On two of the larger cushions placed end to end, lay a blond man, long and lean. He wore a dark gray coverall that was loose as if he had lost weight. His features had a poor color, a golden tan with something unhealthy underlying it. He was, however, clean and recently shaven, and his hair was cut short, if somewhat raggedly. He stirred, then blinked into the soft light of an elliptical fixture recessed into the ceiling. With a smothered groan, he came completely awake. Very carefully, as if from long habit of avoiding painful movement, he rolled to his left side and braced one hand against the floor. The effort of sitting up made him bare his clenched teeth. The grimace was fleeting. He seemed to have some purpose that drove him on to roll completely off the makeshift bed until he knelt with both knees and his left hand on the smooth floor. As he paused to rest, he held his right hand close to his body. After a moment, he brought his right foot up opposite his left knee. Another rest period, on hand, knee, and foot, was required before he shoved himself away from the floor and slowly stood upright. The ceiling suddenly looked too low. He was tall, perhaps two inches over six feet. His features were regular without being especially handsome. A man sizing him up might have expected him to weigh about a hundred and ninety pounds, but slight hollows in his cheeks suggested that this would not be true at the moment. His eyes were blue, but the lids drooped and he seemed to focus only vaguely upon his surroundings. At length, the man turned and walked deliberately to the side of the room where a doorless opening offered egress into what looked like a corridor. The opening was in the shape of an ellipse about five feet high and three wide, beginning a few inches above the floor. He bent to thrust his head into the hall, peering in both directions but taking no heed of faint, scurrying sounds out there. Satisfied, he walked back to his bed, turned over a cushion with his toe, and kicked a small utility bag of gray plastic out into the open. The man stared at the bag for some minutes before reaching an evidently unwelcome decision. Laboriously, then, he knelt until he could slide one end under a knee and slide open the zipper with his left hand. He pawed out a few items--battery shaver, towel, deck of cards, toothbrush--which he left scattered on the floor as soon as he located the object of his search. This was a many-jointed mechanism of metal that resembled an armored centipede. It was as long as his hand and nearly as broad. He held it in his palm as if wondering what to do with it.