THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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A small fire was burning in the center; around it, in a circle, some
hundred and fifty people, including a few women and children, sat,
squatted or reclined. A low hum of voices came out of the soundbox.

"Who the blazes are they?" Anse whispered. "I can't see any way they
could have gotten down there."[Pg 80]

They were in rags, and they weren't armed; there wasn't so much as a
knife or a pistol among them. Conn motioned the lorries and the other
jeep forward.

"Prisoners," he said. "I think they were hauled down here on a scow,
shoved off, and left when the fighting started. Cover me," he told the
men in the lorries. "I'm going down and talk to them."

Somebody below must have heard something. As Anse took the jeep over and
started floating it down, the circle around the fire began moving, the