ng to fix
forever in my memory every last detail of him. We have dozens of sound
stereos, of course, but this was the last time.

Still, it's my business at the News Office, and has been for 30 years,
to observe people and form conclusions about them, so I couldn't help
noticing with a professional eye some of the rest of the selectees.
(This farewell visit is a private affair, and the press is barred, which
is why I'd never been there before.)

There were two kinds of selectees that stood out, in my mind. One was
those who had nobody at all to see them off. Completely alone, poor
kids--orphans, doubtless, with no families and apparently not even
friends near enough to matter. But, in a way, they would be the
happiest; life on Earth couldn't have been very rewarding for them, and
on Lydna they might find companionship. (If only companionship in
misery, I thought--but I shied away from that. In our business, there
are always leaks; we know--or guess--a few things about Lydna nobody
else does, outside the authorities themselves. But we keep our mouths
shut.)

The ones that tore my hearts were the boys and girls in love. They never
take married people for Lydna, but a machine can't tell what a boy or
girl is feeling about another girl or boy, and it's a machine that does
the selecting. There's no use putting up an argument, for, once made,
the choice is inexorable and unchangeable. In my work as a newsgatherer,
I've heard some terrible stories. There have been suicide pacts and
murders.

* * * * *

You could tell the couples in love. Not that there were any scenes. If
there had been any in the two weeks past, they were over. But anybody
who has learned to read human reactions, as I have, could recognize the
agony those youngsters were going through.

[Illustration]

I felt a deep gratitude that Hal wasn't one of them. He'd had his share
of adolescent affairs, of course, but I was sure he was still just
playing around. He'd seen a lot of Bet Milen, a girl a class ahead of
him in school and college, but I didn't think she meant more to him than
any of the others. If she had, she'd have been along to say good-by, but
he'd asked for only the two of us. She was now a laboratory assistant in
our hospital and could easily have gotten the time off.

It was growing late, almost midnight, and Lucy and I had to be at work
tomorrow, no matter how we felt. I forced myself to talk, with Lucy's
s