An atmosphere of weary secrecy and suspicion pervaded the avenue. The voices of the people who jostled him dropped to mumbles as they went by. Heads were bowed or averted--but eyes glanced sharply. He let himself move forward with the crowd, meanwhile studying it closely. The misery and boredom and thwarted yearning for escape bluely shadowed in almost all the faces, was so much like that he remembered from his nightmares that he could easily pretend that he was dreaming--but only pretend. There was a distorted familiarity about some of the faces that provided undiminishing twinges of horror. Those must be individuals whose duplicates in his own world he vaguely knew, or had glimpsed under different circumstances. It was as if the people of his own world were engaged in acting out some strange pageant--perhaps a symbolic presentation dedicated to all the drab, monotonous, futile lives swallowed up in the muck of history. They were dressed, both men and women, in tunic and trousers of some pale color that the blue light made it impossible to determine. There was no individuality--their clothes were all alike, although some seemed more like work clothes, others more like military uniforms. Some seemed to be keeping watch on the others. These were treated with a mingled deference and hostility--way was made for them, but they were not spoken to. And they were spied on in turn--indeed, Thorn got the impression of an almost intolerably complex web of spying and counterspying. Even more deference was shown to occasional individuals in dark clothing, but for a time Thorn did not get a close glimpse of any of these. Everyone seemed on guard, wearily apprehensive. Everywhere was the suggestion of an elaborate hierarchy of authority. There was a steady drone of whispered or mumbled conversation. One thing became fairly certain to Thorn before long. These people were going nowhere. All their uneasy drifting had no purpose except to fill up an empty period between work and sleep--a period in which some unseen, higher authority allowed them freedom, but forbid them from doing anything with it. * * * * * As he drifted along Thorn became more a part of the current, took on its coloring, ceased to arouse special suspicion. He began to overhear words, phrases, then whole fragments of dialogue. All of these had one thing in common: some mention of, or allusion to, the activities of a certain "they." Whatever the subject-matter, this pronoun kept cropping up. It was given a score of different inflections, none of them free from haunting anxiety and veiled resentment. There grew in Thorn's mind the image of an authority that was at once tyrannical, fatherly, arbitrary, austere, possessed of overpowering prestige, yet so familiar that it was never referred to in any more definite way. "They've put our department on a twelve-hour shift."