and everything in its place, you know. You don't need all
that clutter. Is the rest of your office as disorderly as this?"

He looked disparagingly about the small room, then turned toward the
door to the main communications office. Kirk moved to open the door.

At one side of the large office was a battery of file cabinets. Four
desks were arranged conveniently to them. Morely looked at this
arrangement.

"What's this?"

"Billing and Directory, sir. These are the master files of all fixed
communication subscribers. From them, we make up the semiannual
directory, its corrective supplements, and the monthly bills."

Morely frowned at the desks and files, then looked at the clerks, who
were bent over their desks. As one of the girls straightened
momentarily, he recognized her. He'd seen her earlier, in the snack bar.
He looked more closely at her desk. She had reason, he thought for that
radiation of uncertain fear he could sense.

"What's in those files?" he demanded.

"It's a complete index to all subscribers, sir." Kirk looked a little
surprised. Morely recognized that the man thought the question a little
foolish. He cleared his throat growlingly.

"Let's see one of those cards."

Kirk walked to the file, pulled a small envelope at random, and held it
out. The district leader examined it.

"Hah!" he snorted. "I thought so. Duplication of effort. This has
nothing on it that isn't in my quarters and locator files."

"There's billing information on the back, sir," Kirk, pointed out. "And
current charge slips are kept in the envelope. We use these to prepare
the subscriber bills, as well as to maintain the directory service. It's
a convenience file, to speed up our work."

Morely turned the envelope over in his hands. "Oh, yes." He opened the
envelope, to look at the slips inside. "How do you get the information
for these?"

"The charge slips come from Long Lines, sir." Kirk paused. "We get
billing information for basic billing from the counters in the dial
machine. The other information comes from installation reports and from
the quarters file section and the locator files."

* * * * *

Morely handed the envelope back.

"I can see, Kirk," he said, "that you've built up a whole subsection of
unnecessary people here." He stepped over to the file cabinets, examined
their indices, then pulled a drawer open. He pulled his notebook out,
consulted its entries, and searched out