato you I waited till they were gone and went there too Only I didn&039;t dare go inside I didn&039;t knohat to do so I sort of hid until I saw you co-"

"You people there!" It was the sharp, i now, and the hard rapping of her athering and reduced the silence

"Those people trying to leave Co exa work-days with pretended sick calls Come back here!"

But the three were out in the half shadow of Lower City There were the smells and noise of what the Sarkites called the Native Quarter about them and the upper level was once more only a roof above the away fros, Terens felt no lifting of anxiety They had gone too far and henceforth there ht was still passing through his turbulent mind when Rik called, "Look!"

Terens felt salt in his throat

It was perhaps the ht the natives of the Lower City could see It was like a giant bird floating down through one of the openings in the Upper City It shut off the sun and deepened the oloom of that portion of the City But it wasn&039;t a bird It was one of the arround-cars of the patrollers

Natives yelled and began running They ht have no specific reason to fear, but they scattered anyway One man, nearly in the path of the car, stepped aside reluctantly He had been hurrying on his way, intent on soht him He looked about hiht, but alrotesquely broad across the shoulders One of his shirt sleeves was slit down its length, revealing an arh

Terens was hesitating, and Rik and Valona could do nothing without him The Townman&039;s inner uncertainty had o? If they remained where they were, ould they do? There was a chance that the patrollers were after others altogether, but with a patroller unconscious on the library floor through their act, the chances of that were negligible

The broadat a heavy half trot For a h with uncertainty He said in a conversational voice, "Khorov&039;s bakery is second left, beyond the laundry"

He veered back

Terens said, "Coh the uproar, he heard the barking orders that came naturally to patroller throats He threw one look over his shoulder A half dozen of the out They would have no trouble, he knew In his damned Townman&039;s unifor the Upper City

Two of the patrollers were running in the right direction He didn&039;t knohether or not they had seen him, but that didn&039;t matter Both collided with the broad h for Terens to hear the broad man&039;s hoarse bellow and the patrollers&039; sharp cursing Terens herded Valona and Elk around the corner

Khorov&039;s bakery was na illuminated plastic, broken in half a dozen places, and was h its open door There was nothing to do but enter, and they did

An old man looked out from the inner room within which they

could see the flour-obscured gleam of the radar furnaces He had no chance to ask their business

Terens began, "A broadhis arms apart in illustration, and the cries of "Patrollers! Patrollers!" began to be heard outside

The old man said hoarsely, "This way! Quickly!"

Terens held back "In there?"

The old man said, "This one is a dummy"

First Rik, then Valona, then Terens crawled through the furnace door There was a faint click and the back wall of the furnace es above They pushed through it and into a small room, dimly lit, beyond

They waited Ventilation was bad, and the s it Valona kept s his hand mechanically from time to time Rik stared back at her blankly Once in a while he put a hand to his flushed face

Valona began, "Townht whisper, "Not now, Lona Please!"

He passed the back of his hand across his forehead, then stared at the danified by the close confine place Terens stiffened Without quite realizing it, he raised clenched fists

It was the broadThey scarcely fit

He looked at Terens and was a"

Terens looked at his fists, and let them drop

The broad man was in markedly poorer condition now than when they had first seen him His shirt was all but re red and purple, marked one cheekbone His eyes were little and the eyelids crowded them above and below

He said, "They&039;ve stopped looking If you&039;re hungry, the fare here isn&039;t fancy, but there&039;s enough of it What do you say?"

It was night in the City There were lights in the Upper City that lit the sky for miles, but in the Lower City the darkness was

clahtly across the front of the bakery to hide the illegal, past-curfew lights away from it

Rik felt better aran to recede He fixed his eyes on the broad man&039;s cheek

Timidly he asked, "Did they hurt you, mister?"

"A little," said the broad one "It doesn&039;t hed, showing large teeth

"They had to ad but I was in their hile they were chasing so a native out of the way-" His hand rose and fell, holding an invisible weapon, butt-first