He mentioned suicide to the girl during the next work period. She moaned a little and curled up like a fetus on the floor. After an hour, she got up and began inserting punch cards into the big machine again. She avoided Marquis. Marquis looked around, went into a corner with his back to the room, slipped the capsule out and let one of the tiny, almost invisible grains, melt on his tongue. He replaced the capsule and returned to the machine. A quiet but exciting triumph made the remainder of the work period more bearable. Back on his bed, he drifted into sleep, into what he knew was the final sleep. He was more fortunate than the others. Within an hour he would be dead. * * * * * Somewhere, someone was screaming. The sounds rose higher and higher. A human body, somewhere ... pain unimaginable twisting up through clouds of belching steam ... muscles quivering, nerves twitching ... and somewhere a body floating and bobbing and crying ... sheets of agony sweeping and returning in waves and the horror of unescapable pain expanding like a volcano of madness.... Somewhere was someone alive who should be dead. And then in the dark, in absolute silence, Marquis moved a little. He realized, vaguely, that the screaming voice was his own. He stared into the steamy darkness and slowly, carefully, wet his lips. He moved. He felt his lips moving and the whisper sounding loud in the dark. _I'm alive!_ He managed to struggle up out of the bed. He could scarcely remain erect. Every muscle in his body seemed to quiver. He longed to slip down into the darkness and escape into endless sleep. But he'd tried that. And he was still alive. He didn't know how much time had passed. He was sure of the poison's effects, but he wasn't dead. They had gotten to him in time. Sweat exploded from his body. He tried to remember more. Pain. He lay down again. He writhed and perspired on the bed as his tortured mind built grotesque fantasies out of fragments of broken memory. The routine of the unceasing bells went on. Bells, leap up. Bells, calisthenics. Bells, eat. Bells, march. Bells, work. He tried to shut out the bells. He tried to talk to 4901. 4901 covered up his ears and wouldn't listen. The girl wouldn't listen to him. There were other ways. And he kept the poison hidden in the capsule in his hollow tooth. He had been counting the steps covering the length of the hall, then the twenty steps to the left, then to the right to where the narrow corridor led again to the left where he had seen the air-lock. After the bells stopped ringing and the darkness was all around him, he got up. He counted off the steps. No guards, no alarms, nothing to stop him. They depended on the conditioners to take care of everything. This time he would do it. This time they wouldn't bring him back.