Bennington was still meditating on what Rooney could reveal as he walked around the mess hall in the center of the compound. Then he turned to consider again his prison's routine. He leaned against the south wall of the mess hall and looked across at the four barrack buildings bulking against the darkness. They were the two-story type the Army erects for temporary purposes and uses permanently. The smell from the overcrowded buildings hit his nose again as strongly as it had in the afternoon. And sounds hit his ears, soft sounds that had been muffled by the long mess hall between him and their source, low sounds further kept from him by the light wind from the north. The lights in the barracks had been off since 2100, except, of course, for the eerie-blue night lights, and the prisoners should be in their bunks, asleep or at least silent, immobile. _But why were all the lights off in the compound_, and Bennington damned himself for not seeking the answer to the question before. _Thornberry would tell me there is no need for light; that the prisoners can't escape because their drugging has made them unable, or their conditioning has made them afraid, to leave the prison._ The sounds, the flickering like fireflies or carefully thumbed flashlights, didn't come from his near right, Number One, minor crimes, or Number Two, major crimes exclusive of murder. They came from between Three and Four. Number Three. Psychos, sex deviates and murderers, with a couple of padded cells and barred windows needed upstairs, even though the inmates were conditioned. Number Four changed by the addition of an extra latrine for the second floor. Females on the first, juvenile delinquents on the second. Bennington had learned to move like a ghost, move quietly or die, on the almost forgotten battlefields of a police action in Korea. He had had a post-graduate course in the South-East Asian jungles. On the Chilean desert he had added to his skills. He moved now as he had then. But there was little reason for caution. The guards were too busy collecting their fees, the juvenile delinquents were too busy acting as ushers, with even the sex deviates from Number Three busy. The customers, of course, were far too interested in what they were buying. And there was nothing to be done tonight. Bennington snarled to himself, as he carefully made his way back to the house. But tomorrow morning.... * * * * * A good breakfast inside of him, the early morning sun brightening the scene before him, not even combined could they dispel any of Bennington's bitter anger at the memory of last night's saturnalia. He marched across the twenty-five feet separating his house from the Administration Building, a long, two-story structure on the western end of the compound.