booth here," Hawkes suggested. They stepped into it;
the door clicked shut automatically behind them. There was a row of
blank forms in a metal rack against the inside of the door.

Hawkes pulled one out. Alan looked at it. It said, CENTRAL DIRECTORY
MATRIX INFORMATION REQUISITION 1067432. STANDARD SERIES.

Hawkes took a pen from the rack. "We have to fill this out. What's your
brother's full name?"

"Steve Donnell." He spelled it.

"Year of birth?"

Alan paused. "3576," he said finally.

Hawkes frowned, but wrote it down that way.

"Work card number--well, we don't know that. And they want five or six
other numbers too. We'll just have to skip them. Better give me a full
physical description as of the last time you saw him."

Alan thought a moment. "He looked pretty much like me. Height 73 inches,
weight 172 or so, reddish-blonde hair, and so on."

"Don't you have a gene-record?"

Blankly, Alan said, "A what?"

Hawkes scowled. "I forgot--I keep forgetting you're a spacer. Well, if
he's not using his own name any more it may make things really tough.
Gene-records make absolute identification possible. But if you don't
have one----"

Whistling tunelessly, Hawkes filled out the rest of the form. When it
came to REASON FOR APPLICATION, he wrote in, _Tracing of missing
relative_.

"That just about covers it," he said finally. "It's a pretty lame
application, but if we're lucky we may find him." He rolled the form up,
shoved it into a gray metal tube, and dropped it in a slot in the wall.

"What happens now?" Alan asked.

"Now we wait. The application goes downstairs and the big computer goes
to work on it. First thing they'll do is kick aside all the cards of men
named Steve Donnell. Then they'll check them all against the physical
description I supplied. Soon as they find a man who fits the bill,
they'll 'stat his card and send it up here to us. We copy down the
televector number and have them trace him down."

"The _what_ number?"

"You'll see," Hawkes said, grinning. "It's a good system. Just wait."

They waited. One minute, two, three.

"I hope I'm not keeping you from something important," Alan said,
breaking a long uncomfortable silence. "It's really good of you to take
all this time, but I wouldn't want to inconvenience you if----"

"If I didn't want to help you," Hawkes said sharply, "I wouldn't be
doing it. I'm Free Status, you know. That means I don't have any boss
except me. Max Hawkes,