Project Gutenberg's They Twinkled Like Jewels, by Philip Jose Farmer

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Title: They Twinkled Like Jewels

Author: Philip Jose Farmer

Release Date: August 1, 2009 [EBook #29559]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_It was only a year and a half ago that Phil Farmer, till then a
totally unknown (editorially speaking at any rate) young man of
Peoria, wrote himself a novel that won him instantaneous acclaim as
perhaps the hottest new science fiction writer currently astir. Its
title was "The Lovers" and since then he has gone right on proving
himself a top-hand craftsman._

they
twinkled
like
jewels

_by ... Philip Jose Farmer_

Crane didn't get the nice man's name--until it
was far too late to do anything at all about it.

Jack Crane lay all morning in the vacant lot. Now and then he moved a
little to quiet the protest of cramped muscles and stagnant blood, but
most of the time he was as motionless as the heap of rags he resembled.
Not once did he hear or see a Bohas agent, or, for that matter, anyone.
The predawn darkness had hidden his panting flight from the transie
jungle, his dodging across backyards while whistles shrilled and voices
shouted, and his crawling on hands and knees down an alley into the high
grass and bushes which fringed a hidden garden.

For a while his heart had knocked so loudly that he had been sure he
would not be able to hear his pursuers if they did get close. It seemed
inevitable that they would track him down. A buddy had told him that a
new camp had just been built at a place only three hours drive away from
the town. This meant that Bohas would be thick as hornets in the
neighborhood. But no black uniforms had so far appeared. And then, lying
there while the passionate and untiring sun mounted the sky, the
bang-bang of his heart was replaced by a noiseless but painful movement
in his stomach.

He munched a candy bar and two dried rolls which a housewife had given