rad to be restrained fromrocket racing, deepsea exploration,
jet-skiing. It had only given Conrad some ideas he hadn't
had before. The Medicorps had refused to enforce the list on
the basis that danger and violent exercise were a necessary
outlet for Conrad's constitution. Then poor old Bill had writ-
ten Conrad a note threatening to sue him for any injury
resulting from such sports. As if he had a chance against the
Medicorps ruling!
Conrad knew it was no use trying to finish the volley-tennis
game. He lost interest and couldn't concentrate on what he
was doing when Bill started forcing the shift. Conrad shot the
ball back at his opponent in a blistering curve impossible to
intercept.
"So long," he yelled at the man. "I've got some things to
do before my shift ends."
He lounged into the locker rooms and showered, put his
clothes and belongings, including his pharmacase, in a ship-
ping carton, addressed them to his own home and dropped
them in the mail chute.
He stepped with languid nakedness across, the hall, pressed
his identifying wristband to a lock-free and dialled his cloth-
ing sizes.
In this way he procured a neatly wrapped, clean shifting
costume from the slot. He put it on without bothering to re-
turn to his shower room.
He shouted a loud good-bye to no one in particular among
the several men and women in the baths and stepped out
on to the street.
Conrad felt too good even to be sorry that his shift was
over. After all, nothing happened except you came to, five
days later, on your next shift. The important thing was the
rest day. He had always said the last days of the shift should
be a work day; then you would be glad it was over. He
guessed the idea was to rest the body before another person-
ality took over. Well, poor old Bill Walden never got a rested
body. He probably slept off the first twelve hours.
Walking unhurriedly through the street crowds, Conrad en-
tered a public shifting station and found an empty room. As
he started to open the door, a girl came out of the adjoining
booth and Conrad hastily averted his glance. She was still
rearranging her hair. There were so many rude people nowa-
days who didn't seem to care at all about the etiquette of
shifting, womOn particularly. They were always redoing their
hair or make-up where a person couldn't help seeing them.
Conrad pressed his identifying wristband to the lock and
entered the booth he had picked. The act automatically sent
the time and his shift number to Medicorps Headquarters.
Once inside the shifting room, Conrad went to the lava-
tory and turned on the tap of make-up solvent. In spite of
losing two hours of his rest day, he decided to be decent to
old Bill, though he was half tempted to leave his make-up
on. It was a pretty foul joke, of course, especially on a hu-
mourless fellow like poor Walden.
Conrad creamed his face thoroughly and then washed in
water and used the automatic dryer. He looked at his strong
lined face features in the mirror. They displayed a less dis-
tinct expression of his own personality with the make-up
gone.
He turned away from the mirror and it was only then that
he remembered he hadn't spoken to his wife before shifting.
Well, he couldn't decently call up and let her see him with-
out make-up.
He stepped across to the visiophone and set the machine to
deliver his spoken message in type: "Hello, Clara. Sorry I
forgot to call you before. Bill Walden is forcing me to shift
early again. I hope you're not still upset about that business
this morning. Be a good girl and smile at me on the next
shift. I love you. Conrad."
For a moment, when the shift came, the body of Conrad
Manz stood moronically uninhabited. Then, rapidly, out of
the gyri of its brain, the personality of Bill Walden emerged,
replacing the slackly powerful attitude of Conrad by the
slightly prim preciseness of Bill's bearing.
The face, just now relaxed with readiness for action, was
abruptly pulled into an intellectual mask of tension by habit-
ual patterns of conflict in the muscles. There were also acute
momentary signs of clash between the vegetative nervous ac-
tivity characteristic of Bill Walden and the internal homeostas-
is Conrad Manz had left behind him. The face paled as
hypersensitive vascular beds closed under new vegetative
volleys.
Bill Walden grasped sight and sound, and the sharp odour
of make-up solvent stung his nostrils. He was conscious of
only one clamouring, terrifying thought: They -will catch
us. It cannot go on much longer -without Helen guessing
about Clara. She is already angry about Clara delaying
the shift, and if she learns from Mary that I am cheating
on Conrad's shift . . . Any time now, perhaps this time, when
the shift is over, I will be looking into the face of a medicop
who is pulling a needle from my arm, and then it'll all be
over.
So far, at least, there was no medicop. Still feeling un-
real but anxious not to lose precious moments, Bill took an
individualized kit from the wall dispenser and made himself
up. He was sparing and subtle in his use of the make-up, un-
like the horrible make-up jobs Conrad Manz occasionally left
on. Bill rearranged his hair. Conrad always wore it too short
for his taste, but you couldn't complain about everything.
Bill sat in a chair to await some of the slower aspects of the
shift. He knew that an hour after he left the booth, his basal
metabolic rate would be ten points higher. His blood sugar
would go down steadily. In the next five days he would lose
six to eight pounds, which Conrad would promptly regain.
Just as Bill was about to leave the booth, he remembered
to pick up a news summary. He put his wristband to the
switch on the telephoto and a freshly printed summary of the
last five days in the world fell into the rack. His wristband,
of course, called forth one edited for hyperalters on the D-
shift.
It did not mention by name any hypoalter on the D-shift.