Forty-eight hours of constant striving with minimal sleep reduced their nerves to shreds.  It was hard for Justin to decide whether it was worse for himself, whose sole claim to a place in the history-books was at stake; or for Cinnamon, who had had to digest the bitter pill of arriving second, yet had valiantly applied herself to the engineering side of the project and helped turn it into reality; or for Levi, whose subtlest personality-testing procedures were being called in question thanks to a problem that was none of his responsibility; or for Herman Baumgartner, who had suddenly been pitchforked into something which last week he had not even suspected the existence of.

Come to that, it was probably not much fun for the volunteers, who were as a matter of policy kept in complete ignorance of what was being done to them.

The one person for whom Justin felt no sympathy at all was the one who turned up at the head of a string of aides - so-called - and in company of Colonel Lane when the situation in the labs was approaching boiling point.  Without the least intention he and Cinnamon were on the verge of yet another stand-up row, and the helplessness he felt whenever such a crisis developed was magnified until it was almost intolerable now that for once their common future was in the balance.

Among the instrumentation it had been deemed apposite to incorporate in the poster hall were medical detectors which assessed the condition of its occupanats by assaying anthropotoxins and other incidental metabolic substances.  Red lights had been flashing for the past hour when Chester and his companions strode in.

It was not the happiest augury for tomorrow.


Often in the past Justin had thought of the personnel assigned to the firm by "higher authority" as the walking, talking equivalent of interchangeable spare parts.  It was no special surprise to him, therefore, when as he looked up wearily from the latest of uncountable printouts confirming that all was functioning as intended he discovered he could not remember the name of the person who was saying in an awed tone, "Mr. Chester and Ms. di Cassio are here to see you!"

He knew only that any interruption was a welcome one.  Rising, smiling at Lane because so far the colonel had done him no personal affront - and moreover had lost a friend when Gunther died - he went through the automatic motions of providing chairs, except for the "aides" who took station bodyguard-fashion near the door and looked around uneasily as though in search of windows, too, which the poster hall did not possess, and signalled Levi and Herman to come and join him.  Cinnamon, scowling incredibly, marched away to the water-cooler and after drinking leaned on it, breathing hard.

Mentally Justin crossed his fingers.  Given another minute or two she would boil down her accumulated rage to a handful of well-honed insults, and after that things would be as near normal as they ever were.