again. Once more his charge was rejected.

Someone was watching him curiously. Hendley quickly left the vender. Safely in the crowded street again, he found that he was trembling. Now it begins, he thought.

He tried to enter a theater. The ticket machine rejected his identity disc. He went down the escalator to a subway station. There was a line of people before the gate. By the time Hendley reached it, a number of other people had lined up behind him. His hand shook as he held his identity disc out to the ticket machine. Again a red light flashed.

The people behind him grew restless. "Come on, hurry up!" a man said. "What's the trouble?" another asked. "Look!" a woman cried. "Something's wrong! That red light is on!"

Hendley slipped out of the line, his face hot and his heart bumping wildly against his ribs. He heard a shout behind him as he reached the escalators. He plunged up the moving steps.

Back on the street, he was afraid to enter another crowded place to use his disc again. He waited until he found a small, old-fashioned coffee machine tucked away in a quiet corner of an arcade. No one was watching him.

The antique vending machine whirred, vibrated, and began to buzz loudly. Hendley ran.

As long as he kept to the crowded streets, he was safe from detection—providing he didn't attempt to use his identity disc. That way they could track him. But if his disc was useless, he couldn't eat, he couldn't enter a recreation hall, he couldn't take the subway, or sleep in a rented room. He couldn't find rest or refuge in a theater. He could only keep moving.

In the middle of this well-fed city, he could be starved. Free to move about at will, he was trapped.

The day of rebellion had come full circle. He could wait it out until the need of food or sleep dragged him down. He could make them find him. If Ann had been with him, if the machines had rejected her too, he might have kept going as long as possible.

Alone, he knew that he didn't want to. He had known all along this would happen. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction of making him run until he was exhausted, until he was forced to crawl to them, hungry and frightened.

Hendley went up the nearest ramp to the moving sidewalks, grateful that these at least were a free service. He would not have 

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