ge to all and sundry at 30-second intervals. Toward
the end he found himself doing it in a dreamy and forgetful way. His
mind, he decided, was becoming assimilated to the communal telepathic
mind of the ticklers. It did not seem to matter at the time.

After two hours Gusterson realized that he and his guides were
becoming part of a general movement of people, a flow as mindless as
that of blood corpuscles through the veins, yet at the same time dimly
purposeful--at least there was the feeling that it was at the behest
of a mind far above.

The flow was topside. All the slidewalks seemed to lead to the
concourses and the escaladders. Gusterson found himself part of a
human stream moving into the tickler factory adjacent to his
apartment--or another factory very much like it.

* * * * *

Thereafter Gusterson's awarenesses were dimmed. It was as if a bigger
mind were doing the remembering for him and it were permissible and
even mandatory for him to dream his way along. He knew vaguely that
days were passing. He knew he had work of a sort: at one time he was
bringing food to gaunt-eyed tickler-mounted humans working feverishly
in a production line--human hands and tickler claws working together
in a blur of rapidity on silvery mechanisms that moved along jumpily
on a great belt; at another he was sweeping piles of metal scraps and
garbage down a gray corridor.

Two scenes stood out a little more vividly.

A windowless wall had been knocked out for twenty feet. There was blue
sky outside, its light almost hurtful, and a drop of many stories. A
file of humans were being processed. When one of them got to the head
of the file his (or her) tickler was ceremoniously unstrapped from his
shoulder and welded onto a silvery cask with smoothly pointed ends.
The result was something that looked--at least in the case of the Mark
6 ticklers--like a stubby silver submarine, child size. It would hum
gently, lift off the floor and then fly slowly out through the big
blue gap. Then the next tickler-ridden human would step forward for
processing.

The second scene was in a park, the sky again blue, but big and high
with an argosy of white clouds. Gusterson was lined up in a crowd of
humans that stretched as far as he could see, row on irregular row.
Martial music was playing. Overhead hovered a flock of little silver
submarines, lined up rather more orderly in the air than the humans
were on the grou