Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry." "We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied confidently. "It won't any more," Rikud said. "What won't?" "The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it." Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad thing you did, Rikud." "It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there beyond the viewport." "That's ridiculous," Chuls said. Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can eat. I hate Rikud, I think." There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it. Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's quarters. Did women eat? Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the plants in the viewport would even be better. "We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there." "We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully. Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again." "No," Rikud assured him. "It won't." "Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you, too, to show you how it is to be broken." "We must go outside--through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd gurgling sound his stomach made. A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile. Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud. The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face. "I hit him! I hit him!" Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away. It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely and positively. He became sickly giddy thinking about it.