There was agitation now in the cafeteria, a hum of angry voices, a rising murmur that was coming dangerously close. Corriston shut his mind to it. He knelt at the guard's side and swiftly unbuttoned the unconscious man's heavy service jacket. He felt around under the jacket until he was satisfied that he could move on through the doorway with a clear conscience. The guard's heart was beating firmly and steadily. There was a reassuring warmth under the jacket as well, a complete absence of clamminess. Suddenly the guard groaned and started to roll over on his side again. Corriston didn't wait for him to complete the movement. He arose quickly and was through the door in four long strides. He preferred not to run. He was not so much fleeing as seeking a security he was entitled to, a reasonably safe port in a storm that was threatening to take away his freedom by blanketing him in a dark cloud of unjust suspicion and utter tyranny. The corridor was as deserted as he'd hoped it would be. With no one to get in his way or sound an alarm, he had no difficulty at all in locating the emergency passageway which descended in a rail-guarded spiral to the Master Sequence Selector. He kept his right hand on the safety rail as he moved downward into the darkness. For the first time he felt extremely tired. 7 The drone of machinery in a high-vaulted, metal-walled compartment awakened Corriston. It was for the most part a steady, low, continuous sound. But occasionally it ceased to be a drone, in a strict sense, and became high-pitched. It became a shrill, almost intolerable whine, impinging unpleasantly on his eardrums and preventing him from going to sleep again. For interminable minutes he lay stretched out at full length in the lidded, coffinlike rag bin into which he had crawled, a lethargic weariness enveloping him like a shroud. Above his head steel-blue surfaces crisscrossed, vibrating planes of metal and wire intricately folded back upon themselves. After a moment, when the steady drone was well in the ascendency again, he sat up and stared about him. He had a throbbing headache and there was a dryness in his throat which made swallowing difficult. He was certainly not an exceptional man in regard to such matters. During moments of crises he could remain fairly calm and self-possessed but the aftermath could be killing. He felt now as if all of his nerves had been squeezed together in a vise. He looked at his wrist watch and was amazed to discover that he had slept for eight hours. If a search had been made for him, he had no reason to complain about his luck. He hadn't even closed the lid of the bin. But perhaps the oil-stained waste he had drawn over himself had given them the idea that he was just more waste underneath. Perhaps the guards didn't give a damn whether they found him or not. It was quite possible. On a low official level a cynical desire for self-comfort could dominate the thinking of a man.