er. "Any
time you want to take a coffee break with any of the young men, or go
uptown shopping, go ahead, as long as the work gets done. Just one
thing: you have to stay up here in the front of the building, and don't
ever go back in the classrooms. The instructors are mighty strict about
that, and that's one rule I won't stand to be violated."

This significant restriction convinced Maya she was on the right track.
But she needed to move cautiously, if she was not to arouse immediate
suspicion. So she adhered strictly to her role for nearly a month,
keeping her eyes open.

If it was a rebel operation, it was almost perfectly disguised.
Childress performed the duties of the administrative head of a barber
college, and nothing more. The students, about fifty of them, went in
and out at regular school hours, and she became casually acquainted with
a good many of them. The half-dozen instructors, whom she also came to
know, were less regular in their movements, but she could detect nothing
suspicious about them.

"We cut the hair of Mars," was the college's motto, and she learned that
it was the larger of only two barber colleges on the planet. Apparently,
it actually did supply graduate barbers to all the dome cities. It took
in customers for the students to practice on, and, although many of them
were strangers, some of them were prominent Mars City citizens whom she
knew by sight.

There was no question about it: partially, at least, it was a legitimate
barber college, whatever other activities it might mask. The only thing
noticeably unusual on the surface was that it was extremely selective in
its approval of students who applied for courses in barbering. She
discerned that through her processing of the applications.

If she was going to find out anything definite, she would have to get
into the forbidden rear portion of the building. But obviously there
were legitimate classrooms there, in addition to the activities she
suspected, and if she were caught nosing around the classrooms she would
be discharged at once for violation of the rules, without finding out
what she sought. She would have to hit it right the first time.

Biding her time and watching, she was able to learn, almost intuitively,
from the movements of students, customers and instructors, that the
classrooms in which barbering was actually taught were all concentrated
on the western side of the building. If there were any more sinister
activitie