r man was some
problem he had been assigned to solve. When he spoke, his voice was a
monotone lacking any modulation of feeling.

"I am Ashe." He introduced himself baldly; he might have been saying
"This is a table and that is a chair."

Ross's quick temper took spark from the other's indifference. "All
right--so you're Ashe!" He strove to make a challenge of it. "And what
is that supposed to mean?"

But the other did not rise to the bait. He shrugged. "For the time being
we have been partnered----"

"Partnered for what?" demanded Ross, controlling his temper.

"We work in pairs here. The machine sorts us ..." he answered briefly
and consulted his wrist watch. "Mess call soon."

Ashe had already turned away, and Ross could not stand the other's lack
of interest. While Murdock refused to ask questions of the major or any
others on that side of the fence, surely he could get some information
from a fellow "volunteer."

"What is this place, anyway?" he asked.

The other glanced back over his shoulder. "Operation Retrograde."

Ross swallowed his anger. "Okay, but what do they do here? Listen, I
just saw a fellow who'd been banged up as if he'd been in a concrete
mixer, creeping along this hall. What sort of work do they do here? And
what do we have to do?"

To his amazement Ashe smiled, at least his lips quirked faintly. "Hardy
got under your skin, eh? Well, we have our percentage of failures. They
are as few as it's humanly possible to make, and they give us every
advantage that can be worked out for us----"

"Failures at what?"

"Operation Retrograde."

Somewhere down the hall a buzzer gave a muted whirr.

"That's mess call. And I'm hungry, even if you're not." Ashe walked away
as if Ross Murdock had ceased to exist.

But Ross Murdock did exist, and to him that was an important fact. As he
trailed along behind Ashe he determined that he was going to continue to
exist, in one piece and unharmed, Operation Retrograde or no Operation
Retrograde. And he was going to pry a few enlightening answers out of
somebody very soon.

To his surprise he found Ashe waiting for him at the door of a room from
which came the sound of voices and a subdued clatter of trays and
tableware.

"Not many in tonight," Ashe commented in a take-it-or-leave-it tone.
"It's been a busy week."

The room was rather sparsely occupied. Five tables were empty, while the
men gathered at the remaining two. Ross counted ten men, either a