Well, it was not impossible, after all. The Home Office jobs had to go to someone; the super-men who held them now--the Defoes and the Carmodys and the dozen or more others who headed up departments or filled seats on the Council of Underwriters--couldn't live forever. And the jobs had to be filled by someone. Why not me? Only one reason, really. I was not a career man. I hadn't had the early academy training from adolescence on; I had come to the service of the Company itself relatively late in life. The calendar legislated against me. Of course, I thought to myself, I was in a pretty good position, in a way, because of Defoe's evident interest in me. With him helping and counseling me, it might be easier. I thought that and then I stopped myself, shocked. I was thinking in terms of personal preferment. That was not the Company way! If I had learned anything in my training, I had learned that Advancement was on merit alone. Advancement _had_ to be on merit alone ... else the Company became an oligarchy, deadly and self-perpetuating. Shaken, I sat in the dingy little hotel room that was the best the town of Anzio had for me and opened my little Black Book. I thumbed through the fine-printed pages of actuarial tables and turned to the words of Millen Carmody, Chief Underwriter, in the preface. They were the words that had been read to me and the others at our graduation at the Home Office, according to the tradition: _Remember always that the Company serves humanity, not the reverse. The Company's work is the world's work. The Company can end, forever, the menace of war and devastation; but it must not substitute a tyranny of its own. Corruption breeds tyrants. Corruption has no place in the Company._ They were glorious words. I read them over again, and stared at the portrait of Underwriter Carmody that was the frontispiece of the handbook. It was a face to inspire trust--wise and human, grave, but with warmth in the wide-spaced eyes. Millen Carmody was not a man you could doubt. As long as men like him ran the Company--and he was the boss of them all, _the_ Chief Underwriter, the highest position the Company had to offer--there could be no question of favoritism or corruption. * * * * * After eating, I shaved, cleaned up a little and went back to the clinic. There was trouble in the air, no question of it. More expediters were in view, scattered around the entrance, a dozen, cautious yards away from the nearest knots of civilians. Cars with no official company markings, but with armor-glass so thick that it seemed yellow, were parked at the corners. And people were everywhere. People who were quiet. Too quiet. There were some women--but not enough to make the proportion right. And there were no children. I could almost feel the thrust of their eyes as I entered the clinic.