"You made a mistake. You said no newcomers have arrived. I'm here, Jase. I'm your man. Bring on your Russian Bear." Temple smiled grimly. CHAPTER VIII "You got to hand it to Temple's kid brother." "Yeah. Cool as ice cubes." "Are you guys kidding? He doesn't know what's in store for him, that's all." "Do _you_?" "Now that you mention it, no. Isn't a man here who can say for sure what kind of environmental challenges he'll have to respond to. Hypno-surgery sees to it the guys who went through the thing won't talk about it. As if that isn't security enough, the subject's got to be a brand new arrival!" "Shh! Here he comes." The brothers Temple entered Earth City's one tavern quietly, but on their arrival all the speculative talk subsided. The long bar, built to accommodate half a hundred pairs of elbows comfortably, gleamed with a luster unfamiliar to Temple. It might have been marble, but marble translucent rather than opaque, giving a beautiful three-dimensional effect to the surface patterns. "What will it be?" Jason demanded. "Whatever you're drinking is fine." Jason ordered two scotches, neat, and the brothers drank. When Jason got a refill he started talking. "Does T.A.T. mean anything to you, Kit?" "Tat? Umm--no. Wait a minute! T.A.T. Isn't that some kind of protective psychological test?" "That's it. You're shown a couple of dozen pictures, more or less ambiguous, never cut and dry. Each one comes from a different stratum of the social environment, and you're told to create a dramatic situation, a story, for each picture. From your stories, for which you draw on your whole background as a human being, the psychometrician should be able to build a picture of your personality and maybe find out what, if anything, is bothering you." "What's that to do with this response to environmental challenge thing?" "Well," said Jason, drinking a third scotch, "the Super Boys have evolved T.A.T. to its ultimate. T.A.T.--that stands for Thematic Apperception Test. But in E.C.R.--environmental challenge and response, you don't see a picture and create a dramatic story around it. Instead, you get thrust into the picture, the situation, and you have to work out the solution--or suffer whatever consequences the particular environmental challenge has in store for you." "I think I get you. But it's all make believe, huh?" "That's the hell of it," Jason told him. "No, it's not. It is and it isn't. I don't know." "You make it perfectly clear," Temple smiled. "The red-headed boy combed his brown hair, wishing it weren't blond."