es' faces, noting listlessly that their
uniforms and shaved heads had improved their appearance. But nothing
would be able to chill the feverishness of their eyes.

Whistles shrilled. Jack jumped. His heart beat faster. He felt as if the
end of the quest were suddenly close. Somebody would be around the
corner. In a minute that person would be facing him, and then ...

Then, he reflected, and sagged with a wave of disappointment at the
thought, then there was nobody around the corner. It always happened
that way. Besides, there weren't any corners in this camp. He had
reached the wall at the end of the alley. Why didn't he stop looking?

Sergeants lined the prisoners up four abreast preparatory to marching
them into the barracks. Jack supposed it was time to turn in for the
night. He submitted to their barked orders and hard hands without
resentment. They seemed a long way off. For the ten thousandth time he
was thinking that this need not have happened.

If he had been man enough to grapple with himself, to wrestle as Jacob
did with the angel and not let loose until he had felled the problem, he
could be teaching philosophy in a quiet little college, as his father
did. He had graduated from high school with only average marks, and
then, instead of going to college, as his father had so much wanted him
to, he had decided he would work a year. With his earnings, he would see
the world.

He had seen it, but when his money ran out he had not returned home. He
had drifted, taking jobs here and there, sleeping in flop-houses,
jungles, park benches, and freight cars.

When the newly created Bureau of Health and Sanity had frozen jobs in an
effort to solve the transiency problem, Jack had refused to work. He
knew that he would not be able to quit a job without being arrested at
once. Like hundreds of thousands of other youths, he had begged and
stolen and hidden from the local police and the Bohas.

Even through all those years of misery and wandering, he had not once
admitted to himself the true nature of this fog-cottoned grail. He knew
it, and he did not know it. It was patrolling the edge of his mind,
circling a far-off periphery, recognizable by a crude silhouette but
nameless. Any time he wanted to, he could have summoned it closer and
said, _You are it, and I know you, and I know what I am looking for. It
is...? Is what? Worthless? Foolish? Insane? A dream?_

Jack had never had the courage to take that action. W