But our Gas Bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is used in combination with different gasses. Furthermore, we don't torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State, in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago when the work of the Operation Department was only beginning, there were yet to be found some fools who compared our Operation Department with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cut-throat. Both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus.... All this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our logical wheel, the teeth of which engage that _minus_, turn it upward and thus change its aspect. That other matter is somewhat different; the ring in the door was still oscillating, apparently the door had just closed, yet she, I-330, had disappeared; she was not there! The logical wheel could not turn this fact. A dream? But even now I feel still in my right shoulder that incomprehensible sweet pain of I-330 near me in the fog, pressing herself against me. "Thou lovest fog?" Yes, I love the fog too. I love everything and everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so good!... "So good," I said aloud. "Good?" The porcelain eyes bulged out. "What good do you find in that? If that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here around the _Integral_, they--" "Whom do you mean by 'they'?" "How do I know who? But I sense them, all the time." "Have you heard about the new operation which has been invented? I mean the surgical removal of fancy?" (There really were rumors of late about something of the sort.) "No, I haven't. What has that to do with it?" "Merely this: if I were you, I should go and ask to have this operation performed upon me." The plate expressed distinctly something lemon-like, sour. Poor fellow! He took offence if one even hinted that he might possess imagination. Well, a week ago I too should have taken offence at such a hint. Not so now, for I know that I have imagination, that is what my illness consists in, and more than that: I know that it is a wonderful illness,--one does not want to be cured, simply does not want to! We ascended the glass steps; the world spread itself below us like the palm of a hand.