niform was the same as the man's on Marquis'
left.

The man was No. 4901. He hadn't been here so long. His face was thin and
gray. His hair was dark, and he was about the same size and build as
Marquis. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were closed and there
was a slight quivering at the ends of the fingers which were laced
across his stomach.

[Illustration: _When the bells rang they would arise...._]

"Hello," Marquis said. The man shivered, then opened dull eyes and
looked up at Marquis. "I just got in. Name's Charles Marquis."

The man blinked. "I'm--I'm--No. 4901." He looked down at his chest,
repeated the number. His fingers shook a little as he touched his lips.

Marquis said. "What's this indoctrination?"

"You--learn. The bells ring--you forget--and learn--"

"There's absolutely no chance of escaping?" Marquis whispered, more to
himself than to 4901.

"Only by dying," 4901 shivered. His eyes rolled crazily, then he turned
over and buried his face in his arms.

The situation had twisted all the old accepted values squarely around.
Preferring death over life. But not because of any anti-life attitude,
or pessimism, or defeatism. None of those negative attitudes that would
have made the will-to-die abnormal under conditions in which there would
have been hope and some faint chance of a bearable future. Here to keep
on living was a final form of de-humanized indignity, of humiliation, of
ignominy, of the worst thing of all--loss of one's-self--of one's
individuality. To die as a human being was much more preferable over
continuing to live as something else--something neither human or
machine, but something of both, with none of the dignity of either.

* * * * *

The screening process hadn't detected the capsule of poison in Marquis'
tooth. The capsule contained ten grains of poison, only one of which was
enough to bring a painless death within sixteen hours or so. That was
his ace in the hole, and he waited only for the best time to use it.

Bells rang. The prisoners jumped from their beds and went through a few
minutes of calisthenics. Other bells rang and a tray of small tins of
food-concentrates appeared out of a slit in the wall by each bed. More
bells rang, different kinds of bells, some deep and brazen, others high
and shrill. And the prisoners marched off to specialized jobs
co-operating with various machines.

You slept eight hours. Calisthenics five min