utes. Eating ten minutes.
Relaxation to the tune of musical bells, ten minutes. Work period eight
hours. Repeat. That was all of life, and after a while Marquis knew, a
man would not be aware of time, nor of his name, nor that he had once
been human.

Marquis felt deep lancing pain as he tried to resist the bells. Each
time the bells rang and a prisoner didn't respond properly, invisible
rays of needle pain punched and kept punching until he reacted properly.

And finally he did as the bells told him to do. Finally he forgot that
things had ever been any other way.

Marquis sat on his bed, eating, while the bells of eating rang across
the bowed heads in the gray uniforms. He stared at the girl, then at the
man, 4901. There were many opportunities to take one's own life here.
That had perplexed him from the start--_why hasn't the girl, and this
man, succeeded in dying?_

And all the others? They were comparatively new here, all these in this
indoctrination ward. Why weren't they trying to leave in the only
dignified way of escape left?

No. 4901 tried to talk, he tried hard to remember things. Sometimes
memory would break through and bring him pictures of other times, of
happenings on Earth, of a girl he had known, of times when he was a
child. But only the mildest and softest kind of recollections....

Marquis said, "I don't think there's a prisoner here who doesn't want to
escape, and death is the only way out for us. We know that."

For an instant, No. 4901 stopped eating. A spoonful of food concentrate
hung suspended between his mouth and the shelf. Then the food moved
again to the urging of the bells. Invisible pain needles gouged Marquis'
neck, and he ate again too, automatically, talking between tasteless
bites. "A man's life at least is his own," Marquis said. "They can take
everything else. But a man certainly has a right and a duty to take that
life if by so doing he can retain his integrity as a human being.
Suicide--"

No. 4901 bent forward. He groaned, mumbled "Don't--don't--" several
times, then curled forward and lay on the floor knotted up into a
twitching ball.

The eating period was over. The lights went off. Bells sounded for
relaxation. Then the sleep bells began ringing, filling up the absolute
darkness.

Marquis lay there in the dark and he was afraid. He had the poison. He
had the will. But he couldn't be unique in that respect. What was the
matter with the others? All right, the devil