score of years before the first bomb fell, the computers on the Peace Planning Boards of both East and West had directed the movement of the cities underground.

The second century was one of recovery from the war, of continuing progress toward a more streamlined, automated and efficient society, and of the slow but steady return toward the surface of the earth. But if those years presented unusual obstacles—new ways of producing foods had constantly to be found, new methods of decontaminating air and water, new systems of construction and transport, new ways to accommodate a population which entered another phase of explosion in spite of the limitations of underground life—if there were difficulties, there were also advantages.

"At last the opportunities were present," the Investigator cried with unflagging vigor, "for a truly controlled progress. Even the strictures of space underground became an aid rather than a deterrent. Controls were easier to put into effect, easier to enforce. And we had the tools, TRH-247—the computers to guide our way. No longer were we stumbling blindly, planned progress was possible!"

"But is it progress?" Hendley interjected defensively, for the first time breaking into the Investigator's narrative. "Haven't we lost a lot of things? That's what I feel. It seems to me those early societies had something we don't have. They were always moving outward, discovering new horizons, exploring—even if they blundered, they tried. We're not trying. Our world isn't expanding, it's shrinking. It has less—less meaning."

The Investigator's smile was patronizing. "You say they were always questing—of course they were. Blindly, inefficiently, between their wars. But who benefited, TRH-247? All men? No. A few favored ones. And what were they really searching for on their new horizons?" He thundered the question. "What those favored few had! What is now possible for all of us! Man's real goal, TRH-247, always known but never really understood—freedom! Freedom from the burdens of indebtedness and the necessity to work! Freedom for total leisure and recreation! The freedom which the system of the tax debt and the structure of the Organization has brought within the reach of all men—Freeman status!"

Breathless, the Investigator paused. Hendley felt an urge to protest further, but he was not sure of his ground. He wanted to say that efficiency should not be the only yardstick of achievement. He felt that there might be more to human endeavor than the pursuit of pleasure. He would have deplored the 

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