orders to the lancers.
Should he tell them to couch lances, or lower lances, or aim lances,
or--

* * * * *

"P. T. boys, let's go. Out to the door," a bored voice called.

Potts opened his eyes. He sighed. Again he had failed. The dayroom had
hardly changed. The chairs were all pushed together in the center of the
floor, and two patients with brooms swept little ridges of dirt and
cigarette butts toward the door. Potts sat slouched in one of the chairs
and raised his feet as the sweepers passed.

"Orville Potts, out to the door," the bored voice said.

Potts gave Wilhart a killing look when the big attendant, immaculate in
white duck trousers and short-sleeved linen shirt, passed through to the
porch. Potts wondered why so many of the attendants resembled
clean-shaven gorillas.

He arose leisurely from the chair, shuffled around the sweepers, and
entered the hall. A pair of huge, gray, faded cotton pants draped his
spindling legs in wrinkled folds, and an equally faded khaki shirt hung
from his stooped shoulders. Potts had not combed his hair in three days.
He pushed the tangled brown mass out of his eyes and threaded between
the groups of men that jammed the hall, smoking and waiting to go to the
shoe shop, or the paint detail, or psychodrama, or merely waiting.

At the locked door to the stairs, Potts stopped and glared at the six
patients already assembled.

"Hello, Orville Potts," said another long-armed, barrel-chested
attendant. This one wore a black necktie, and, so far as Potts knew, had
no name but Joe. Potts ignored Joe.

The attendant pulled a ring of keys attached to a long heavy chain from
his pocket and unlocked the door, when Wilhart brought the rest of the
P. T. boys.

"Downstairs, when I call your name," Joe said, and read from the charts
attached to his clip-board.

When his name was called, Potts stepped through to the landing and
descended the top stairs. Joe locked the door.

Potts looked up at Danny Harris, who stood motionless on the landing.
While Joe weaved down the crowded steps, Wilhart took Harris by the arm
and pushed him.

"Let's go," he said. "Here, Orville Potts, take Danny Harris downstairs
with you."

Potts said, "Do your own dragging."

"Well!" Wilhart gasped. "Hear that, Joe? Orville Potts is talking this
morning!"

Joe turned up a red, grim face. "He'll talk a lot before I'm through
with him," he promised.

The sixteen patients