Dressed in his pajamas, he stood beside the metal tube, in which for so many years he had slept his regulation sleep and dreamed his regulation dreams. There was something of the finely made casket about this tube--the six foot length and three foot diameter; the lid along its top and the dull shine of the metal and the quiet of it, as though it were asleep and lying in wait for a tired body to bring it awake so that it could put the body to sleep and live in the dreams it would give to the sleeper. Beside his own tube stood its twin, where his wife had also slept and dreamed through the years. Leaning slightly forward, he felt the press of metal against his hip bones, felt the tube roll an inch with his weight. He rested one hand on the metal top, felt its warmth and smoothness, was aware of its cleanness, like that of a surgical instrument. Now he glanced at the glistening black panel that stood two feet high at the tube's head; quickly checked its four illuminated dials and three gleaming arrows and at the same time raised his hand to drop the cards into the softly glowing slot at the panel's top. Suddenly his hand stopped. He bent forward. What was this? A feeling of strangeness. Vague. Like sensing some subtle change in a picture that has hung for twenty years above the fireplace in one's home. He drew closer, squinting. The dials and meters seemed to be the same as they had yesterday and the day before and the year before. And yet? The dials. Larger? By a fraction? And the tiny gleaming arrows of the meters. Barely longer? And the marks on the dials and meters? One extra each, very faintly, like a piece of hair. He was very still for a long moment. Then he moved around the foot of his own sleeping tube, pushed between the two and stood at the head of the other one. He checked its dials and meters. They were as they had been for many years. He stepped back to the panel of his own and pressed a button. As the glistening metal top rose, silently, he ran his hand around the yawning interior, felt the downy softness and the body-like warmth. Then his hand touched a pliable metal plate. That should not be there. He stood back, remembering the workmen who had come into the house that morning for the routine checkup of the tubes. His wife had already left for work and he had just stepped through the door when they had met him in the corridor. They had gone on into the rooms and he had sensed vaguely that something was wrong. Then he had put the feeling out of his mind and gone to his work.