suction cups. He stuck one of the cups to Regan's faceplate, fastened another one to his ear and twirled a dial.

"Please get me out of this suit," Regan said.

The man's face lit up with pleasure. He nodded and patted the chest of the suit. Then he spoke.

The language was a guttural, fast-paced one. Regan had never heard anything like it.

"Please," he said. "Please get me out."

The man continued to smile. He beckoned and two other men appeared. They took turns listening to Regan plead to be released. They smiled, too, though obviously none of them understood a word. Without gestures, it was impossible for Regan to convey his plight.

They stood around him, chattering in their outlandish tongue. Others joined them. They all had the same look about them. Friendly, smiling faces and hands that patted him on the chest. It became a confused nightmare as still others streamed in, as if he were the main attraction in a fifty-cent tour.

But apparently there was method in their milling around. They measured him from top to toe, from side to side, in circumference and in depth. They used steel tapes and calipers and jotted down their findings in little books or punched them out on button-studded chessboards. They wheeled in a huge contraption which must have been a camera and clicked it at him from every angle. They lifted his arms and legs and chattered with excitement to see how peculiarly he bent at the joints.

It was as if Regan were a new kind of animal that had swum into their ken and which they were classifying, or which they would classify at their leisure after they had measured it in all possible ways.

They kept it up for an eternity and a half. Regan's vision got hazy, his throat burned and his stomach ached in irregular spasms.

He was barely conscious when the two bearers came back in, loaded him on the plank and took him out into the rotunda. The throng of scientists followed. The floor-wide elevator sank to the main level and they all went out into the street.

A big, rectangular, doorless, bus-like vehicle was standing there. The bearers, with a great deal of effort, propped Regan up in the front seat. His head lolled back inside the suit. The shift in position blacked him out temporarily. 

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