real ice, Lindsay. I've been
trying for years to work out a way to tell people computers are robbing
them of all powers of decision."

"All they have to do is confine them to mathematical problems and let
people decide human ones," said Lindsay.

The Secretary General cleared his throat. He said, "Without the
computers there would be no United Worlds. There would be no world at
all, probably."

It was a rebuke. Carlo Bergozza redonned his spectacles and rose from
the table. He said, "If you'll excuse me I have some business to attend
to. I'm sure my daughter will see that you are properly entertained." He
left the room with slow, old-man steps.

Maria said fondly, "Poor darling, he gets so upset. He'll take a pill
and go to sleep. Let's go to the bathroom, shall we?"

* * * * *

Though outwardly the Secretary General's mansion was hyper-gingerbread
steamboat Gothic, inwardly it was entirely modern in plan. There was a
living room, of course, for formal receptions, but as in all normal
Earth-dwellings of the period the bathroom was the lived-in chamber.

There and there only did people of the 2070's permit themselves to
relax. This was a logical development of latter-day plumbing and air
conditioning and the crowding of apartment and small-house life. Actual
lavatory plumbing was concealed, in this instance, by an etched glass
screen. Otherwise the room featured comfortable plastic lounge chairs
and sofas around a fifteen-foot sunken tub and a small semicircular bar,
fully equipped.

On entering Maria unfastened her harness and coverall and stood before
them, a sweet-bodied dark-eyed girl in her early twenties, clad in
shorts and halter. "Lord!" she exclaimed, pushing dark hair back from
her broad low forehead, "It feels good to relax. Zalen, I want to talk
to you."

"Delighted," said Lindsay, mildly surprised at the use of his Martian
first name.

"I've got something to tell him first," said Anderson, unhitching his
own harness and emerging as a lean medium-sized man in good condition
for his forty years. "I got word just before I flew up here tonight that
your life may be in danger, Zalen."

* * * * *

Lindsay accepted the arrack-fizz Maria handed him, said "That makes
warning number two, Senator. Du Fresne talked to me about it this
afternoon."

Maria paled visibly. She said, "It sounds impossible!"

"It backs up the judgment of my own g