"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, he could read, after a fashion. He recognized the names; the boys were all members of the top floor secret society. He went out and gave the list to Martha Collins.
He'd expected some argument with her, but she seemed to accept Ray Pelton's printing as Prestonby's; she began checking room charts and class lists, and calling for the boys to be sent at once to the office. He went out, and down to the 'copter repair shop, where he found that a big four-ton air truck that the senior class had been working on for several weeks was finished.