ad prepared
me for the official session--though they didn't seem nearly so
inquisitive there.

By this time, I'd come to expect that they wouldn't believe my age
when I told them. The woman at the window behind the counter wanted to
see a "birth certificate," and I produced the one piece of
identification I had; an ancient and yellowed document they had kept
for me all these years. From the information it contained, I suspected
it might even _be_ a birth certificate; whether or not, it apparently
satisfied her, and after that all she wanted was things like my
address and height and weight. Fortunately, they had taken the
trouble, back on the ship, to determine these statistics for me,
because things like that were always coming up on television shows,
especially when people were being questioned by the police. For the
address, of course, I used the motel. The rest I knew, and I guess we
had the figures close enough to right so that at least the woman
didn't question any of it.

I had my road test about half an hour later, in a rented car, and the
examiner said I did very well. He seemed surprised, and I don't
wonder, considering the way most of those people contrive to mismanage
a simple mechanism like an automobile. I guess when they say Earth is
still in the Mechanical Age, what they mean is that humans are just
_learning_ about machines.

* * * * *

The biggest single stroke of luck I had at any time came during that
road test. We passed a public-looking building with a sign in front
that I didn't understand.

"What's that place?" I asked the examiner, and he said, as if anyone
would know what he meant, "That? Oh--the Library."

I looked it up in my dictionary as soon as I was done at the License
Bureau, and when I found out what it was, everything became a great
deal simpler.

There was a woman who worked there, who showed me, without any
surprise at my ignorance, just how the card catalogue worked, and what
the numbering system meant; she didn't ask me how old I was, or any
other questions, or demand any proof of any kind to convince her I had
a right to use the place. She didn't even bother me much with
questions about what I was looking for. I told her there were a _lot_
of things I wanted to know, and she seemed to think that was a good
answer, and said if she could help me any way, not to hesitate to ask,
and then she left me alone with those drawers and drawers full of