And Ray replied with a smile she could only interpret as a leer, "You'd have been a right busy little mink yourself, Jan." Janet gurgled and hugged his other arm and Lynne barely repressed an anti-social impulse to snap, "Shut _up_!" at both of them. Lynne wondered what was wrong with her. Surely by this time she ought to be used to Janet's continuous and generally good-humored use of the sex challenge on any male in the vicinity. It hadn't bothered her much until the headache began two days ago. Nor had Ray's good-nature seemed such a weakness. Hitherto she had found it sweet. On impulse she said, "You two go ahead. I'm going to have a colafizz. Maybe it will knock some of the beast out of me." "You could stand having a little more of it knocked into you, darling," said Janet. This time Ray said nothing. Lynne entered a pharmabar and pressed the proper buttons, sipped the stinging-sweet retort-shaped plastitumbler slowly. The mild stimulant relaxed her a little, caused the ache in her head to subside to a dull discomfort. She felt almost human as she took one of the moving strips the rest of the way so as not to be late to work. Their studioff was situated halfway up the massive four-hundred meter tower of the brain-station. It was shaped like a cylinder cut in half vertically and contained a semicircular table with banks of buttons in front of each seat-niche. The walls were luminous in whatever color or series of colors was keyed to the problem faced by the team. At the moment it was blank, a sort of alabaster-ivory in tone. Ray and Janet were already in their places. Their conversation ceased abruptly as Lynne entered and slid into her lounger and slipped on the collar that keyed her to the machine. She wondered what Janet had been saying about her, what Ray had been replying. _I'm turning into a paranoiac_, she thought, managed a smile of sorts and said aloud, "What's today's problem?" "Feel better, honey?" Ray asked her. Lynne nodded. Janet, obviously uninterested, said, "Disposal of waste-foods so as to be useful to highway construction in Assam--without disruption of traffic-loads in Patagonia." "Another of _those_!" said Lynne with a sigh. But she got to work almost automatically, keying her impulses to fit those of Ray and Janet. For the time being personal and emotional problems were laid aside. They were a single unit--a machine that was part of the greater machine--that was in turn part of the administration of Earth. For this work they had been trained and conditioned all their lives. * * * * * Early in the century--some fifty years back--when the cybernetic machine had been regulated to their proper functions of recording and assemblage only, of non-mathematical factors, the use of human teams, working as supplements to the machines themselves, had been conceived and formulated by the Earth Government.