punishment had been. A week deprived of recreation hours, he supposed. It couldn't have been very bad or he would remember.

Stranger still, the black-haired boy who had vanished behind the wall did not return to school. Hendley never saw or heard of him again.

A door opened into the white room where Hendley sat on the cold bench. A nurse entered. She glanced at him with clinical objectivity. In one hand she carried a small vial and a hypodermic needle.

"What's that?" Hendley asked sharply.

"Protective inoculation," the woman said with brisk indifference. "Hold out your arm."

Conditioned from childhood to frequent inoculations, Hendley raised his arm. The nurse was as efficient as her manner. He hardly felt the prick of the needle.

"Now you will follow me," she said, after deftly removing and discarding the detachable needle.

The room to which she led him turned out to be a large office, facing the typical open courtyard around which all of the central building towers were constructed. Drapes were drawn back over a broad window. Pale moonlight filtered through the courtyard from the invisible sky above. A large white desk dominated the room. Behind it sat the Morale Investigator who had come to Hendley's room.

The door closed and Hendley was alone with the Investigator, who gestured toward a comfortably upholstered, backless couch to the left of the desk. "Sit down," the big man said. And then, solicitously, "Are you cold? I can raise the heat level."

"No," Hendley said stiffly. "I'm not cold."

It was only after he had sat on the couch that he realized how low it was. In contrast, the wide, high desk and the large swivel chair behind it seemed higher than normal. Hendley found himself looking up at the Investigator. The inferior position, he reflected. He remembered from his architectural studies that in some of the offices in Administration buildings the floors were actually angled, so that an official at his desk would always be on a somewhat higher level than any caller.

"Would you like to tell me about it now?" the Investigator asked. His tone was mild, personal, inviting confidence. Hendley studied him more closely. The impression of size still predominated, but with it there was a clear effect of controlled, well-muscled, 

 Prev. P 32/165 next