The nurse at the desk of Floor 24, Ward 5, flexed a smooth, tan arm and looked at the hall chronometer. She sighed inaudibly. 20:13:09, said the dial. Two more hours on duty for Miss Markett Travenor, F-2349464-23a-10-256W-26. Which was to say that her file was Female number 2349464 in the Register of Persons, that she lived in apartment 23 on floor 10 in building 256 on the West side of parkzone 26. Examination of her face and figure would have convinced you that one as lovely as she could have existed by accident only in the Twentieth Century. Happily, however, by the year 2046 (in which she was born), scientific mating was no dream of a few forward-looking visionaries, but a reality: she was the lovely offspring of a couple carefully paired.

Markett looked down from her chronometer, her green eyes darkly thoughtful. Dr. Ward Alfreed (M-2536478-13a-20-358E-22) was late. She looked down the white-enameled corridor, then at the indicating finger of an elevator. It had not moved. Easily she pressed a communicator attached to a strap of her uniform. Immediately a voice spoke:
"Entrance hall speaking--Central Information Desk."
Markett snapped a button. "Lee?", she asked. "Is the hotter down there yet?" "Hotter," in the year 2066, meant boy-friend.
"Dr. Alfreed," replied the voice, "is going up now with Patient--just a moment--Patient sixty-six-twenty-five."
"Thanks," replied Markett, snapping off the contact. She picked a card from the full-view files before her. Patient sixty-six-twenty-five, Psycho Clinic. "Marked degeneration," read the card. "Cowardly tendencies--fear of falling, fear of floating, fear of slipping, fear of standing still. Three attempted suicides unsuccessful due to lack of creative technique. Prognosis: doubtful. Use of Psychological Regulator suggested. E. B." All that, and the date for the operation--today.

She rose and faced the elevator as sharp-tuned ears caught the almost imperceptible hum of doors opening. Dr. Alfreed nodded cheerfully to her, twitched his head for her benefit toward the man whose arm he was grasping. Patient sixty-six-twenty-five, no doubt, she thought, glancing again at his card. Name was Clark Stevens (M-3972677-234a-150N-190), she saw. Tall, too, and well-built. But, somehow, his posture and bearing were almost utterly lacking in masculinity; at the moment he looked the role of a weak, vacillating subject of a rehabilitation test, and he shocked Markett's sense of what was right and decent with his overclad body. He wore a shirt and trousers, seemingly improvised from a number of the one-piece, short-sleeved suits worn by the world as fashion and comfort decreed. Yet there was something about him--? She 

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