He reached out, put his thumbprint on the contract and signed.
"This is your copy," said the interviewer, detaching it from his desk and passing it to him. "Go out the door to the rear and follow the signs in the corridor to the office of the Holding Area."
Hal followed the directions. They led him down a well-lighted tunnel about four meters wide to a much wider entrance in the right wall of the tunnel. Turning in at the entrance, he saw what appeared to be an enclosed office to his right, and a considerably larger enclosed area to his left, through the doorless entrance of which came the sound of music and voices. Straight ahead, but further on, he could see what seemed to be a double row of large cages made of floor to ceiling metal bars, but with their doors, for the most part, standing open.
He assumed that the office on the right was the one he had been directed to in the Holding Area; but curiosity led him toward the doorway of the place opposite, with the noisy interior. He automatically approached its doorway from an angle, out of training, and stopped about three meters away to look in; but he need not have been cautious. None of those inside were paying any attention to anything outside.
Apparently, it was simply a recreation place. It was well-filled with people, but with only one woman visible, and the rest men. There was a bar and most of those there seemed to be drinking out of silvery metal mugs that must have held at least half a liter. On any other world, such mugs would have been expensive items indeed - perhaps here they were simply a cheap way to cut down on breakage.
Hal turned back to the office, knocked on its door when he could find no annunciator stud, and - when he heard nothing - let himself in.
Within was a wall to wall, waist-high counter dividing the room crosswise, with two desks behind it. Only one desk was occupied, and the man at it was middle-aged, balding and heavy-set. He had the look of someone who did little but sit at desks. He glanced up at Hal.
"We don't knock here," he said. He extended his hand without getting up. "Papers."
Hal leaned over the counter and managed to pass them over without taking his feet off the floor. The man behind the counter accepted them and ran them through the slot in his desk.
"All right," he said, handing them back - Hal had to stretch himself across the counter once more to retrieve them - "find yourself a bunk out back. Rollcall and assignments at eight-thirty in the morning. My name's Jennison - but you call me Superintendent."
"Thank you," said Hal, reflexively, and for the first time Jennison lifted his gaze from his desk and actually looked at him.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Twenty," said Hal.
"Sure." Jennison nodded.
"Is there any place I could get something to eat?" Hal asked.
"I'll sell you a package meal," Jennison said. "Got credit?"
"You just saw my papers."
Jennison punched his key pad and looked into the screen on his desk.
"All right," he said. "I've debited you the cost of one package meal." He swiveled his float around and touched the wall behind him, which opened to show a food storage locker. He took a white, sealed package from the locker and tossed it to Hal.
"Thanks," said Hal.
"You'll get out of that habit," said Jennison.
"What habit?" asked Hal.
Jennison snorted a short laugh and went back to his work without answering.
Hal took his package and his bag and went out of the office, and into the back area, among the cages. When he came to them he found that each one held two double-decker bunks on each side of the cage, so that each had sleeping space for eight individuals. The bunks stood against the side walls of the cage with a little space of the wall of bars before them, and beyond them to where the cell ended in the solid wall that must be backed by the rock of the cave excavated to make this area. The first few cages he came to had two or three occupants in each, all of them sleeping heavily. He continued on back until he could see that there was no cage without at least one person in it.
He finally chose a cage in which the only occupant was a man sitting on one of the bottom bunks toward the back. The cage door was open and Hal came in, a little hesitantly. The man, a leathery-looking individual in his late thirties or early forties, had been carving on a piece of what looked like gray metal, but which must have been quite soft. Now, the knife and the metal bar hung motionless in his hands as he watched Hal enter. His face was expressionless.
"Hello," said Hal. "I'm Tad Thornhill. I just signed a contract for work, here."
The other did not say anything. Hal gestured toward the bottom bunk opposite the one on which the man sat.
"Is this taken?" he asked.
The man stared at him a second longer, still without expression, then he spoke.
"That one?" he said. His voice was hoarse, as if disuse had left it rusty. "No, that doesn't belong to anybody."
"I'll take it then." Hal tossed his bag to the head end of the bunk, in the corner against the back wall. He sat down, and began to open the sealed meal package. "I haven't eaten since I left the ship."
The other man again said nothing, but went back to his carving. Hal spread the package open and saw through the transparent seal that it was some kind of stew with a baked vegetable that looked like a potato in its skin, some bread, and a small bar of what looked like chocolate, but certainly must be synthetic. He could feel the package heating automatically in his hands, now that the outer seal had been broken. He waited the customary sixty seconds, broke the transparent inner seal, and began eating. The food was tasteless and without much texture, but the heat of it was good, and it filled his empty stomach. He suddenly realized he had forgotten to ask Jennison for something to drink.
He looked across at the other man, busy shaping his piece of soft metal into something that looked like a statuette of a man.
"Is there anything to drink around here?" he asked.
"Beer and liquors up in the canteen, front, if you've got the credit," said the other without looking up.
"I mean something like fruit juice, coffee, water - something like that," said Hal.
The other looked at him and jerked his knife up and to his right, pointing chest-high on the wall just beyond them. Rising, Hal found an aperture in the wall, and a stud beside it. He looked about for something to use as a cup, found nothing and finally ended up folding a crude cup out of the outer shell of the meal package. He pressed the stud, and water fountained up in a small arc. He caught it in his jury-rigged cup and drank. It tasted strongly of iron.
He sat down again, finished his meal with the help of several more cupfuls of the water, then bundled the package and containers in his hands and looked around him.
"Throw it under the bunk," said the man across from him.
Hal stared; but the other was bent over his carving and paying no attention. Reluctantly, for it was hard for him to believe that the advice was correct, he finally did as the man had suggested. Then he lay down on the bunk, with his bag prudently between his head and the wall of bars that separated him from the next cages, and gazed at the dark underside of the bunk above him.
He was about to drop off to sleep when the sound of footsteps made him open his eyes again and look toward his feet. A short, somewhat heavy man was just entering the door of the cage. This newcomer stopped just inside the door and stared at Hal.
"He asked me if that bunk was anybody's," said the man doing the carving. "I told him no, it wasn't anybody's."
The other man laughed and climbed up into the top bunk next to the one below which the carver sat. He thrashed around momentarily, but ended up on his side, looking down into the cage, and lay there with his eyes open.
Hal closed his eyes again, and tried to sleep; but with the arrival of the second man, his mind had started to work. He made himself lie still and willed his arms, legs, and body to relax, but still he did not sleep. The powerful feeling of grief and loneliness began to take him over once more. He felt naked in his isolation. This place was entirely different from the Final Encyclopedia where he had at least found intelligent, responsible people like those with whom he had grown up; and where he had even found those who could be friends, like Ajela and Tam. Here, he felt almost as if he had been locked into a cage with wild animals, unpredictable and dangerous.