Had he felt this same resentment himself? The question pulled Hendley erect in his seat. Was his rebellion rooted in a common envy? The possibility made him uneasy with himself. It offered an explanation for the way in which the idyllic moments with ABC-331, which had seemed so intensely important, should so quickly have receded in his memory. He had been offered a chance to glimpse the true freedom, the goal of all. Did everything fade into unimportance before that dream? Had his protest, disguised as the yearning for individuality, been no more than a subtler face of envy? "Don't have much to say for yourself, do you?" the fat distributor in the beige uniform muttered. Hendley turned to meet the bitter little eyes with a level gaze. In sudden anger he forgot the Investigator's insistence on silence. "I started as a 2-Dayman myself," he said flatly. "I'm not even a--" The copter dipped abruptly. Hendley broke off. A faint pull in his stomach told him the ship was descending. That brief tug released a tingle of excitement through his body. A stewardess appeared from the lounge, wearing a tight-fitting green uniform and a vacuous smile. She advanced straight to Hendley's seat. "You will go forward now, sir," she said, her tone a little too eager, too flatteringly awed. "The private debarking platform is through that door." Hendley rose. Glancing down once more at the fat passenger who had been so angered by the white uniform, he thought: It's just as well you don't know the truth. Envy grew vigorously enough without nourishment, as a weed forced its way through the smallest crack in solid pavement. He turned abruptly and made his way along the aisle to the narrow door at the front of the cabin. * * * * * Just before the outer panel swung open Hendley donned the sunglasses he had been issued. Even this protection did not keep his eyes from aching as the full glare of sunlight struck them. He stepped from the copter onto a concrete apron. The exit panel instantly closed behind him, and a moment later the copter rose swiftly and quietly, blasting Hendley with a column of hot air. He shut his eyes against the sun's glare and felt its weight for a long moment after the copter's funnel of air had spun away. When he opened his eyes again, squinting, he surveyed a desolate, empty world. A broad expanse of concrete--cracked, broken, uneven, erratically patched--stretched to the fringe of a brown desert, which rose in smooth shallow steps to a ring of brown mountains hazy in the distance. In all that wilderness there was neither sight nor sound of life--nothing but the deteriorating white concrete of the landing strip, the brown earth, the aching sunlight.