Slick looked over the railing of the balcony. There were several people waiting for elevators and radial cars on the level below, all decently naked, of course, but the young man was right. Nobody else had seen Slick's shame. Hurriedly, he stepped out of the uncomfortable clothes and rolled them into a bundle. The young man took it from him. "You're very kind--thank you so much," Slick said. "Think nothing of it," the young man said. "What address should I put on this stuff?" "Just Recidivist Gardens. They'll take care of it in the office. I hope you don't think all of us at the Gardens do peculiar things like this. It's just that--well, it's a long story, but they didn't start my conditioning until I'd been in the blank five years. I'm not capable of anything really anti-social, you understand, but I get what they call sequence scrambles. Sometimes I act as if I were living in the past. I'm not crazy, though. The doctors at the Gardens assure me I'm not crazy." "Of course you're not," the young man said soothingly. "But that's a long blank--five years." "I went the limit, really. Twenty years." "Then you must be the man they call Slick!" "You've heard of my case?" "I was with you the night you made my father put us in the field." "Dickie Porter! How you have grown! I've always told your father I didn't want to meet you. He said if it was going to happen, it would, whether he introduced us or not. But I hate to face you, after taking such a large slice out of your life--" "But I'm still young. You're the one who's had the worst of it, because when you come out of the blank, you won't have so many years left. But you have the comfort of knowing you really did something worth while. Your case and mine have been invaluable to the research, particularly yours, because it was with you that my father developed the conditioning techniques. If it hadn't been for you, it would have been very difficult to find anyone willing to draw a twenty-year blank." "No. Not even a lifer would want that. But I don't take any credit for it. I did it only because I was so bull-headed I wouldn't listen to what Dr. Porter was trying to tell me." "I came out of it six months ago," the young man said. "Now I can consciously hear, and feel, and smell, just like other people. I don't have to wait till tomorrow to remember what I said to somebody today, or what tonight's dinner tasted like." * * * * * "I'm so glad to hear that!" Slick said. "Dr. Tyson says I should be coming out of it soon, too. Say, wait a minute--I heard what you said just now--I'm hearing what I said myself--why, I've had full sensory impressions for several minutes now, but it kind of sneaked up on me--" The young man seized Slick's hand and pumped it vigorously. "Congratulations! You're out of it!"