"Well," Mrs. Frost said, also noticing, "we don't want them anyway. It's better they should go over."

"I sometimes wonder what they do with all those people," Allen said. Nobody had accurate figures on the number of renegades who had fled to the Resort; because of the onus, the relatives preferred to state that the missing individual had gone to the colonies. Colonists were, after all, only failures; a noose was a voluntary expatriate who had declared himself an enemy of moral civilization.

"I've heard," Mrs. Frost said conversationally, "that incoming supplicants are set to work in vast slave-labor camps. Or was that the Communists who did that?"

"Both," Allen said. "And with the revenue, the Resort is building a vast empire in outer space to dominate the universe. Huge robot armies, too. Women supplicants are—" He concluded briefly: "Ill-used."

At the tiller of the Getabout, Ralf Hadler said suddenly: "Mrs. Frost, there's a car behind us trying to pass. What'll I do?"

"Let it pass." They all looked around. A Getabout, like their own, but with the sticker of the Pure Food and Drug League, was nosing its way to their left side. Hadler had gone white at this unforseen dilemma, and their Getabout was veering witlessly.

"Pull over and stop," Allen told him.

"Speed up," Mavis said, turning in his seat and peering defiantly through the rear window. "They don't own this lane."

The Pure Food and Drug League Getabout continued to advance on them, equally uncertain of itself. As Hadler dribbled toward the right, it abruptly seized what seemed to be its chance and shot forward. Hadler then let his tiller slide between his hands, and two fenders scraped shatteringly.

Mavis, trembling, crept from their stopped Getabout. Mrs. Frost followed him, and Allen and young Hadler got out on the other side. The Pure Food and Drug League car idled its motor, and the driver—alone inside—gaped out at them. He was a middle-aged gentleman, obviously at the end of a long day at the office.

"Maybe we could back," Mrs. Frost said, holding her manila folder aimlessly. Mavis, reduced to impotence, wandered around the two Getabouts and poked here and there with his toe. Hadler stood like iron, betraying no feeling.

The fenders had combined, and one car would have to be jacked up. Allen inspected the damage, noted the angle at which the two metals had met, and then gave up. "They have tow trucks," he said to Mrs. Frost. "Have Ralf call the Transportation Pool." He looked around him; they were not far from the Committee building. "We can walk from here."

Without protest, Mrs. Frost started off, and he followed.

"What about me?" Mavis demanded, hurrying a few steps.

"You can stay with the car," Mrs. Frost said. Hadler had already strode toward a building and phone booth; Mavis was alone with the gentleman from the Pure Food and Drug League. "Tell the police what happened."

A cop, on foot, was walking over. Not far behind him came a juvenile, attracted by the convocation of people.

"This embarrassing is," Mrs. Frost said presently, as the two of them walked toward the Committee building.

"I suppose Ralf will go up before his block warden." The picture of Mrs. Birmingham entered his mind, the coyly sweet malevolence of the creature situated behind her table, dealing out trouble.

Mrs. Frost said: "The Cohorts have their own inquiry setup." As they reached the front entrance of the building, she said thoughtfully: "Mavis is completely burned out. He can't cope with any situation. He makes no decisions. Hasn't for months."

Allen didn't comment. It wasn't his place.

"Maybe it's just as well," Mrs. Frost said. "Leaving him back there. I'd rather see Mrs. Hoyt without him trailing along."

This was the first he had heard that they were meeting with Ida Pease Hoyt. Halting, he said: "Maybe you should explain what you're going to do."

"I believe you know what I'm going to do," she said, continuing on.

And he did.

CHAPTER 4

Allen purcell returned home to his one-room apartment at the hour of nine-thirty p.m. Janet met him at the door.

"Did you eat?" she asked. "You didn't."

"No," he admitted, entering the room.

"I'll fix you something." She set back the wall tape and restored the kitchen, which had departed at eight. In a few minutes, "Alaskan salmon" was baking in the oven, and the near-authentic odor drifted through the room. Janet put on an apron and began setting the table.

Throwing himself down on a chair, Allen opened the evening paper. But he was too tired to read; he changed his mind and pushed the paper away. The meeting with Ida Pease Hoyt and Sue Frost had lasted three hours. It had been gruelling.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Janet asked.

"Later." He fooled with a sugar cube at the table. "How was the Book Club? Sir Walter Scott written anything good lately?"

"Not a thing," she said shortly, responding to the tone of his voice.

"You believe Charles Dickens is here to stay?"

She turned from the stove. "Something happened and I want to know what it is."

Her concern made him relent. "The Agency was not exposed as a vice den."

"You said on the phone you went to T-M. And you said something terrible happened at the Agency."

"I fired Fred Luddy, if you call that terrible. When'll the ‘salmon' be ready?"

"Soon. Five minutes."

Allen said: "Ida Pease Hoyt offered me Mavis' job. Director of Telemedia. Sue Frost did all the talking."

For a moment Janet stood at the stove and then she began to cry.

"Why the heck are you crying?" Allen demanded.

Between sobs she choked: "I don't know. I'm scared."

He went on fooling with the sugar cube. Now it had broken in half, so he flattened the halves to grains. "It wasn't much of a surprise. The post is always filled from the Agencies, and Mavis has been washed up for months. Eight years is a long time to be responsible for everybody's morality."

"Yes, you—said—he should retire." She blew her nose and rubbed her eyes. "Last year you told me that."

"Trouble is, he really wants to do the job."

"Does he know?"

"Sue Frost told him. He finished up the meeting. The four of us sat around drinking coffee and settling it."

"Then it is settled?"

Thinking of the look on Mavis' face when he left the meeting, Allen said: "No. Not completely. Mavis resigned; his paper is in, and Sue's statement has gone out. The routine protocol. Years of devoted service, faithful adherence to the Principles of Moral Reclamation. I talked to him briefly in the hall afterward." Actually, he had walked a quarter mile with Mavis, from the Committee building to Mavis' apartment. "He's got a piece of planet in the Sirius System. They're great on cattle. According to Mavis, you can't distinguish the taste and texture from the domestic herds."

Janet said: "What's undecided?"

"Maybe I won't take it."

"Why not?"

"I want to be alive eight years from now. I don't want to be retiring to some God-forsaken rustic backwater ten light years away."

Pushing her handkerchief into her breast pocket, Janet bent to turn off the oven. "Once, when we were setting up the Agency, we talked about this. We were very frank."

"What did we decide?" He remembered what they had decided. They decided to decide when the time came, because it might very well never come. And anyhow Janet was too busy worrying about the imminent collapse of the Agency. "This is all so useless. We're acting as if the job is some sort of plum. It's not a plum and it never was. Nobody ever pretended it was. Why did Mavis take it? Because it seemed like the moral thing to do."

"Public service," Janet said faintly.