That had been his original mistake, Alan thought. He saw he had a lot to learn about this strange, unfriendly world if he were going to stay here long. He wondered if anyone had missed him back at the Enclave, yet. Maybe it won't take too long to find Steve, he thought. I should have left a note for Dad explaining I'd be back. But---- "Here we are," Hawkes said, nudging him. The door in the Overshoot's side opened and they got out quickly. They were on another rooftop. Ten minutes later they stood outside an immense building whose walls were sleek slabs of green pellucite, shining with a radiant inner warmth of their own. The building must have been a hundred stories high, or more. It terminated in a burnished spire. "This is it," Hawkes said. "The Central Directory Building. We'll try the Standard Matrix first." A little dizzy, Alan followed without discussing the matter. Hawkes led him through a vast lobby big enough to hide the _Valhalla_ in, past throngs of Earthers, into a huge hall lined on all sides by computer banks. "Let's take this booth here," Hawkes suggested. They stepped into it; the door clicked shut automatically behind them. There was a row of blank forms in a metal rack against the inside of the door. Hawkes pulled one out. Alan looked at it. It said, CENTRAL DIRECTORY MATRIX INFORMATION REQUISITION 1067432. STANDARD SERIES. Hawkes took a pen from the rack. "We have to fill this out. What's your brother's full name?" "Steve Donnell." He spelled it. "Year of birth?" Alan paused. "3576," he said finally. Hawkes frowned, but wrote it down that way. "Work card number--well, we don't know that. And they want five or six other numbers too. We'll just have to skip them. Better give me a full physical description as of the last time you saw him." Alan thought a moment. "He looked pretty much like me. Height 73 inches, weight 172 or so, reddish-blonde hair, and so on." "Don't you have a gene-record?" Blankly, Alan said, "A what?" Hawkes scowled. "I forgot--I keep forgetting you're a spacer. Well, if he's not using his own name any more it may make things really tough. Gene-records make absolute identification possible. But if you don't have one----" Whistling tunelessly, Hawkes filled out the rest of the form. When it came to REASON FOR APPLICATION, he wrote in, _Tracing of missing relative_. "That just about covers it," he said finally. "It's a pretty lame application, but if we're lucky we may find him." He rolled the form up, shoved it into a gray metal tube, and dropped it in a slot in the wall. "What happens now?" Alan asked.