matter?" one of the Tindars asked. "Dr. Bronsky will be here presently, sirs," the attendant repeated. Dr. Bronsky came into the room with a retinue of flustered assistants. He nodded to the Tindars and worked his lips around as he waited for a pale little man to shuffle nervously into the room.

"Now, Endicott, how did you move the cots around? Try to remember," the doctor spoke with a fatherly air to the little man. "I don't know ... I was thinking of something else," Endicott whined. "I was polishing the floors. They have to be cleaned by ten o'clock. I was working with the sterilizer on the floors. I moved the cots to get them out of my road. I thought they were identified."

"Thought!" snorted Dr. Bronsky. "Since when does a damned fool think!" "I'm sorry, Dr. Bronsky," the little man pleaded. "It's a rule. The floors have to be cleaned." "It is also a rule--a primary rule, Endicott, that identification of the 'pattern' is second only to the welfare of the 'pattern'," the doctor stormed. He gestured wildly in silence for a few minutes, then burst out again. "Get out! I will not have asses in my ward! Get out! You're fired!"

The little man shuffled abjectly out. One Tindar turned to Dr. Bronsky. "What's the fury about?" he asked. The doctor gestured the rest of his assistants and attendants out and closed the door. He worked his lips nervously for a few seconds. "An unprecedented occurrence has blackened the record of Commercial Duplication. You shall have a perfect right to sue, but I'm sure that President Histar will settle satisfactorily with you out of court." He paused as if it were painful to go on. "That attendant--that double, double damned fool has mixed you up before you were stamped. One minute the controller is out of the room and he does it! We have no means in our power now to tell which of you is the duplicate and which is the original. We have one hope. Perhaps one of you woke up before you were removed from the chambers? Perhaps one of you remembers which chamber he was in?"

"The last thing I recall is dozing off in the primary," one Tindar said. "Same here," the other said. "This is indeed regrettable!" boomed the doctor. "It's unheard of!" "It's not that serious, doctor," one of the Tindars said. "We can still do our work. One of us shall disappear on the way back, that's all. The only inconvenience shall be having to bring the duplicate part of the way back." "But who shall be your pilot?" the doctor mused, "if on the way back the one piloting the ship were to disappear...."

"We have another 

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