The brief statement carried a world of significance. Born free! Never to have known work, worry, regimentation, routine, discipline. Never to have wanted anything. Never to have breathed the sterile, chemically purified air of the underground cities, never to have been contained in the blind-walled towers, never to have been deprived of the sun and the stars! Hendley thought of childhood with the parks and the trees and the sunlight--delightful prelude to a whole lifetime of leisure and play, with every whim or need indulged, catered to, satisfied. No wonder the young man wore his Freeman status with such nonchalance! "It must have been a wonderful life," he said, awed by the prospect. "I guess you'd say so. Sure," the Freeman said composedly. "But I never thought of it that way." "Your parents were both here when you were born?" "Uh-huh." "Then you grew up with them." Hendley felt a different envy. "I was taken away from mine after the first few years. I hardly remember them. That's the way it's done outside. I didn't see much of them after I was six. From then on it was schools, work training--you never had that." "Oh, I had schools," the young Freeman protested. "The best. Nothing's too good for a Freeman, you know." He laughed. "Those school computers--they tried to drill it into us. I guess I didn't learn as much as I should have, but I was exposed to it, anyway. As for my parents, I never saw much of them. They were always too busy getting their jolts. This was all new to them when I was a kid. Like with you." "Jolts?" "Laughies. Fun. Pleasure-pures. You know." "Are they still here? I mean--alive?" "They're around somewhere," the young man said indifferently. "I saw the old boy on a hunt about six or seven suns ago." "A hunt! That's where that girl--" Hendley broke off. "I heard someone talking about a hunting party. What's that all about?" "You don't know about the hunt?" The young man looked at Hendley oddly. "No. How could I?" "That's right." The Freeman hesitated. "We'll get to the hunt later. First you have to get the dimensional view--you, with depth. Behind the scenes. And I'm just the little Freeman who can push the right buttons. How about it?" "I'm with you." The Freeman grinned. "We ought to have names. What's yours?" "TRH-247." "Mine's a laughie. NIK-700. You can call me Nik," he said. "Everybody does. We don't run a very tight ship here," he added with humor. "That's an old saying. I heard it from a computer in one of those back-time courses in school." Hendley was unfamiliar with the phrase, but he guessed its meaning. As he rose with his new friend he thought: The Organization is a tight ship. As tight as computer ingenuity can make it. Freedom is escape from that, too. * * * * * "You have casinos in the outside world, I suppose?" Nik asked.