When he reached the Center he stood outside the entry for several minutes. It was almost midnight, but you couldn't determine that from street level. At surface level, from the courtyard between the office core and the sleeping unit, you would be able to see the night sky overhead. Elsewhere the day was all one. Activity was the same at any hour, involving different work shifts, different people, but essentially the same. Hendley felt an inner chill as he entered the residential wing and made his way up to his room. No one stopped him. His room had no lock on the door. The room was undisturbed, silent, empty. On the small plastic desk to the left of the entrance was a slip of white paper. The note, which had been delivered through the mail chute opening in the wall just above the desk, directed him to report to the infirmary. It was stamped with the time of delivery: _9:35 A.M._ In sudden anger Hendley tore the note into shreds and threw the white strips of paper into the waste chute. As they disappeared, fluttering madly in the suction, he had the odd impression that they were like the tiny figures of the Freemen he had seen in the film, vanishing into the trees. There was a knock on the door. The tall, silver-haired man in the beige coverall had a genial face, dominated by sympathetic gray eyes. He was big-boned and heavy, but he carried himself easily. His voice had an impressive rumble. "Good evening, TRH-247," he said. "You've had quite a day, haven't you?" The emblem on his sleeve, brown with a white background, showed a design of staff-and-serpent. Lettered in brown stitching were the words MORALE INVESTIGATOR. "You will come with me," the Investigator said. With a faintly indulgent smile he added, "I trust you are not going to give us any trouble?" Hendley shook his head. He had stopped running. As he stepped from his room into the bright corridor, he felt an odd tug of regret for the close security he was leaving. The room was too small, blind-walled, impersonal, uninviting. But it was a place familiar and known. It held no surprises. 4 Naked, TRH-247 sat on a cool white plastic bench and repressed a shiver. The room was not cold, but gooseflesh stood out on his arms. Though he was now alone in one of a series of examination rooms to which he had been taken, he felt ill at ease in his nakedness--an effect no doubt carefully calculated, he reflected, to increase the insecurity anyone must feel in the Morale Investigation Center. Everything in the Center was designed to create the impression that here nothing was--nothing could be--concealed. The walls, the ceilings, the floors, the spare furnishings, the instruments--all were a gleaming, immaculate white plastic, bathed in clear white light. Even the attendants and nurses, as well as the gray-haired Investigators, donned white robes over their uniforms when they entered the Center.