They were comfortable. A rather surprisingly soft bed, a bookcase (already Machine Major Chatterji had stocked it with conversion tables and reference books), a more than adequate chest for the personal belohgings he had long since ceased to own. "Isn't it nice?93 the Togetherness girl enthused. "But we'll have to hurry, Steve. It's almost nineteen hundred hours!"
The Togetherness Canteen was high over the maze of tunnels that comprised Team Center. Its gray concrete was liberally splashed with bright colors.
It was full of light and sound and people. There were nearly twenty Togetherness girls as pretty as Faith; they danced with laughing officers of the Technicorps, sat with them at tables, sang with them around a piano. There were hurrying waitresses as pretty as the Togetherness girls, or almost, bringing drinks and light refreshment. And there were the officers—Ryeland's new colleagues.
They all wore the crisp scarlet uniform; and his heart bounded, for three of them at least, he saw, wore the same iron collar as himself. But they were laughing. One danced with a red-headed girl as tall as he, two were in a card game.
The iron collar did not seem to weigh heavily on these Risks.
Ryeland took a deep, wondering breath. Maybe this place was the place he had hoped for all those three years. . . .
One side of the room was an enormous window, twenty feet tall, made of armor-glass. Outside weathered cliffs were splashed with orange sun, nearly set. The tops of pines swayed in an unheard wind, and a far mountain slope was splotched with evergreens and golden autumn aspen.
Faith touched his arm. "What's wrong, Steve? Afraid of high places?"
He had hardly noticed the scenery; his thoughts had been on his collar. But he blinked and came awake. "I—I didn't know where this place was, until I saw the outside."
"You still don't know," she laughed. "Come along. You'll want to meet the Team leader."
General Fleemer had big bulging eyes and a tight uniform; it made him look like a very important frog. "So you're Steve Ryeland?" The general pumped his hand, the bulging eyes glowing with friendly Togetherness. "Glad to have you, Steve!" He grinned and flicked the iron collar with a fingernail. It rang faintly. "We'll have that off you in no time. Give us results, we'll give you your clearance! What could be fairer?"
He caught Steve by the other elbow, the one Faith wasn't using, and carried him off. Faith trailed along. "Want you to meet some of the others," he boomed. "Here. Pascal! Come over here. Steve, I want you to meet—"
"But I already know Colonel Lescure," said Ryeland. It was the grayhaired Technicorps officer who had conducted them to Compartment 93 on the Planner's subtrain.
The colonel nodded, and took him aside for a moment while General Fleemer rounded up more of the Team. "I didn't want to say anything before—but I knew you were coming here. And I'm glad. Your—ah—interview was a success, eh?" And he nudged Ryeland's ribs.
It occurred to Ryeland that the colonel might not have been nearly as jolly with him if the interview hadn't been a success, but he let it pass. "Yes," he said, "the Planner was quite—"
"Planner?" Colonel Lescure winked. "I mean the other interview, son! She's quite a girl!" It seemed, thought Steve Ryeland, that there was hardly a human under the Plan of Man who wasn't aware that he had spent three-quarters of an hour with Donna Creery in her bath.
"Over here!" cried the general, beckoning. "You too, Otto!" As Ryeland reached the general Colonel Otto Gottling stumped over, his face like a rock. He was a jet combustion expert, as it turned out; his chamber had powered the last twelve rockets built for the out-planet run.
Everyone was a specialist and Ryeland found it uncommonly difficult to figure out where the specialties fit together. Colonel Lescure, he discovered, was Director of the Plan of Space Biology, for example. A major named Max Lunggren was an astrophysicist. There were two other mathematicians—one an expert in number theory, the other whose name was vaguely familiar to Ryeland as the author of a paper on normed rings. (Coincidentally—or was it coincidence?—both of them wore the collars of Risks.) The third Risk was a food chemist, a fat, jolly man who owned a fund of limericks.
But some hours later Ryeland received a clue, at least; the evening was not entirely devoted to Togetherness.
When everyone was satisfactorily mellow General Fleemer climbed atop a table and hammered it with his heel for attention.
"A toast!" he bawled. "I give you Teamwork—and the Plan!"
There was a rousing roar. Fleemer drained his glass with them and then turned serious. "Some of you," he cried, "wonder what our Team Attack is aimed at. Well, you'll find out! But for the benefit of the new people, first let me review the overall philosophy of the Team Attack itself. It is the essential tool of our scientific progress, and too important to be taken for granted!"
"Hurray for Team Attack!" bawled one of the iron-collar mathematicians, amid a giggle of the Togetherness girls around him.
General Fleemer smiled, quelling him. He said: "Once upon a time-so our Team historians tell me—science was done by individual men. Some of you may think it is still done that way." He gave a frosty grin to Ryeland and the other Risks. "But that is all over. The turning point came with the Einstein Team, which met at a town called Hiroshima to attack the primary problem of atomic fission.
"Unfortunately," the general said sadly, holding out his glass for a refill, "these pioneers were destroyed by the unexpected success of their first experiment with uranium fission. But the principle of team attack survived!
"Since then the Plan of Man has refined the principles and polished the techniques of Team Attack. When the Plan of Man requires a new scientific discovery, a team is created to make it. Such a team is needed now—and you are my Team, all of you!"
There was prolonged cheering.
Then Fleemer paused. He smiled, and it was a scorpion's smile, vastly out of character in that wattled marshmallow face.
He said: "I'm sure you all understand why you can be counted on to do your best." He nodded merrily to Ryeland and the other iron-collar men. "When you succeed, you will learn that Teamwork operates both ways. When you succeed. But if you fail—if you fail—why, then . . . ."
He trailed off, and looked somberly at the men for a second.
Then he grinned and drew one pudgy finger across his non-existent neck. "Zzzzt! The Body Bank! But we won't fail!"
There was a burst of laughter. Machine Major Chatterji leaped to a table, his glasses gleaming. "Three cheers for General Fleemer and the Plan of Man! Hip, hip-"
"Hooray!" The cheer was loud but ragged.
"Hip, hip-"
"Hooray!" Louder now. The whole room was together.
"Hip, hip—"
"Hooray!" Ryeland found himself thundering along with the rest. He couldn't help it. He had been born under the Plan of Man. He could not doubt it. It would have deprived his life of meaning, as the iron collar that was the Plan's gift to him had, for a time, nearly deprived it of hope.
There was a loud applause. And General Fleemer, still smiling, raised his hand. "What the Machine needs," he said, "is a new physical principle." He shrugged winsomely—as best he could with those blubber shoulders. "I'm not a scientist, and I don't know just how tough this job is going to be. Probably some of you think it's going to be very tough. Well," he said, chuckling, "the rest of you are just going to have to convince them otherwise!" And he touched his finger jestingly to his throat.
Ryeland tried, but got little information from the others. It wasn't so much that they refused to tell; it was more that he couldn't understand. The Machine would give him a detailed directive, they assured him, and wouldn't he have another drink?