He had been trained from childhood to be a scientist of the First Order, his mental coordinates had warranted it. So he had never seen any other level but the First. Vaguely he had heard of that Second level where spartan simplicity was a virtue, luxury-less, where toil was constant, and thinking--a dangerous luxury, except where work-problems were concerned. And the columbium steel band around his young heart seemed to constrict more and more. Quickly he finished packing his personal possessions. Nothing else was allowed him--a sentence of demotion entailed complete personal loss. II "In twenty-seven seconds," an impassive voice vaguely reminiscent, predicted from the inter-connecting catwalk above, "the vat will burst, flooding the safety moat with acid." The marvelous tonal quality was startling, for in its depths there was no emotional content--almost as if it were a sexless voice prophesying the most natural thing in the world. With a swift movement that sent the muscles rippling along a Leander-like torso, Vyrl Guerlan abandoned the precision tool with which he had tackled a gigantic refractory coupling. Gleaming with perspiration, his square-cut mouth compressed into a line of fury, he gazed up at the speaker and wondered where he'd heard that voice before. Above him rose the titanic vat of processing acid, that treated the materials and converted them into gelatinous masses in the first process. "I was a First Order Scientist, I'm now an Analyst," Guerlan said brusquely. "Nothing in my tests indicates such an accident." But the whining crescendo of the vat's machinery was threnody in major and minor warning of sudden, devastating trouble, as its originally smooth purr changed to a cacophony of sound. "Twelve seconds!" Came the placid voice in reply. "Care to test _my_ prediction?" For an answer Guerlan scrambled up the hetero-plastic ladder to the upper catwalk with the agility of dread, his mane of blue-black hair tangled and dishevelled, his face white and strained. Guerlan towered beside the fragile figure of the scientist, whose wasp-like waist and marvelously slender hands gave him an elfin quality in comparison with Vyrl's streamlined strength. For an instant Guerlan felt an overpowering desire to seize the delicate body in his own great hands and break it in two. But the luminous violet eyes on the abnormally lovely face, appraising him now as if he were a particularly obnoxious specimen, held him in check with their utterly calm detachment. It was then he remembered where he'd last heard those impersonal tones, that sexless voice that seemed devoid of all emotion.