Jeff removed his shirt and trousers swiftly, carefully folding the file card and stuffing it under the inner sole of his right shoe. It wasn't exactly the perfect hiding place, if anyone were looking for the card. But not once during the conversation had Schiml's eyes strayed curiously to Jeff's shirt front. Either Schiml had not seen him take the card, or else the doctor's self-control was superhuman. And no mention of the dice had been made, either. Jeff gave his shoes a final pat, tossed his clothes on one of the gurneys lining the walls and pushed through the doors into the next room. It was huge, dome-ceilinged, with a dozen partitions dividing different sections from one another. One end looked like a classroom, with blackboards occupying a whole wall. Another section carried the paraphernalia of a complete gymnasium. The doctors were sitting in a corner that was obviously outfitted as an examination room: the tables were covered with crisp green sheeting, and the walls had gleaming cabinets full of green-wrapped bundles and instruments. Schiml sat on the edge of a desk. His eyes watched Jeff closely as he lit a cigarette, leaned back and blew rings into the air. Dr. Gabriel motioned Jeff to the table and started the physical without further delay. It was the most rigorous, painstaking physical examination Jeff had ever had. The little, squinting doctor poked and probed him from head to toe. He snapped retinal-pattern photos, examined pore-patterns, listened, prodded, thumped, auscultated. He motioned Jeff back onto the chair and started going over him with a rubber hammer, tapping him sharply in dozens of areas, eliciting a most disconcerting variety of muscular jerks and twitches. Then the hammer was replaced by a small electrode, with which the doctor probed and tested, bringing spasmodic jerks to the muscles of Jeff's back and arms and thighs. Finally, Dr. Gabriel relaxed, sat Jeff down in a soft chair and retired to a small portable instrument cabinet nearby. Dr. Schiml put out his smoke and stood up. "Any questions before we begin?" Jeff almost sighed aloud. Any questions? His nerves tingled all over and his mind was full of conjecture--wild, ridiculous guesses of what they would discover in the testing, of what the results would bring. Suppose they learned about the dice? Suppose they found out that he was a fraud, that he was in the Center on a private mission, a mission of death all his own, and no party to their own missions of death? And yet, if he had to follow through, the kind of work he would be assigned to would depend upon the results of the tests--that seemed sure. But what if they rendered him unconscious, knocked him out, used drugs?