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He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in thethe earth would be covered with their dust like a strange snow That was his idiot thought as he stood shivering in the dark, and let his lips go on

They had this machine They had two machines, really One of them slid down into your sto for all the old water and the old tireen matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil Did it drink of the darkness? Did it suck out all the poisons accumulated with the years? It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching It had an Eye The i a special optical hel out What did the Eye see? He did not say He saw but did not see what the Eye saw The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one's yard The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached Go on, anyway, shove the bore down, slush up the eht out in the throb of the suction snake The operator stood s, too

The other machine, operated by an equally impersonal fellow in nonstainable reddish-brown coveralls This machine pumped all of the blood from the body and replaced it with fresh blood and serum

"Got to clean 'e over the silent wo the stomach if you don't clean the blood Leave that stuff in the blood and the blood hits the brain like a ives up, just quits"

"Stop it!" said Montag

"I was just sayin'," said the operator

"Are you done?" said Montag

They shut the er did not even touch the around their noses and into their eyes withoutthem blink or squint "That's fifty bucks"

"First, why don't you tell ht?"

"Sure, she'll be okay We got all the et at her now As I said, you take out the old and put in the new and you're okay"

"Neither of you is an MD Why didn't they send an MD froency?"

"Hell!" The operator's cigarette ht Got so o, we had the special machines built With the optical lens, of course, that was new; the rest is ancient You don't need an MD, case like this; all you need is two handymen, clean up the probleo Just had another call on the old ear-thimble Ten blocks from here Someone else just juain Keep her quiet We got a contrasedative in her She'll wake up hungry So long"

And the ht-lined mouths, the men with the eyes of puff adders, took up their load of machine and tube, their case of liquid e of nameless stuff, and strolled out the door

Montag sank down into a chair and looked at this woently, and he put out his hand to feel the warmness of breath on his palm

"Mildred," he said, at last