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shelter, food, and electronic toys like television and polythene cakes with automatic winking candles.

What is going on in the world outside? What are the women doing with the civilization that man created? They give me hints and broad outlines, but how much of it is true? Selective science, for instance: the canalizing of research into functional projects. No more unprofitable ventures into high speed flight or rockets into space. The world itself is waiting to be developed. The sciences of atomics and electronics must be applied in the service of humanity and the State. The frontiers of science will only be assailed when the knowledge so gained can be usefully applied for the direct benefit of society of this planet. Science is no longer the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; it has become an instrument of the State, designed to improve and strengthen the machinery of the State. One more step towards the human anthill, perhaps . . .

I'm seventy-five today I'm an old man, though I don't feel a day over sixty. There can't be long to go for me, and I've nothing to lose any more. Just to look around, that's all I ask. To break loose for a while and be free. I keep asking, but they give evasive answers. But I've nothing to lose if I force the issue. They can't kill me while I can still produce what they want for their incubators and test tubes, and even if they do, well, death isn't so very far away in any case.

I'll do it. Tonight. Now.

Exactly what it was he intended to do, Old Gavor would have been hard put to define. There was an urgency in his mind that had to be relieved on a tactical basis, for there was no way of thinking ahead. He knew nothing of the building in which he had lived for more years than he cared to re-