As soon as Phelps was gone, I took a careful look at my new living quarters. The room itself was about fourteen by eighteen, but the end in which I was confined was only fourteen by ten, the other eight feet of end being barred off by a very efficient-looking set of heavy metal rods and equally strong cross-girdering. There was a sliding door that fit in place as nicely as the door to a bank vault; it was locked by heavy keeper-bars that slid up from the floor and down from the ceiling and they were actuated by hidden motors. In the barrier was a flat horizontal slot wide enough to take a tray and high enough to pass a teacup. The bottom of this slot was flush with a small table that extended through the barrier by a couple of feet on both sides so that a tray could be set down on the outside and slipped in.

I tested the bars with my hands, but even my new set of muscles wouldn't flex them more than a few thousandths of an inch.

The walls were steel. All I got as I tried them was a set of paint-clogged fingernails. The floor was also steel. The ceiling was a bit too high for me to tackle, but I assumed that it, too, was steel. The window was barred from the inside, undoubtedly so that any visitor from the outside could not catch on to the fact that this building was a private calaboose.

The—er—furnishings of this cold storage bin were meager of minimum requirements. A washstand and toilet. A bunk made of metal girders welded to the floor. The bedding rested on wide resilient straps fixed to the cross-bars at top and bottom of the bed. A foam-rubber mattress, sheets, and one blanket finished off the bed.

It was a cell designed by Mekstroms to contain Mekstroms and by wiseacres to contain other wiseacres. The non-metallic parts of the room were, of course, fireproof. Anything I could get hold of was totally useless as a weapon or lever or tool; anything that might have been useful to a prisoner was welded down.

Having given up in the escape department, I sat on my bunk and lit a cigarette. I looked for tell-tales, and found a television lens set above the door of the room eight feet outside of my steel barrier. Beside the lens was a speaker grille and a smaller opening that looked like a microphone dust cover.

With a grunt, I flipped my cigarette at the television lens. I hit just above the hole, missing it by about an inch. Immediately a tinny-sounding voice said,

"That is not permitted, Mr. Cornell. You are expected to maintain some degree of personal cleanliness. Since you cannot pick up that cigarette butt, you have placed an unwelcome task upon our personnel. One more infraction of this nature and you will not be permitted the luxury of smoking."

"Go to the devil!" I snapped.

There was no reply. Not even a haughty chuckle. The silence was worse than any reply because it pointed out the absolute superiority of their position.

Eventually I dozed off, there being nothing else to do. When I awoke they'd shoved a tray of food in on my table. I ate unenthusiastically. I dozed again, during which time someone removed the tray. When I woke up the second time it was night and time to go to bed, so I went. I woke up in the morning to see a burly guy enter with a tray of breakfast. I attempted to engage him in light conversation but he did not even let on that I was in the cell. Later he removed the tray as silently as he'd brought it, and I was left with another four hours of utter boredom until the same bird returned with a light lunch. Six hours after lunch came a slightly more substantial dinner, but no talk.

By bedtime the second night I was getting stir-crazy.

I hit the sack at about nine thirty, and tossed and turned, unable to drop off because I was not actually tired. I was also wondering when they'd come around with their brain-washing crew, or maybe someone who'd enter with an ultimatum.

On the following morning, the tray-bearer was Dr. Thorndyke, who sat on the chair on the outside of my bars and looked at me silently. I tried giving him stare for stare, but eventually I gave up and said, "So now where do we go?"

"Cornell, you're in a bad spot of your own making."

"Could be," I admitted.

"And yet, really, you're more of a victim of circumstances."

"Forgetting all the sideplay, I'm a prisoner," I told him curtly. "Let's face a few facts, Thorndyke, and stop tossing this guff."

"All right," he said shortly, "The facts are these: We would prefer that you help us willingly. We'd further prefer to have you as you are. That is, un-reoriented mentally."

"You couldn't afford to trust me," I grunted.

"Maybe we can. It's no secret that we've latched on to quite a number of your friends. Let's assume that they will all be well-treated if you agree to join us willingly."

"I'm sure that the attitude of any of my friends is such that they'd prefer me to stand my ground rather than betray their notions of right and wrong." I told him.

"That's a foolish premise," he replied. "You could no more prevail against us than you could single-handedly overthrow the Government. Having faced that fact, it becomes sound and sensible to accept the premise and then see what sort of niche you can carve out of the new order."

"I don't like your new order," I grunted.

"Many people will not," he admitted. "But then, people do not really know what's good for them."

I almost laughed at him. "Look," I said, "I'd rather make my own ignorant mistakes than to have some Great Father supervise my life. And speaking of fathers, we've both got to admit that God Himself permits us the complete freedom of our wills."

Thorndyke sneered at me. "If we're to quote the Scripture," he said sourly, "I'll point out that 'The Lord Thy God is a jealous God, visiting His wrath even upon seven generations of those who hate Him.'"

"Granted," I replied calmly, "But whether we love Him or hate Him is entirely up to our own particular notion. Now—"

"Cornell, stop talking like an idiot. Here, too, you can take your choice. I'm not ordering you. I'm just trying to point out that whether you go on suffering or enjoying life is entirely up to your own decision. And also your decision will help or hinder others."

"You're entirely too Godlike," I told him.

"Well," he said, "think it over."

"Go to the devil!"

"Now, that's a very weak response," he said loftily, "Doing nobody any good or harm. Just talk. So stop gabbing and think."

Thorndyke left me with my thoughts. Sure, I had bargaining power, but it was no good. I'd be useful only until they discovered some method of inoculating normal flesh with Mekstrom's Disease, and once that was taken care of, Steve Cornell would be a burden upon their resources.

So that was the morning of my third day of incarceration and nothing more took place all day. They didn't even give me anything to read, and I almost went nuts. You have no idea of how long fourteen hours can be until you've been sitting in a cell with absolutely nothing to do. I exercised by chinning myself on the bars and playing gymnastics. I wanted to run but there was not enough room. The physical thrill I got out of being able to chin myself with one hand wore off after a half hundred pull-ups because it was no great feat for a Mekstrom. I did push-ups and bridges and other stunts until I was bored again.

And all the while, my thinking section was going around and around. The one main point that I kept coming back to was a very unpleasant future to face:

It was certain that no matter what I did, nor how I argued, I was going to help them out. Either I would do it willingly or they'd grow tired of the lecture routine and take me in for a mental re-evaluation, after which (Being not-Steve Cornell any more) I'd join their ranks and do their bidding. About the only thing I could look at with self-confidence was my determination to hold out. If I was going to join them, it would be after I were no longer the man I am, but reoriented into whatever design they wanted. And that resolve was weakened by the normal human will to live. You can't make a horse drink water, but you can lead a human being to a well and he will drink it dry if you keep a shotgun pointed in his direction.

And so it ended up with my always wondering if, when the cards were all dealt out face up, whether I would have the guts to keep on saying 'No' right up to the point where I walked into their department of brain-washing. In fact, I was rather afraid that in the last moment I'd weaken, just to stay being me.

That uncertainty of mine was, of course, just the idea they wanted to nourish in my mind. They were doing it by leaving me alone with my mental merry-go-round.

Again I hit the sack out of sheer boredom and I turned and tossed for what seemed like hours before I dropped off to sleep, wondering and dreaming about who was to be the next visitor with a bill of goods to sell.

The next visitor came in about midnight, or thereabouts. I woke up with the realization that someone had come in through the outer door and was standing there in the semi-dark caused by a bright moon shining in through my barred window.

"Steve," she said, in a near whisper.

"Go away," I told her. "Haven't you done enough already?"

"Oh, please, Steve. I've got to talk to you."

I sat on the edge of my bunk and looked at her. She was fully dressed; her light printed silk was of the same general pattern and fit that she preferred. In fact, Catherine looked as I'd always seen her, and as I'd pictured her during the long hopeless weeks of our separation.

"You've got something to add?" I asked her coldly.

"I've got to make you understand, Steve," she pleaded.

"Understand what?" I snapped. "I know already. You deliberately set out to marry, or else-how tie some emotional cable onto me. God knows that you succeeded. If it hadn't been for that accident, I'd have been nailed down tight."

"That part is true," she whispered.

"Naturally, you've got justification."

"Well, I have."

"So has any burglar."

She shook her head at me. "Steve, you don't really understand. If only you could read my mind and know the truth—"

She let this trail off in a helpless awkwardness. It was one of those statements that are meaningless because it can be said by either friend or foe and cannot be checked.

I just looked at her and suddenly remembered something:

This was the first time in my life that I was in a position to do some verbal fencing with a telepath on even terms. I could say 'Yes' and think 'No' with absolute impunity. In fact, I might even have had an edge, since as a poor non-telepath I did have some training in subterfuge, falsehood, and diplomatic maneuver that the telepath couldn't have. Catherine and I, at long last, were in the position of the so-called good old days when boys and girls couldn't really know the truth about one another's real thoughts.

"So what's this truth?" I demanded.

"Steve, answer me truly. Have you ever been put on an odious job, only to find that the job is really pleasant?"

"Yes."

"Then hear me out. I—in fact, no woman—takes kindly to being directed to do what I did. I was told to meet you, to marry—" Her face looked flustered and it might have been a bit flushed for all I knew. I couldn't see color enough in the dim light to be sure. "—And then I met you, Steve, and I found out that you were really a very nice sort of guy."

"Well, thanks."

"Don't be bitter. Hear the truth. If Otto Mekstrom had not existed, if there were no such thing as Mekstrom's Disease, and I had met you freely and openly as men and women meet, I'd have come to feel the same, Steve. I must make you understand that my emotional attachment to you was not increased nor decreased by the fact that my physical actions were directed at you. If anything, my job was just rendered pleasantly easier."

I grunted. "And so you were made happy."

"Yes," she whispered. "And I was going to marry you and live honestly with you—"

"Heck of a marriage with the wife in the Medical Center for Mekstrom's Disease and our first child—"

"Steve, you poor fool, don't you understand? If our child came as predicted, the first thing I'd do would be to have the child inoculate the father? Then we'd be—"

"Um," I grunted. "I hadn't thought of that." This was a flat lie. I'd considered it a-plenty since my jailing here. Present the Medical Center with a child, a Mekstrom, and a Carrier, and good old pappy would be no longer needed.

"Well, after I found out all about you, Steve, that's what I had in mind. But now—"

"Now what?" I urged her gently. I had a hunch that she was leading up to something, but ducking shy about it until she managed to find out how I thought. It would have been all zero if we'd been in a clear area, but as it was I led her gently on.

"But now I've failed," she said with a slight wail.

"What do they do with failures?" I asked harshly. "Siberia? Or a gunny sack weighted down with an anvil? Or do they drum you out of the corps?"

"I don't know."

I eyed her closely. I was forced to admit that no matter how Catherine thought, she was a mighty attractive dish from the physical standpoint. And regardless of the trouble she'd put me through, I could not overlook the fact that I had been deep enough in love to plan elopement and marriage. I'd held her slender body close, and either her response had been honestly warm or Catherine was an actress of very rare physical ability. Scholar Phelps could hardly have picked a warmer temptress in the first place; putting her onto me now was a stroke of near-genius.

I got up from the edge of my bunk and faced her through my bars. She came close, too, and we looked into each other's faces over a cross-rail of the heavy fence.

I managed a wistful grin at her. "You're not really a failure yet, are you, kid?"

"I don't quite know how to—to—" she replied.

I looked around my little cell with a gruesome gesture. "This isn't my idea of a pleasant home. And yet it will be my home until someone decides that I'm too expensive to keep."

"I know," she breathed.

Taking the bit in my teeth, I said, "Catherine even though—well, heck. I'd like to help you."

"You mean that?" she asked in almost an eager voice.

"It's not impossible to forget that we were eloping when all this started."

"It all seems so long ago," she said with a thick voice. "And I wish we were back there—no, Steve, I wish Mekstrom's Disease had never happened—I wish—"

"Stop wishing and think," I told her half-humorously. "If there were no Mekstrom's Disease, the chances are that we'd never have met in the first place."

"That's the cruel part of it all," she cried. And I mean cried.

I rapped on the metal bars with a fist. "So here we are," I said unhappily. "I can't help you now, Catherine."

She put her hands through the bars and held my face between them. She looked searching into my eyes, as if straining to force her blocked telepath sense through the deadness of the area. She leaned against the steel but the barrier was very effective; our lips met through the cold metal. It was a very unsatisfactory kiss because we had to purse our lips like a pair of piccolo players to make them meet. It was like making love through a keyhole.

This unsatisfactory lovemaking did not last long. Unsteadily, Catherine said, "I want you, Steve."

Inwardly I grinned, and then with the same feeling as if I'd laughed out loud at a funeral, I said, "Through these steel bars?"

She brought out a little cylindrical key. Then went to a brass wall plate beside the outer door, inserted the key, and turned. The sliding door to my cell opened on noiseless machined slides.

Then with a careful look at me, Catherine slipped a little shutter over the glass bull's eye in the door. Her hand reached up to a hidden toggle above the door and as she snapped it, a thick cover surged out above the speaker, television lens, and microphone grille, curved down and shut off the tell-tales with a cushioned sound. Apparently the top management of the joint used these cells for other things than mere containment of unruly prisoners. I almost grinned; the society that Scholar Phelps proposed was not the kind that flourished in an atmosphere of trust, or privacy—except for the top brass.

Catherine turned from her switch plate and came across the floor with her face lifted and her lips parted.

"Hold me, Steve."

My hand came forward in a short jab that caught her dead center in the plexus below the ribs. Her breath caught in one strangled gasp and her eyes went glassy. She swayed stiffly in half-paralysis. My other hand came up, closing as it rose, until it became a fist that connected in a shoulder-jarring wallop on the side of her jaw. Her head snapped up and her knees caved in. She folded from the hips and went down bonelessly. From her throat came the bubbly sound of air being forced painfully through a flaccid wet tube.

I jumped outside of the cell barrier because I was certain that they had some means of closing the cell from a master control center. I don't know much about penology, but that's the way I'd do it. I was half-surprised that I'd been able to get away with this much.

Catherine stirred and moaned, and I stopped long enough to take the key out of the wall plate. The cell door closed on its silent slides.

I had hardly been able to more than run the zipper up my shirt when the door opened and I had to dance like a fool to get behind it. The door admitted a flood of bright light from the corridor, and Dr. James Thorndyke. The cell door must have been bugged.

Thorndyke came in behind a large automatic clutched in one nervous fist. He strained his eyes at the gloom that was not cut by the ribbon of light.

And then I cut him down with a solid slice of my right hand to the base of his neck. I remembered to jump off the ground as the blow went home; there was a sickening crunch of bone and muscle as Thorndyke caved forward to the floor. He dropped the gun, luckily, as his body began to twitch and kick spasmodically as the life drained out of him.

I re-swallowed a mouthful of bitter bile as I reached down to pick up his gun. Then the room got hot and unbearably small and I felt a frantic urge to leave, to close the door upon that sight.

---