"He doesn't know," the slender boy jeered.

"I do too! It's where people go when they're old!"

"No, it isn't," the slim one said quite seriously. "That isn't where they go. They die."

"I didn't say dead people!" the fat boy retorted. "It's where you go when you don't have to work any more, when you're free!"

And then Hendley remembered. His father had talked about the Freeman Camps, during those early years which Hendley remembered only as a brief and pleasant interlude before he was taken from his parents and enrolled in the Organization's training schools.

The three boys walked in silence alongside the high wall for a while. The fat boy said, "I bet we could get over if we really wanted to."

"How?" Hendley wanted to know.

"We could climb it."

"No, we couldn't. What would you get hold of?"

"We could use a rope."

They reached a break in the wall, which turned out to be a high, metal-barred gate coated with an opaque plastic between the bars so that you could not see through it. There was no one around.

"Look!" the slim, black-haired boy said, pointing.

Near the bottom of the gate there was a tear in the plastic film between two of the metal bars. Even when the film was pushed aside, the opening was only a few inches wide—but it was an opening. (How strange it was now to recall the easy accessibility of the camp to three curious boys! But in those days the surface was not yet considered safe for human life, and even the camps had to be underground, located on the outskirts of the great cities.)

"I bet I could get through there," the slim boy said.

"What would you want to do that for?" the fat, blond boy scoffed, covering his chagrin, for it was evident that he could never squeeze through the opening.

"Well, you wanted to climb over."

"No one's supposed to go in there," the fat boy insisted.

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