The gang was still smiling, but faintly. The waiter was backing away.

"No," Kane insisted. "He said Martinis, and she said Martinis, and so did several others. But I didn't say Martinis. I said Scotch, no ice."

"But Martinis—"

Ben forced a pained laugh. "But we ordered Martinis."

"Martinis," Laura said.

"The ayes always have it," Kane heard Lucille whisper near him.

Phil said, with a kind of shaky joviality. "Martinis—"

"Gin makes me ill," Kane said. "For me, it has to be Scotch."

Phil whispered. "Scotch."

"Scotch," the waiter said.

A jukebox in a far corner blasted out from a sea of bubbling, multicolored light.

Laura whispered huskily in his ear. "Don't worry about any little old thing. We're one together, man."

God, he was tired. He was so tired he could hardly sit there. He felt numb, and there was desperation under the numbness. Kane wanted to get off somewhere by himself so he could rest, sleep, and think. He wanted to think....

Bits of information drifted haphazardly into Kane's consciousness from the conversation. He had ordered another double Scotch and was almost through with it. He was passing out, but held to conscious awareness by the unceasing banter, laughter and the jukebox—like a marionette held up with wires.

If he suddenly found himself alone in silence, he knew he would collapse instantly.

It seemed that this was a group with a certain common Reacto level, and they all worked in the same place, and lived in the same section of a big housing project, a place called Sunny Hill.

Phil was their Integrator, and he was also an Official in the Isotopic Corporation where the Group worked. Phil was an 

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