"I'm sorry you cannot come to a reasonable conclusion," said Dr.
Thorndyke. "If you cannot see the logic of--"

I cut him off short. "Look, Doc," I snapped, "If you can't see where
your line of thinking ends, you're in bad shape."

He looked superior. "You're sour because you know you haven't got what
it takes."

I almost nipped. "You're so damned dumb that you can't see that in any
society of supermen, you'd not be qualified to clean out ash trays," I
tossed back at him.

He smiled self-confidently. "By the time they start looking at my
level--if they ever do--you'll have been gone long ago. Sorry, Cornell.
You don't add up."

Well, that was nothing I didn't know already. In his society, I was a
nonentity. Yet, somehow, if that's what the human race was coming to
under the Thorndyke's and the Phelps', I didn't care to stay around.

"All right," I snapped. "Which way do I go from here? The laboratory, or
will you dispense with the preliminaries and let me take the high slide
right now before this--" I held up my infected finger, "gets to the
painful stages."

With the air and tone of a man inspecting an interesting specimen
impaled on a mounting pin, Thorndyke replied:

"Oh--we have use for the likes of you."

XVII

It would please me no end to report here that the gang at the Medical
Center were crude, rough, vicious, and that they didn't give a damn
about human suffering. Unfortunately for my sense of moral balance, I
can't. They didn't cut huge slices out of my hide without benefit of
anaesthesia. They didn't shove pipe-sized needles into me, or strap me
on a board and open me up with dull knives. Instead, they treated me as
if I'd been going to pay for my treatment and ultimately emerge from the
Center to go forth and extol its virtues. I ate good food, slept in a
clean and comfortable bed, smoked free cigarettes, read the best
magazines--and also some of the worst, if I must report the whole
truth--and was permitted to mingle with the rest of the patients,
guests, victims, personnel, and so forth that were attached to my ward.

I was not at any time treated as though I were anything but a willing
and happy member of their team. It was known that I was not, but if any
emotion was shown, it was sympathy at my plight in not being one of
them. This was viewed in the same way as any other accident of birth or
upbringing.

In my room was another man about my age. He'd arrived a day before me,
with