The Corporate Tax Debt followed closely upon the origin of the personal debt--with the same result. Within the span of a few generations the Western Organization arrived at the crude, rough form of an economic and social structure already realized in the East. The Organization owned, controlled, supplied, managed everything. Concurrently with that first century of the Organization's growth to maturity--and in large part because of its development--automated efficiency came into its own. Computers came more and more to dominate life. Under their guidance, wasteful and unrewarding ventures were gradually eliminated from man's work and his dreams--like the costly and unsuccessful attempts to invade outer space. Man's world narrowed--but man flourished. Then came the war--a residue, the Investigator asserted, from the hostilities of the pre-Organization world. Only the wisdom of the computers enabled civilization to survive, for, a score of years before the first bomb fell, the computers on the Peace Planning Boards of both East and West had directed the movement of the cities underground. The second century was one of recovery from the war, of continuing progress toward a more streamlined, automated and efficient society, and of the slow but steady return toward the surface of the earth. But if those years presented unusual obstacles--new ways of producing foods had constantly to be found, new methods of decontaminating air and water, new systems of construction and transport, new ways to accommodate a population which entered another phase of explosion in spite of the limitations of underground life--if there were difficulties, there were also advantages. "At last the opportunities were present," the Investigator cried with unflagging vigor, "for a truly controlled progress. Even the strictures of space underground became an aid rather than a deterrent. Controls were easier to put into effect, easier to enforce. And we had the tools, TRH-247--the computers to guide our way. No longer were we stumbling blindly, planned progress was possible!" "But _is_ it progress?" Hendley interjected defensively, for the first time breaking into the Investigator's narrative. "Haven't we lost a lot of things? That's what I feel. It seems to me those early societies had something we don't have. They were always moving outward, discovering new horizons, exploring--even if they blundered, they tried. We're not trying. Our world isn't expanding, it's shrinking. It has less--less meaning."