cooperative. Machine and man learn to work very intimately
together. Later, after the indoctrination--because of your specialized
knowledge of food-concentrate preparation--we will transfer you to the
food-mart. The period of indoctrination varies in length with the
individuals. You will be screened now and taken to the indoctrination
ward. We probably won't be seeing one another again. The bells take care
of everything here. The bells and the machines. There is never an
error--never any mistakes. Machines do not make mistakes."

He was marched out of there and through a series of rooms. He was taken
in by generators, huge oscilloscopes. Spun like a living tube through
curtains of vacuum tube voltimeters, electronic power panels. Twisted
and squeezed through rolls of skeins of hook-up wire. Bent through
shieldings of every color, size and shape. Rolled over panel plates,
huge racks of glowing tubes, elaborate transceivers. Tumbled down long
surfaces of gleaming bakelite. Plunged through color-indexed files of
resistors and capacitances....

_... here machine and man learn to work very intimately together._

As he drifted through the machine tooled nightmare, Marquis knew _what_
he had been fighting all his life, what he would continue to fight with
every grain of ingenuity. Mechanization--the horror of losing one's
identity and becoming part of an assembly line.

He could hear a clicking sound as tubes sharpened and faded in
intensity. The clicking--rhythm, a hypnotic rhythm like the beating of
his own heart--the throbbing and thrumming, the contracting and
expanding, the pulsing and pounding....

_... the machines and the nervous system of the workers become slowly
cooperative._

* * * * *

Beds were spaced ten feet apart down both sides of a long gray metal
hall. There were no cells, no privacy, nothing but beds and the gray
metalene suits with numbers printed across the chest.

His bed, with his number printed above it, was indicated to him, and the
guard disappeared. He was alone. It was absolutely silent. On his right
a woman lay on a bed. No. 329. She had been here a long time. She
appeared dead. Her breasts rose and fell with a peculiarly steady
rhythm, and seemed to be coordinated with the silent, invisible
throbbing of the metal walls. She might have been attractive once. Here
it didn't make any difference. Her face was gray, like metal. Her hair
was cropped short. Her u