y failure
to use his share of food, so he dialed Breakfast Number Three--tomato
juice, toast, and coffee.

The signal-panel flashed "Under-Eating" and he knew the state
machine-records system had advised his cybernetic cooker to increase the
amount of his consumption. Chin in hands, he sat hopelessly at the
kitchen table awaiting his meal, and in due course was served prunes,
waffles, bacon, eggs, toast, and tea--none of which he liked, except for
toast.

He ate dutifully nevertheless, telling himself he wasn't afraid of the
ration-cops who were always suspecting him of underconsumption because
he was the tall skinny type and never got fat like most people, but that
he ate what the cooker had given him because his father had been
unemployed for a long time during the depression seventy-five years
before, so he'd never been able to bring himself to throw food away.

Failure to consume had in the old days been called "overproduction" and
by any name it was bad. So was war--he'd read enough about war to be
glad that form of consumption had finally been abolished.

Still it was a duty and not a pleasure to eat so much, and a relief to
get up and put the dirty dishes into the disposal machine and go up
topside to his gyro.

* * * * *

Disgustingly, he had a long wait before departure. After climbing into
the gyro and transmitting his flight plan, he had to sit seething for
all of fifteen minutes before the Mount Diablo Flight Control Center
deigned to lift his remote-controlled gyro into the air. And when the
signal came, ascent was so awkwardly abrupt it made his ears pop.

He couldn't even complain. The Center was mechanical, and unequipped to
hear complaints.

It routed him straight down the San Joaquin Valley--a beautiful sight
from fifteen thousand feet, but over-familiar. He fell asleep and
awakened only when unexpectedly brought down at Bakersfield Field.

Above his instrument panel the printing-receiver said "Routine Check of
Equipment and Documents. Not Over Five Minutes' Delay."

But it could take longer. And tardiness was subject to official
punishments as a form of unproductiveness. He called George Harding at
the plant.

Harding apparently had been expecting the call. His round bluff face
wore a scowl of annoyance.

"Don't you ever watch the newscasts?" he demanded angrily. "They began
this 'Routine Check' you're in at five this morning, and were
broadcasting pictur