He ran through them back toward the bathroom. It was still full of men from the downstairs john. "What time is it?" Kane yelled at someone with a paper towel pressed to his eyes. "'Bout three I'd say, what a night!" "Three--" Three o'clock in the morning, but the fact was Kane wasn't sure about the day. He backed out of the bathroom, slammed the door. "The Staff is ready, Prof," Phil said. "We're all with you, aren't we?" Laura giggled. The closet. Kane ran into the closet and slammed the door. There was something immediately cozy in the narrow black confines of the closet. Either closet walls weren't TV screens, or they had decided to let him sleep at last. Probably the former. Better convert closets to Television. In case kiddies misbehave and get locked in the closet, they'll not be alone in there.... He curled up on the floor in the pitch blackness and almost immediately began to drift off into sleep. The narrow darkness tightened around him like a thick comforting blanket on a cold night.... Sometime later--he had no idea how much time had passed--a light was blinking at his lids. He opened them slowly and stared into a flickering yellow eye. A doorhinge creaked. Up there somewhere a voice said pleasantly: "Professor Kane, your Staff is here." "Staff?" he whispered, trying to see above the blinking light. "We're here." * * * * * The TV walls were dead now, but that was hardly consoling. The overhead light was glaring with an intense whiteness. The three members of the Staff were busy, and Kane was being Tested. Kane had emerged from the closet determined to remain as rational as possible, to control his emotions, and find out what he could about his human rights as an individual. That was easy to find out and only required a few questions honestly and frankly answered. As a minority, Kane had no rights whatsoever. He had one big right, the right to think as the majority did. But that didn't count for much yet because Kane was ill, maladjusted and had anti-group feeling. The Staff was going to test him, find out what was wrong with Kane. And this of course implied that when they found out what was wrong, the difficulty would be taken care of. The Staff was kind, considerate, almost excessively polite considering the circumstances. They were young efficient men with crewcuts, briefcases, and wearing tight conservative dark suits. Only slight differences in build distinguished them one from another, but this superficial outward difference only seemed to emphasize the Staff's basic unity, its Group Spirit, its Staff Consciousness. Every public institution, every business establishment, every school, club, hotel, factory, office building--in short, everywhere that people congregated in official Groups, there was a regular Staff on duty twenty-four hours a day. They were Integrators. Glorified personnel men.