Hugo did as he had been ordered and they walked side by side to the gymnasium. Hugo had once seen a small gymnasium, ill equipped and badly lighted, and it had appealed mightily to him. Now he stood in a prodigious vaulted room with a shimmering floor, a circular balcony, a varied array of apparatus. His hands clenched. Lefty quit him for a moment and came back with a man who wore knickers. “Mr. Woodman, this is—what the hell’s your name?”

“Danner. Hugo Danner.”

“Mr. Woodman is football coach.”

Hugo took the man’s hand. Lefty excused himself. Mr. Woodman said: “Young Foresman said you played football.”

“Just on a high-school team in Colorado.”

“Said you were husky. Go in my office and ask Fitzsimmons to give you a gym suit. Come out when you’re ready.”

Hugo undressed and put on the suit. Fitzsimmons, the trainer, looked at him with warm admiration. “You’re sure built, son.”

“Yeah. That’s luck, isn’t it?”

Then Hugo was taken to another office. Woodman asked him a number of questions about his weight, his health, his past medical history. He listened to Hugo’s heart and then led him to a scale. Hugo had lied about his weight.

“I thought you said one hundred and sixty, Mr. Danner?”

The scales showed two hundred and eleven, but it was impossible for a man of his size and build to weigh that much. Hugo had lied deliberately, hoping that he could avoid the embarrassment of being weighed. “I did, Mr. Woodman. You see—my weight is a sort of freak. I don’t show it—no one would believe it—and yet there it is.” He did not go into the details of his construction from a plasm new to biology.

“Huh!” Mr. Woodman said. Together they walked out on the floor of the gymnasium. Woodman called to one of the figures on the track who was making slow, plodding circuits. “Hey, Nellie! Take this bird up and pace him for a lap. Make it fast.”

A little smile came at the corners of Hugo’s mouth. Several of the men in the gymnasium stopped work to watch the trial of what was evidently a new candidate. “Ready?” Woodman said, and the runners crouched side by side. “Set? Go!”

Nelson, one of the best sprinters Webster had had for years, dashed forward. He had covered thirty feet when he heard a voice almost in his ear. “Faster, old man.”

Nelson increased. “Faster, boy, I’m passing you.” The words were spoken quietly, calmly. A rage filled Nelson. He let every ounce of his strength into his limbs and skimmed the canvas. Half a lap. Hugo ran at his side and Nelson could not lead him. The remaining half was not a race. Hugo finished thirty feet in the lead.

Woodman, standing on the floor, wiped his forehead and bawled: “That the best you can do, Nellie?”

“Yes, sir.”