re black beneath his thick brows.

"You made that, didn't you?" Loveral asked.

"Yes, I made that," Atkinson said. "I made that and I made something
else. Another minute and I'll have that finished, too."

"George," said Loveral, stepping quietly forward, "I don't like to say
this, of course. You've been one of our very best members. But nobody
works here, George. We can't allow that. You know the rules."

"I know the rules, all right."

"Well, then," Loveral said, extending his hand toward the hammer, "we'll
just destroy this and whatever else you might have been making. We'll
just forget it ever happened. We'll get along real fine that way,
George. We'll just be such good friends."

"We'll just go to hell," said Atkinson, snatching his hammer away.

Loveral's smile disappeared. "I'll tell you, George. I have to mean
business with this. You know the reasons. If we allow anybody to work
here, then there's going to be trouble. That isn't our plan. We're here
to grow within ourselves and expand culturally. Not to commercialize a
beautiful world like Dream Planet."

Atkinson stood unmoving, and Loveral could see the way the man's muscles
were tight, like steel springs, and the way his eyes burned deep inside
their blackness.

"We've given you everything you need," Loveral explained, trying to
adjust the smile on his lips again. "Everybody has everything they want.
But, you see, if you sit there and work and make something that someone
else doesn't have, then the whole system is destroyed. Then someone will
want what you've made. We'll have jealousy and hatred and fighting. This
is the stuff of which wars are made, George. You know that. It starts
with small things like this, but it grows. When it does, the structure
of our life here will collapse. You wouldn't want that, would you,
George?"

"Yes!" Atkinson said, his mouth white at the edges. "I'd like to see the
whole rotten thing collapsed and blown to hell!"

Loveral's teeth snapped together and his lips grew tight. He could feel
a muscle jumping along his neck.

Atkinson looked at him with furious eyes. "What do you think it's like,
living this way? You're busy working twenty-four hours a day, while we
wander around this damned prison like the breathing dead. You can feel
sweat and aches in your bones from a hard day's work. Sleep is like
medicine to you, instead of another stretch of torture. You can forget
your own brain for a while by doing something w