he time
comes. And the worst of it is that I know no matter which way my choice
falls, I'm going to be hideously unhappy."

The psychiatrist asked tranquilly, "You can't guess what choice it is
that you must make, or its alternative?"

"I can't. And that's the hell of it--not knowing."

The icy chill of the polar plain touched him and with it came a deeper
cold that had not been a part of the dream. At that instant, he might
have identified its source, but was afraid to.

"My fear has some relation to whatever it is these people are about to
do," he said. "I just realized that. But that doesn't help, because I've
no idea what it is."

He glanced at his strap watch, and the time made him stand up before the
little psychiatrist could speak again. The hour was 15:57, and he saw in
dismay that his 16:00 appointment with Sean O'Donnell and the Irradiated
Foods tycoon would be late.

"I don't expect an immediate opinion," he said. "You couldn't reach one
as long as I'm here. Add up what I've told you, and if it makes any sort
of sense you can radophone me tonight at 19:00. If my apartment doesn't
answer, relay the call to my cabin in the Catskills--I've kept the
location a secret, for privacy's sake, but the number is on alternate
listing."

He paused briefly at the door, touched with an uncharacteristic flash of
sour humor. "And telestat your bill to me. If I asked for it now, you'd
probably charge nothing."

* * * * *

The mood vanished as soon as he was outside and saw the gray-suited
Jaffers operative waiting with stolid patience on the ramp of a
department store across the street.

The shock of reminder brought on a giddy recurrence of his
hallucination.

The polar plain yawned before him. The silent machines crept over their
snow-packed ways, the faceless people stood in frozen groups.

He emerged from the seizure, shaken and sweating, to find that the
Jaffers man had crossed the street and was waiting a safe distance
behind. Alcorn fought down a panic desire to run away blindly only
because Kitty would be waiting for him at Consolidated--Kitty, his
bulwark of reassurance.

The gray-suited man was a deliberate hundred feet behind him when he
boarded a tube-car.

Kitty was not in his office and there was no time to ring for her.

Instead, he went through the long accounting room beyond, answering
automatically the smiles of a suddenly genial staff and headed for
O'Donne