“Are you going to the show tonight?” the doctor asked cheerfully.
“I don’t know.”
For two weeks Hendley had waited anxiously for the show to return. The first time Ann had not appeared with the troupe. The following week she had been there. He had recognized her the moment she appeared in the red spotlight. That night had been worse than the other. He could only watch at a distance. There was no way to communicate with her. When the audience reaction began to clarify itself on the giant thought-screen, Hendley could not watch it. Then the lottery began…
“I think we can leave the bandages off now,” the doctor said. One by one he flexed the fingers of Hendley’s left hand. “How does that feel?”
“It hurts.”
“But not too bad, eh? You’ll find it stiff for a while, and you’ll have to be a little careful of it, but it’s coming along fine. You’re lucky. You mend quickly.”
Only the body mended, Hendley thought. The other, the deeper wound, did not heal. “Tell me something, Doctor,” he said abruptly. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Eh? I just told you. You’re coming along much better than we had any right to expect.”
“I don’t mean the hand. I mean—why am I different? Why do I feel things that others don’t seem to feel? Not just here in the camp—I know there are some who don’t adjust to freedom—but outside, too. Why didn’t I fit in? Why did I feel that something was wrong?”
The doctor sat gingerly on the edge of the bed in Hendley’s room, as if the question made him move with caution. “What makes you think you’re different?”
“I know I am! Nik was different, too, but not in the same way.”
“Freedom sickness,” the doctor said absently.
“But you can’t call mine freedom sickness,” Hendley argued. “I haven’t been here long enough. And I didn’t belong in the outside Organization either. I don’t belong anywhere! To me the whole system seems wrong, but why am I the only one who feels that way?”
“You’re not the only one.”
“Maybe not, but there aren’t very many like me. I told you how that Morale Investigator reacted. I was a prize specimen to him. I was something new! That’s why I was sent here.”
The doctor sighed. “This is a little out of my field,” he said thoughtfully. “But I think I can make an educated guess about your trouble.”
“Then guess, for Organization’s sake!”
“I suspect that your genes failed to respond to the pre-birth treatment in the Genetic Center.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, you know that the chemistry of the human cell is organized in a very specific pattern. Research proved long ago that artificial mutations could be produced in the genetic material of the cell. What is not so widely known is that the series of tests in the clinics of the Genetic Center, which every expectant mother undergoes in the second month of pregnancy, are actually a course of treatment.”
“What kind of treatment? And what does this have to do with me? Are you saying that my genes are mixed up?”
“In a way. But not exactly.”
“You’re not making sense!”
“Be patient.” The doctor began to pace the room. His habitual good humor had given way to an absorbed frown. He stopped suddenly before Hendley. “Why do you suppose that Organization society has remained so stable for so many years? Because the system works best for the most people? That doesn’t explain it. Human hereditary factors, left to themselves, are too complex. But once it was proved that the basic molecular pattern which determines the direction life will take—determines form, shape, inherited characteristics, temperament, in short makes you what you are—could be altered, the way was clear. Through early treatment unwanted characteristics, psychological as well as physical, could be eliminated. That’s why there is virtually no physical deformity or mental illness within the Organization. A tremendous achievement, my friend, but the treatment goes beyond such genetic errors. It is also designed to eliminate unstable personality traits. That’s why the Organization has so few anarchists, so few rebels, so few questioning enough to perceive that they might be unhappy or their lives useless.” The doctor paused, then added, “The treatment is not infallible, of course.”
Hendley stared at him. “It failed with me? I’m one of the—the imperfect ones?”
“I wouldn’t use that word. I’d use the term—normal. For some reason or other your genetic material remained unaffected by the treatment. You’re a natural man.”
For several minutes there was silence in the room while Hendley pondered the doctor’s words. At last he said, “It’s too late now, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I understand late treatment has been tried—even experiments with adults—but without success.”
Hendley rose and went to the window. It was late afternoon and the sun was low above the horizon. He regarded its fiery beauty with bitterness. “What about you?” he asked the doctor. “You know all this, but you’re happy.”
The doctor smiled. “I couldn’t be anything else. I’m… made that way.”
“And I’m a misfit!”
“There are different ways of looking at that.” The doctor crossed the room to stand beside Hendley at the window. The smile was back on his lips, but it remained pensive. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“What?”
“I envy you.
The phrase seemed disturbingly familiar. Hendley tried to remember who else had spoken it to him. The answer popped unexpectedly into his mind. The Morale Investigator had voiced a similar envy on the morning Hendley departed for the Freeman Camp.
He did not smile at the irony.
It was an hour after sunset when Hendley saw the visitor. He was on his way to the main Rec Hall, being unable to stay away on the night of the show in spite of the torment he knew he would endure if Ann was on stage. The glimpse of a red sleeve emblem out of the corner of his eye was enough to make him jump hastily and precariously off the moving walk. Regaining his balance, he looked around eagerly. The familiar identification symbol stood out clearly among the mass of otherwise identical white uniforms. This was the first visitor Hendley had seen since his arrival in the Freeman Camp, and he knew that it was more than curiosity, more than the memory of an experience shared by the stranger, which made his heart pound as he began to follow the red beacon on the visitor’s arm.
The man seemed awed by the excitement and activity swirling around him. Hendley wondered if he, too, had gazed about so eagerly on his first night, if his eyes had been alight with the same glitter, if his lips had been parted in a continuous expression of wonder. The visitor was a solidly hewn block of a man with coarse black hair, the outline of a heavy dark beard, and thighs and biceps so thick they stretched the unusually loose-fitting coverall taut. But in spite of his muscular bulk, the stranger moved with surprisingly light, quick steps. Standing still, he looked heavy and ponderous; in motion he conveyed an impression of dynamic strength held in check by an instinctive caution.
His alert, inquiring gaze missed nothing. Hendley had been following him for no more than a few minutes before he realized that his own curiosity had been too obvious. The visitor, pausing before the entrance to a dance hall, turned suddenly to stare directly at Hendley. The glance was bright and hard, but the man’s mouth was smiling in a friendly way.
Approaching him casually, Hendley returned the smile. “Your first night?” he called out heartily.
“Was I that obvious?” the visitor asked. “It’s no wonder. This is the biggest night of my life!”
“I guess everyone feels that way,” Hendley said. He tried to remember how Nik had first cultivated him, but he quickly realized that the circumstances had been different. Nik had been prepared. He’d been waiting for a visitor to come. His every move had been carefully planned. Was it madness to try to repeat his tactics without any preparation, without help, without even a plan of attack?
“I’ll bet there’s a lot I’ll miss on my own,” the visitor said. The comment was almost too fortuitous, as if he were offering himself as a victim. “You must know everything there is to see.”
Hendley could not resist the temptation. “I’ll be glad to show you around,” he said.
“Great!” The muscular visitor punched Hendley enthusiastically on the arm. “I didn’t really want to ask, but I’ve only got one night, and I certainly don’t want to pass up anything special just because I didn’t know it was there!”
Hendley nodded. For a moment he couldn’t speak, his jaws locked by the pain in his arm. The visitor had hit him lightly, almost playfully, but the blow had carried a numbing force. It was absurd to consider trying to overpower such a man. If he had any suspicion at all, any warning, he could break Hendley’s spine with a casual pressure of those thick arms.
But he wouldn’t be expecting anything, Hendley thought. He was too excited by the camp’s promised pleasures. He would have no reason to suspect anything. And even a powerful man was vulnerable to a blow on the skull by a heavy enough weapon—a rock, for instance, or a makeshift club. All that was necessary was to lure him into a dark, deserted place where a weapon was handy. It needed daring, quickness, determination, but the reward would be worth the risk. Anyway, Hendley had nothing to lose. If the opportunity failed to present itself, he would simply not act. He would be no worse off than he was now.
“Let’s start with this place,” the visitor suggested, pointing to a nearby building. “What is it?”
“A bowling alley.”
The stranger dismissed this sport. “We have those outside. Do you have PIB’s here?”
“Of course.”
“Better than ours, I’ll bet. Can anyone go anytime he wants?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
The tour began. The visitor’s interests turned out to be catholic, his energies inexhaustible, his capacity for food and liquor and sex prodigious. Before long Hendley, beginning to feel somewhat heady, gave up the possibility of getting the stranger drunk. Halfway through the evening, the visitor inquired about the yellow mushroom building on the hill. Hendley told him about the Rec Hall’s casino and the weekly show, climaxing in the lottery. The visitor’s eyes flashed. “That’s how I like to spell pleasure!” he exclaimed, knocking Hendley breathless with a clap on the back. “Let’s go!”
“It’s early yet,” Hendley said. After a moment’s hesitation he suggested, “A lot of things go on in the parks that you haven’t seen.”
“I saw plenty there in the daytime. It’s the big show for me!”
Hendley forced a laugh. “Don’t judge our night sports by daylight. Come on, we’ll take a shortcut through the park and then up the hill.”
“You’re the Freeman!” the visitor said. “Lead on!”
Hendley tried to think clearly and calmly. Surprise was the important thing. Surprise—and an effective weapon. It would not do to miss. He had already decided on the place, a small clearing not far from the main road through the central park. The spot was well screened by bushes and trees. Here he could hide the visitor’s body until he had time to fetch the doctor to remove the man’s identity disc—or found some other way of cutting it loose.
They started along a path leading into the park. As they approached the clearing Hendley had mentally selected, his eyes searched the path for the weapon he needed. Soon he saw it—a bed of smooth stones defining a flower bed, some of them as big as a fist, a short distance ahead. He let the visitor take the lead along the path. “Be careful through here,” he said. “Sometimes there are prowlers at night.”
“Prowlers?”
“We have crime here. Freedom doesn’t breed constraint. It’s best to be on guard. You might keep an eye on the bushes as you go. You watch the left, I’ll watch the right.”
The big man peered curiously into the shadows to the left of the path. The bed of rocks was on the right. When they drew opposite it Hendley stooped quickly. His hand closed over a large stone that shaped itself to his palm. He rose hastily. The visitor’s back was toward him.
“I don’t see anything,” the stranger said. “Say, maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea coming this way. What is it we were supposed to see?”
Now, Hendley thought. Get him beyond that screen of trees into the clearing. Any pretext will do. He suspects nothing. It will be quick and painless. With his thick skull, the visitor was unlikely to be hurt seriously even by a heavy blow. And he’d undoubtedly be glad to wake up and find himself a Freeman. He liked his pleasures! It might even be possible to talk him into making the switch without violence, although Hendley didn’t want to risk everything on that chance.
“Well?” the visitor demanded. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Where’s that nighttime fun you mentioned?”
Hendley’s arm sagged. The tension went out of his body. At that moment the visitor turned. He seemed to stiffen slightly, but otherwise he betrayed no reaction. In a tone that held no more than ordinary curiosity, he asked, “What’s that you’ve got there?”
“Just being cautious,” Hendley said. “I thought I heard something off there in the bushes. You never know what you’ll run into in the park at night.”
“Yeah?”
The visitor’s voice had sharpened. His hard, bright eyes were fixed on Hendley’s face. He was suspicious now, but it didn’t seem to matter. The moment had passed for action, and Hendley had failed. He’d been unable to bring himself to the violence needed. The whole impromptu plan had been reckless, ill-conceived, doomed to failure. But even if it had not, he had lacked the necessary ingredient to bring it off: callous indifference to another man’s fate.
“I think we’d better get back,” he said. “The park seems to be a washout tonight. Usually there’s more going on that makes it worth the risk.”
The visitor laughed softly. “What’s your hurry? I’d like to see everything this place has to offer.”
Hendley regarded him uneasily. The man’s response was unnatural. “We don’t want to miss the show,” Hendley said.
“You told me we had plenty of time.”
Hendley glanced nervously over his shoulder toward the main walk. It was not far, but a bend in the path shut them off from the view of anyone riding through the park, just as Hendley had planned. He drew back, turning along the way they had come, but the visitor’s thick hand caught his arm in an unbreakable grip. “You’re not playing games with me, are you?” he asked softly.
Frightened now, Hendley stared at him. The stranger, he realized suddenly, had been too eager to be alone with him, too ready to dare the mysteries of a situation about which he knew nothing. Why? At that moment it seemed obvious that the visitor was not the type to walk innocently into an ambush. Had the intended victim all along been cunningly baiting his own trap?
“I’m not playing games,” Hendley said. Then, determined to force the visitor to show his hand, he added, “But I’m beginning to wonder about you.”
The big man’s mouth smiled. “Just why did you bring me here?” he asked.
Before Hendley could answer there was a noise behind them. Both men turned. Shadows moved on the path, solidifying into the shapes of Freemen. They barred the way back to the main walk.
“What’s this?” the visitor asked sharply. “Some friends of yours?”
“No!” Hendley gasped. “A pleasure pack. They roam the parks at night!”
“Pleasure packs, eh?” The visitor was still smiling as the silent figures moved closer. There were four of them. Without a word they fanned out in a practiced encircling movement. They would strike noiselessly, Hendley knew. Not that it mattered, since few Freemen passing along the main walk would answer a cry for help.
The attack came in a sudden rush. The men paired off, two of them closing in on each of their intended victims. They carried clubs and knives. Hendley dodged a blow from a club and struck out blindly with the rock he still carried in his hand. He felt no hesitation. This was no premeditated violence but self-defense. The solid impact of the rock against bone was strangely satisfying. But he had no time to congratulate himself as the stunned attacker fell away. The other man closed with him, grabbing his arm, preventing another blow with the rock. They fell together to the ground. Grunts and cries of pain came from nearby, but Hendley could see nothing of the other fight.
Suddenly he was flat on his back, the arm holding the rock pinned by the attacker’s knee. Hendley looked up at a distorted grin of pleasure. An arm rose and a knife blade flashed. He tried to twist free but he knew that he was already too late.
The knife traveled no more than a few inches toward his chest. Huge hands seized the attacker and hauled him bodily into the air. Hendley heard a gasp of pain. The knife dropped to the ground beside him. There was a soft thud, and the attacker’s limp figure flew through the air. It dropped in a shapeless heap.
The visitor grinned down at Hendley. “I guess you did hear something in the bushes after all,” he said. “But they weren’t much.”
Hendley scrambled to his feet and looked around. Three of the attackers lay sprawled on the ground, inert. Hendley had caught one of them with his first blow. The visitor, he realized with amazement, had overpowered the others alone—armed men!—with his bare hands. And he was not even breathing quickly.
“One of them got away,” the visitor said. “But he won’t be in a hurry to start any more fights. Not for a while.”
Hendley remained speechless. He saw that he was between the visitor and the main walk. That was all he needed. This was no man to confront alone in the isolation of the park. He began to back away, watching the muscular stranger warily.
“I’ve been waiting for you to make the move,” the visitor said. “You must be satisfied about me by now.”
“Satisfied? What do you mean?”
The visitor stepped toward him. “The code word is BAM,” he said softly.
The sound was ridiculous in that moment of tension, like a child’s play word. But Hendley did not laugh. The visitor was frowning. This was no game. The word had a special meaning of some kind, like the key to a puzzle which seems unimportant and insignificant by itself but acquires a unique value when properly used. Had the visitor been fencing with him all evening, waiting for him to come up with the magic word?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hendley said.
The visitor smiled. “That’s the wrong answer,” he said.
Without warning he charged. Only the fact that Hendley was already poised on the verge of flight enabled him to elude the big man’s rush. A thick arm caught at his waist, but he was already spinning clear. The fabric of his uniform tore as he broke loose.
Then he was running along the path toward the moving walk and safety, not looking back, not daring to waste even the fraction of a second it would have taken to glance over his shoulder.
For the second time in three weeks, ABC-331 was absent from the spectacle on the stage of the auditorium. Hendley stared down at the spotlighted dancers. Each movement, each graceful pose, each tantalizing glimpse in the nearest materializer brought achingly to memory Ann’s willowy beauty. He could hear the audience breathing and muttering and shifting about in quickening excitement, like some huge invisible animal in the darkness of the theater. He felt relief that she was not there, exposing her beauty to the audience like an offering, but at the same time he felt cut off from her.
If only he could communicate with her in some way, let her know that he was alive and safe in the camp, even though he was a prisoner. At least the knowledge would give her some hope.
Hope for what?
The clear, cold question jarred him. Ann saw things with a more candid eye than his. She would know what confinement in the camp meant. She would not blind herself to the impossibility of escape. She would be relieved to know that he was safe, glad, even happy—but she would know that his assumption of a Freeman’s role erected a wall far more solid and impregnable than any previous barrier of social status.
Shadowy images flickered on the great thought-screen above the stage. Lurid shapes of desire, created by the minds of Freemen who had exhausted every normal area of pleasure, writhed and twisted on the screen like fugitives from the deepest caverns of the imagination. Dreading what was coming, loathing it because Ann had been involved in that same monstrous pantomime, Hendley turned away from the screen. And in that moment, when his attention shifted, he felt again the pressure of eyes on the back of his neck.
He looked around. Three rows back, sitting almost directly behind Hendley, the visitor quietly watched the performance on stage. He was smiling thinly.
It could have been coincidence. Hendley had come to the Rec Hall directly from the park. The show had already started, and the only remaining seats were in the balcony. The visitor must have arrived shortly after him, and it was natural that he should have found a seat nearby. But Hendley knew that the big man’s presence was no accident. His seat had been deliberately chosen.
Why? What did he hope to accomplish? In the crowded Rec Hall Hendley was safe from attack—and in any event why should the man pursue him? Was it because of that ridiculous-sounding message Hendley had failed to recognize?
The visitor’s gaze started to swivel toward him. Hendley swung quickly back toward the screen. The pressure was repeated at the back of his head. BAM, he thought. What could the word mean?
The show went on. The erotic audience impression of it danced above the stage on the giant screen. And at last the lottery began. Through it all Hendley sat and watched, torturing himself with fears about Ann’s absence and what it meant. And whenever his self-absorption wavered, he would become conscious of the patient watch of the visitor sitting behind him.
The last number was called, the last nude figure stood submissively in the spotlight of stage center. The light-curtain fell, obscuring the stage. There was a rush of movement toward the exits. Hendley started up the aisle, turned quickly and pushed his way through the crowd toward another escalator. The visitor was unfamiliar with the camp. If Hendley could reach the sidewalk strip ahead of him without being seen, he could easily elude pursuit.
The exits were jammed. Hendley shoved and jostled his way forward, found an opening and slipped through. He rode the escalator down to the lobby, where the milling crowd again offered a human screen. He began to breathe more easily. The bar on one side of the lobby offered a natural escape route. He fought his way through the clamoring horde of drinkers and ducked out a side door. From there it was only a short distance across the grounds surrounding the Rec Hall to the moving walk. He broke into a run.
He stopped at the edge of the walk to look back. The feeling of triumph drained out of him in a rush. The hulking figure of the visitor was outlined by the lights from the Rec Hall. He paused as Hendley did, regarding him impassively, no more than thirty feet away.
Staring back at the stranger, for the first time Hendley felt within him the coiling presence of hatred.
Hendley was, he knew, half-drunk. The condition was becoming a habit, as indeed it was with an apparent majority of Freemen. The easy availability of liquor was a superficial reason. More pertinent was the need to dull one’s senses and artificially stimulate the mind. Pleasure seemed keener when, as in a photograph, it was brought sharply into focus against a blurred background.
The casino, as always, was crowded. It was therefore safe. Hendley had had only a few chips, and he had soon lost these. Now, observing the action at one of the tables, he felt boredom nibbling at him companionably like an old friend. Gambling meant nothing unless you could play.
He searched the crowd for the hard, cruel face of the visitor. It was not visible. But he was there somewhere, patiently watching and waiting. You have a long wait, Hendley thought. Tomorrow you must be on the copter heading back to the city. I can wait till then. Sleep is a bore anyway, a waste.
If only he had some chips!
A winner at the table, raking in a pile of chips, grinned at Hendley. “No chips, friend?” he asked.
“Not just at the moment,” Hendley said eagerly. “But I feel lucky. I’d be glad to share my winnings if you’ll stake me.”
The player laughed. “Your kind of luck I don’t need,” he said. “Why don’t you try the Big Game,” he added jeeringly. “You don’t need chips there.”
“You don’t?” Hendley glanced quickly at the big table in the exact center of the casino. It was inactive, as it usually was, guarded only by the silent, motionless robot-dealer.
“You mean you didn’t know?” the player asked.
“No. How does it work?”
The player shrugged with an indifference that might have been exaggerated. “It’s you against the house,” he said. “You have a chance to win ten thousand chips—if you feel lucky.”
“What if you lose?” Hendley could feel the excitement building in him. He didn’t really care what the penalty was for losing. Here was something different. He had the rest of the night to get through somehow. He couldn’t risk leaving the Rec Hall while darkness held and the visitor waited. The game would occupy the time, and bring its own exhilaration.
“You don’t think about losing,” the player said evasively. “What gambler does? The game ends at dawn, no matter who’s ahead. If you last out till then, you win.”
Sober, Hendley would have persisted in his questioning. Instead he stared at the big table. What could happen to him if he lost? He was a Freeman. Having everything, he had nothing to lose. Anyway, he did feel lucky. And the prize was huge—enough chips to gamble with for weeks! Longer than that, for you always stood a better chance of winning if you had enough chips to ride out the cold streaks and plunge when you were hot.
With a kind of aggressive, defiant determination he strode through the casino. The robot-dealer at the center table looked up as he approached. His plastic face was expressionless, or rather it was set in a perpetual attitude of slightly curious amiability. He could not care whether Hendley played or did not play, won or lost. That in itself was an advantage, Hendley thought. Desire had something to do with luck.
He slipped onto a stool across the table from the robot. “I want to play,” he said.
With the instant response of the machine, the robot placed two identical stacks of large chips between them. They were a half inch more in diameter than the usual casino chips, with smooth white surfaces marked by a red cross. The robot pushed one of the stacks toward Hendley. Depressing a button, he activated two pairs of small viewscreens, one set for each player. Only one of each pair of viewers was visible to the opposing player, the other being the player’s own record of his moves.
There was a faint whirring, like an old-fashioned museum clock winding up to strike, and the robot’s voice mechanism announced, “We play ‘100’ game.”
It was to be a direct, head-on contest. Hendley knew the game, whose rules were simpler than the play actually was in practice. It was an electronic version of the child’s trick of guessing how many fingers are pointing when the hands are held out of sight, except that the possible combinations of numbers were infinitely greater, with one hundred as the maximum total. Bets were made for high or low figures, with each player free to draw additional numbers after the first two or to stand with what he had. The odds were, on the face of it, even. But Hendley knew that the robot’s precision instrument of a brain was capable of exact, rapid mathematical calculations far beyond his powers. He had to offset that edge by turning his human fallibility into an asset—by doing the unexpected. If he allowed any consistent sequence to develop in his tactics, the robot would instantly detect and take advantage of the fact. Hendley forced himself to play erratically, hoping that he would not unconsciously fall into a pattern of inconsistency.
In the two-player duel the moves went quickly. In the beginning Hendley played and bet conservatively. For a while he seemed to be holding his own. Then, very slowly at first, like a runner inching into the lead in a closely contested race, the robot’s stack of chips began to grow, Hendley’s to shrink.
A crowd gathered almost imperceptibly. Absorbed in the intricacies of betting, Hendley did not notice the gradual swelling of onlookers. Then, it seemed simultaneously, he became aware of increasing tension, a tightening of hidden springs within his body, and of the crowd surrounding the big table. It was unlike an ordinary gathering in one thing: its peculiar stillness. No one moved or spoke. When Hendley looked around, every eye swiveled toward him. Among the intently watching faces he saw that of the visitor, whose expression was no longer confident. He seemed puzzled. There was in the other faces a controlled anticipation that increased Hendley’s nervousness. The crowd’s strange silence, its air of breathless waiting, seemed somehow ominous.
He started to reach for a glass—drinks were brought regularly to the table. He’d been drinking automatically, without thinking. Now he drew back his hand. He’d already had far too much. Although his brain seemed remarkably clear, like the cloudless sky over the Freeman Camp on a cool night, he realized that that drunken clarity could be deceptive.
He gave all of his attention to his plays. Shortly after he returned to this grim concentration, the tide of the duel changed. Hendley thought he detected a fixed sequence in the robot’s guesses. Betting experimentally, he won. Again. Another win. With increasing sureness he raised his bets boldly. In half a dozen plays he recouped all of his losses and more. The run continued. He couldn’t lose. Then, abruptly, the pattern of the robot’s moves disappeared. Hendley grinned. He had three-fourths of the chips on the table now—he had the advantage. More important, he had proved to himself that the robot was vulnerable. A machine didn’t adjust as quickly as a human being, perhaps because it felt no fear.
Hearing a muttering in the crowd, Hendley stared at the ring of faces. He was surprised to see a number of the Freemen smiling at him encouragingly. So they were not all waiting for him to lose! Some of them appeared disappointed, but almost as many were pulling for him. The knowledge buoyed him tremendously.
The game dragged on. Hendley kept searching for another weakness in the robot’s play, but without success. The stacks of chips became even again. Hendley kept varying his guesses, changing his bets at random from high to low number combinations, but slowly the robot drew ahead again. At last Hendley admitted to himself that, if the game went on long enough, the robot would inevitably win. But the game ended at dawn. If Hendley held out until then he could cash in his chips. He wondered how long he had been playing. Hours, it seemed. His body ached, and the continuous tension had begun to affect his nerves. That was part of the robot’s strength, he thought. It was tireless. Moreover, it did not make the small errors Hendley occasionally made from carelessness or lack of concentration. With the rest of the play relatively even, these infrequent slips alone could account for the robot’s superiority. It seemed clear that the robot had made corrections to prevent the one serious blunder of consistency it had made. That had been Hendley’s only chance to win. Now all he could hope to do was stave off defeat until the first light of day.
The end came with the suddenness of a physical blow. Only afterward did Hendley realize that the robot, like a fighter sensing weakness and stepping up the tempo of his attack, had quickened the speed of play. Hendley lost several bets in succession. Instinct warned him that so many losses could not be accounted for by chance alone, but he was already panicking. He cut his bets down to the minimum. Still the robot won. Frantically, Hendley stalled for time as much as he could, groping for the pattern in his play that was betraying him. Now the mind which had seemed so clear and sharp was a dizzying confusion of numbers. The robot brushed aside his delaying tactics, continuing the pressure. Hendley was reduced to three chips. How long had they been playing now? How much longer did he need? If only the casino had windows so that he could see the first light in the east!
He lost again. Now chance itself worked against him. He lacked enough chips to wait out the pendulum swing of luck. He had to risk the final two chips together in a desperate attempt to gain more of a working margin. His total in the draw was high—ninety-two. Good enough to win nine times out of ten…
The crowd burst upon him, shouting, cheering, pounding him on the back. After the hours of taut silence the noise was overwhelming. Hendley couldn’t understand. He’d lost. Why were they congratulating him? “Great game!” someone shouted. “Best I’ve ever seen!” The crowd was moving out of the casino, carrying him along with them. Someone beyond the confusion shouted a question, “—lost the big game!” came the answer. “Almost made it—there’s only an hour left ‘til dawn!”
A face thrust close to Hendley’s, a forehead swollen and red, eyes bright with excitement. “You’ve still got a good chance!” the man cried. “We have to catch you before sunrise. Just an hour to hide out!”
“Hide!” Hendley gaped in bewilderment.
“Sure! You’re the target!” the red-faced man yelled above the turmoil. “You lost the game—now we have the hunt!”
And suddenly, frighteningly, Hendley knew why the big table was almost always empty, and why the mention of the hunt had always created such a feverish interest. He saw with terrible clarity what he had unconsciously guessed all along.
The prey of the hunters was human.