"OKAY!" shouted Charlie Jingle in desperation. "Maybe you did. And maybe, if you go in against the Champ, maybe he'll kill you! Maybe he'll smash you so hard I won't be able to put you together again. You wanna take that chance? Or you wanna settle down nice and quiet in some Pug factory, supervisin' young fighters?" "Naw!" yelled the Tanker. "I wanna take that chance! I want you to get me a fight with the Champ!" "Are you dumb, or what? Don't you know they never come back?" "All I know is this," began the Tanker. "Fourteen years we bin together. Fourteen years you stuck it out and starved it out, workin' with scraps from a junk-heap, with stumble-bums like me who've seen their day. There was times when you went hungry because the junk-heap needed oil, or wiring, or a pattern-analysis, or parts. Now you got something! Now you can be on top! You know damn well you don't want any part of that Hollywood fiasco. You got a crack at _big_ money. You gonna let it go by-the-by because you're afraid a pile of wires might get killed? Naw! We fight, and that's the way it stacks!" "You mean it, don't you, Tanker?" The Tanker said nothing. Charlie Jingle slowly rose, tired in his bones, tired in his joints. "Okay. I'll arrange it. But don't blame me if--" "I won't," said Tanker Bell tightly, and Charlie went out. In the hall, the Hollywood people were still waiting for him. Charlie shouldered past them with a half-spring to his step. * * * * * He sat in the waiting-room of the offices of Pugilists, Inc., on a plush powder-blue lounge chair chewing gum languidly. From time to time he shot a glance at the secretary sitting inside a totally enclosed desk, operating a Mento-Writer Machine, the electrical contact-buttons fixed to her temples. He watched in sleepy fascination as, every so often, she leaned over and pushed the button marked _corrector_, and there would follow an electrical hiss as the tape on the machine slid back, eliminating wrongly-formed thoughts. Charlie knew that somewhere in the room there was machinery observing him, measuring his pulse, emotional balance, probable intelligence, habits, and massing and digesting the general information so that Pugilists, Inc., would know what kind of man they were dealing with, and what approach would be best. Somewhere in this building another machine was probably purring, feeding information from memory-banks, relating all known facts and incidents regarding Charlie Jingle, his birth, environment, social and political connections, moral status, business ethics, and bank account.... Not that Charlie Jingle was so important to them, this he knew. But Pugilists, Inc., kept records and histories of every and any individual having even the remotest connection with the fight game.