many mouths gaped from a nearby wall. This, too, was routine. If anything worked to correct his mistakes this would. Section headquarters all over the city would be semi-automatically notified, bulletins flashed to rural districts. Within half an hour millions of citizens would be informed--not alarmed--by the quick-changing public information screens. And with a sense of duty well done, he retired to his quarters on the same floor and stared for a while at a forbidden bottle of wine. Then he got drunk.

Clark Stevens carried Markett Travenor as far as the elevator door. Glancing back at the prostrate form of the man he had hit in the jaw, his eyes narrowed. Something of cold reason was coming back. Then, suddenly, he became aware--but acutely--of the girl he was carrying in his arms. "Ah," he said. Abruptly he shifted one of his hands a trifle; the girl shivered and giggled.

Slowly awareness returned to Stevens. Then he let her drop to the floor. She looked at him again, quizzically, like a trusting child. This man, she thought, is masculine. But not with the familiar air of equality to which I am accustomed--but overbearingly male. A sort of aura covered his body--she sensed something brutish, irresponsible, uncivilized. Everything he did confirmed this idea. "What--?" said the girl. She scrambled to her feet, not taking her eyes off Stevens. The man shook his head dazedly. "I won't hurt you," he said. "I'm all right." He hesitated. "I'm--different." Markett nodded. "What I did back there in England--" he said slowly, and paused. "Do you know?" he asked. "Could you see what I did?"

"No," said Markett. "I should have watched and checked, but the doctor and I let it go." "The doctor," said Stevens. "The man I hit?" She nodded, half smiling. "And you'd better be getting out of here," said Markett. "He might wake up angry." She pushed the button of the elevator, and the doors rolled open. "Come on," she said, as the man stood silently. "You're not afraid anymore, are you?" "Afraid?" Stevens laughed. "I was. It was something that happened in the mine--" He drew a hand across his eyes; the elevator's doors rolled shut, and they began their ascent to the roof. "Explosion?" asked Markett. "They happen, I hear." "Maybe. What the hell?" he said, grinning happily. "I'm here, you're here, and I'm just after storming a castle in England with my Norsemen. It was terrible, but somehow--I don't know. I shouldn't be proud of the things I did." He shuddered a little. "Killing. Maiming. And I burned the town when there was nothing left I could take from it."

The doors of the 

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