et the most out of it. Any good
theoretician from Hanson's world could probably make fools of these
people. Maybe that was why the Satheri had gone scrounging back through
other worlds to find men who had the necessary drive to get things done
when the going was tough.

Twice he passed abandoned villages, but there was nothing there for him.
He was coming toward forested ground now, something like the country in
which the Sons of the Egg had found refuge. The thought of that made him
go slower. But for a long time, there was no further sign of life. The
woods thinned out to grasslands, and he went on for hours more before he
spotted a cluster of lights ahead.

As he drew nearer, he saw that the lights seemed to be fluorescents.
They were coming from corrugated iron sheds that looked like aircraft
hangars strung together. There was a woven-wire fence around the
structures, and a sign that said simply: _Project Eighty-Five_. In the
half-light from the sky, he could see a well-kept lawn, and there were a
few groups of men standing about idly. Most wore white coveralls, though
two were dressed in simple business suits.

Hanson moved forward purposefully, acting as if he had urgent business.
If he stopped, there would be questions, he suspected; he wanted to find
answers, not to answer idle questions.

There was no one at the desk in the little reception alcove, but he
heard the sound of voices through a side door leading out. He went
through it, to find a larger yard with more men idling. There should be
someone here who knew more of what was going on in this world than he
did now.

His choice, in the long run, seemed to lie between Bork and the Satheri,
unless he could find some way of hiding himself from both sides. At the
moment, he was relatively free for the first time since they had brought
him here, and he wanted to make sure that he could make the most use of
the fact.

Nobody asked anything. He slowed, drifting along the perimeter of the
group of men, and still nobody paid him any attention. Finally, he
dropped onto the ground near a group of half a dozen men who looked more
alert than the rest. They seemed to be reminiscing over old times.

"--two thirty-eight an hour with overtime--and double time for
the swing shift. We really had it made then! And every
Saturday, never fail, the general would come out from Muroc and
tell us we were the heros of the home front--with overtime pay