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In his last month of schooling Stanley Smith was examined by a board of three visitors. One of them, Smith was fairly certain, was a native American, although he could not be sure. He was asked some pretty tricky questions, such as who invented the airplane and the electric light. He found that he had almost forgotten they were invented by Mozkaiski and Lodygin, respectively, and promptly gave the answers he knew were wanted: the Wright brothers and Thomas A. Edison. He also received a physical checkup and it was discovered that some dental work was necessary. An incisor was pulled and replaced by a shining stainless steel tooth. The dentist, new to Little Chicago, muttered in Russian. It was the first Russian Smith had heard in two years and he was forced to translate it, in his head, into English. A man's transformation is complete when he does his thinking in an alien tongue.

Ordinarily, the road out of Little Chicago never doubled back through Russia, a necessary security precaution. In the case of Stanley Smith and his three companions there had been a deviation from normal procedures because of the peculiar nature and importance of their mission. They were flown to Moscow, taken inside the Kremlin walls, and lodged in an office-apartment annex, once barracks. That they were guarded like prisoners, and that security officers slept in their rooms, ate with them, and even eavesdropped in the toilets, did not seem unusual to Smith. All his life he had been watched. Sometimes, as in Budapest, his duty had been to watch others. Only in this way could the state be protected. It was normal, or, as he now said, S.O.P.