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“No,” she agreed, “you don’t. But you’d better.”

Clarey took the cheap underground route home. His antiseptic little two-room apartment seemed even bleaker than usual. He dialed a dyspep pill from the auto-spensor; the lunch was beginning to tell on him. And that evening he couldn’t even take an interest in Sentries of the Sky, which, though he’d never have admitted it, was his favorite program. He had no friends; nobody would miss him if he left Earth or died or anything. The general’s right, he thought; I might as well be an alien on an alien planet. At least I’ll be paid better. And he wondered whether, in lighter gravity, his spirits might not get a lift.

He dragged himself to work the next day. He found someone did care after all. “Well, Sub-Archivist Clarey,” Chief Section Archivist MacFingal snarled, “I would have expected to see more sparkle in your eye, more pep in your step, after a whole day of nothing but sweet rest.”

“But—but General Spano said it would be all right if I didn’t report back in the afternoon.”