The Nasty Frenchman turned red. "That's just it: we've been in and we're going to be out, right out in the cold. Can't you get that straight? Something's going to break. They're onto something--Schiml and his boys--something big. And they've got a new man, somebody they're excited about, somebody that's been knocking walls down just by looking at them, or something--" Harpo made a disgusted noise. "You mean, the old ESP story again. So maybe they go off on another spook hunt. They'll get over it, same as they did the last time or the time before." The Nasty Frenchman's voice was tense. "But they're _changing things_. And changes mean trouble." He glanced at Jeff and his eyebrows went up. "Look, they get on a line of work, they assign men to different parts of a job, they get work lined up months in advance. Then all of a sudden something new comes along. They get excited about something and they toss out a couple dozen workers, add on a couple dozen new ones, change the fees, change the work. And they end up handing the best pay to somebody who's just come in. I don't like it. I've been in this place too long. I've had too many tough, lousy jobs here to just get pushed aside because they don't happen to be interested any more in what they were doing to me before. And they never tell us! We never know for sure. We just have to wait and guess and hope." The little man's eyes blazed. "But we can pick up some things, a little here, a little there--you learn how, after a while. And I can tell you, something's wrong, something's going to happen. You can even feel it in here." Jeff's skin crawled. That was it, of course. There was something wrong. But it hadn't happened yet. It was going to happen. He stared at a huddled group around a panmumjon game, watched the bright-colored dice cubes roll across and back, across and back. A newcomer, the Nasty Frenchman had said, someone who had come in and disrupted the smooth work schedule of the Center, someone who had the doctors suddenly excited. Someone whom they were planning to use--on a spook hunt. What kind of a spook hunt? Why that choice of words? Could Conroe conceivably be the newcomer they had been talking about? It didn't seem possible that it could have happened so suddenly if Conroe were the one--but who? And what did this have to do with the ever-growing sense of impending danger that pervaded the room, right now? Jeff's eyes wandered to the dice game, and the fear in his mind suddenly grew to a screaming torrent. _Go away, Jeff. Don't watch, don't look--_He scowled, suddenly angry. Why not look? What was there so dangerous in a dice game? He moved over to the nearby huddle and watched the moving cubes in fascination. _No, Jeff, no, don't do it, Jeff--_With a curse, he dropped to his knees and reached out for the dice.