d, from automated elevators to automated
baby-sitters.

[Illustration]

The servant announced him and then seemingly disappeared in the brief
moment while Joe was bowing formally over Nadine Haer's hand. Even
while murmuring the appropriate banalities, Joe wondered how one
acquired the ability to seemingly disappear, once one's services were
no longer needed. Each man to his own trade, he decided.

He had a date with Nadine, but it turned out that the piquant Upper
was not alone. In fact, it was obvious that she had not as yet got
around to dressing for her appointment with Joe. He had promised to
take her soaring in his sailplane. She was attired, as always, as
those dress who have never considered the cost of clothing. And, as
ever, when Joe saw her newly, after a period of a day or more away, he
was taken with her intensity and her almost brittle beauty. What was
it that the aristocrat seemed able to acquire after but a generation
or two of what they were pleased to call breeding? That aloof quality,
the exquisite gentility.

"Joe," Nadine said, "you'll be pleased to meet Philip Holland,
Category Government, Rank Secretary. Phil, Major Joseph Mauser."

The other, possibly forty, shook hands firmly and looked into Joe's
face. He had a crisp manner. "Good heavens, yes," he said. "That
remarkable innovation of using an engineless aircraft for
reconnaissance. My old friend, Marshal Cogswell, was speaking of it
the other day. I assume that in advance you purchased stock in the
firms which manufacture such craft, major. They must be booming."

Joe grimaced wryly. "No, sir. I wasn't smart enough to think of that.
Professional soldiers are traditionally stupid. What was the old
expression? They can take their shirts off without unbuttoning their
collars."

Philip Holland cocked his head, even as he chuckled. "I detect a note
of bitterness, major."

Nadine said airily, "Joe is ambitious, thinking the answer to all his
problems lies in jumping his caste to Upper."

Joe looked at her impatiently to where she sat on a Mid-Twentieth
Century type sofa.

Philip Holland said, "Possibly he's right, my dear. Each of us have
different needs to achieve such happiness as is possible to man."

To Joe, he sounded just vaguely on the stuffy side, even through the
crispness. By nature nervous and quick moving, Holland seemed to try
and project an air of calm which didn't quite come off. Joe wondered
what his relationship to Na