“Say, now—”

“Communism? Fascism? Women? Your personal ambitions? …That’s all. You don’t have to answer.”

“What the devil is this, anyway?” snapped Everard.

“A bit of psychological testing. Forget it. I’ve no interest in your opinions except as they reflect basic emotional orientation.” Mr. Gordon leaned back, making a bridge of his fingers. “Very promising so far. Now, here’s the set up. We’re doing work which is, as I’ve told you, highly confidential. We…ah…we’re planning to spring a surprise on our competitors.” He chuckled. “Go ahead and report me to the FBI if you wish. We’ve already been investigated and have a clean bill of health. You’ll find that we really do carry on worldwide financial and engineering operations. But there’s another aspect of the job, and that’s the one we want men for. I’ll pay you one hundred dollars to go in the back room and take a set of tests. It’ll last about three hours. If you don’t pass, that’s the end of it. If you do, we’ll sign you on, tell you the facts, and start you training. Are you game?”

Everard hesitated. He had a feeling of being rushed. There was more to this enterprise than an office and one bland stranger. Still…

Decision. ‘‘I’ll sign on after you’ve told me what it’s all about.”

“As you wish,” shrugged Mr. Cordon. “Suit yourself. The tests will say whether you’re going to or not, you know. We use some very advanced techniques.”

That, at least, was entirely true. Everard knew a little something about modern psychology: encephalographs, association tests, the Minnesota profile. He did not recognize any of the hooded machines that hummed and blinked around him. The questions which the assistant—a white-skinned, completely hairless man of indeterminate age, with a heavy accent and no facial expression—fired at him seemed irrelevant to anything. And what was the metal cap he was supposed to wear on his head? Into what did the wires from it lead?

He stole glances at the meter faces, but the letters and numerals were like nothing he had seen before. Not English, French, Russian, Greek, Chinese, anything belonging to A.D. 1954. Perhaps he was already beginning to realize the truth, even then.

A curious self-knowledge grew in him as the tests proceeded. Manson Emmert Everard, age thirty, onetime lieutenant in the U.S. Army Engineers; design and production experience in America, Sweden, Arabia; still a bachelor, though with increasingly wistful thoughts about his married friends; no current girl, no close ties of any kind; a bit of a bibliophile; a dogged poker player; fondness for sailboats and horses and rifles; a camper and fisherman on his vacations. He had known it all, of course, but only as isolated shards of fact. It was peculiar, this sudden sensing of himself as an integrated organism, this realization that each characteristic was a single inevitable facet of an overall pattern.

He came out exhausted and wringing wet. Mr. Gordon offered him a cigarette and swept eyes rapidly over a series of coded sheets which the assistant gave him. Now and then he muttered a phrase: “…Zeth-20 cortical…undifferentiated evaluation here…psychic reaction to antitoxin…weakness in central coordination …” He had slipped into an accent, a lilt and a treatment of vowels which were like nothing Everard had heard in a long experience of the ways in which the English language can be mangled.