office.

Beardsley hated these moments. He was still trembling as he made a
hurried entrance. Sure enough, as if on cue Jeff Arnold glanced up from
his charts and grinned.

"Ah, good morning, Beardsley! Now don't tell me our pet goo--uh--snapped
at you again?"

It was the routine remark, but today Arnold was immediately contrite for
a change. "Sorry," he said, and a certain weariness replaced the grin.
He gestured to the alco-mech. "Can I dial you a drink? Feel in need of
one myself!"

"Eleven-C," said Beardsley, and slumped into the pneumo-chair. Arnold
rose and dialled 11-C, handed him the drink and dialled 9-R for himself.
Sipping it, he moved around the desk.

There was something very strange and preoccupied in his movements,
Beardsley thought, more than a mere tiredness. He had never seen Arnold
this way.

"Yes sir, this is the day!" A muscle twitched in his corded neck; Arnold
eased his long frame into a chair, rubbed thumb and forefinger at his
eyes. "Been up half the night running off clearance tests. Can't afford
to foul up on this one!"

Beardsley tossed off his drink and blinked at the fiery strength of it.
Now why should Arnold say that? When had ECAIAC ever fouled up? He
watched the man across the desk. Jeff Arnold was a vigorous, striking
specimen, handsome in an athletic way, with long stubborn jaw and
unhappy gray eyes beneath his unruly hair; the sort of face that
intrigues women, Beardsley catalogued from past experience. And, he
added, altogether too young a man to be operating a monster like ECAIAC.

* * * * *

Arnold indicated the empty glass. "Another?"

"No, I think not," Beardsley replied carefully.

Arnold hesitated, eyeing the briefcase in Beardsley's clutch. "It's been
rough on you, too, I imagine. Hope there aren't more than thirty
variants! We're set up for more, of course, but it'll necessitate--"

"Twenty-two," Beardsley assured him. Carefully, he spread the coded and
sealed _persona-tapes_ across the desk. "Fresh from Citizen-File
Augment, everything annotated and cross-checked. Blood-count, emotional
stasis, plethora, psycho-geneological index, neuro-thalamic
imbalance--every type factor is here. We really went to the Files on
this case."

"Looks as if you did! How does it narrow down?"

"Fifteen possibles, four Logicals and three Primes--" Beardsley stopped
abruptly. (That news-caster: how had he known there were three Primes?
This stuf