The gaunt woman was staring into the scanner-glass, and gripping the metal frame so tightly that her knuckles had a mottled look.
"At last!" she breathed, leaning sharply forward. "Those machines have never proved their worth until now. What a fool I was to oppose the project on the grounds of economy. Only two machines when we could have had twenty. But never mind, the two are doing very well."
"Are they?" said a quiet voice at her side. "I would not be too sure. The man is clever as well as courageous. And the woman knows how to keep fear at arm's length, always. You have met your match in that pair."
The woman swung about, an angry flushing suffusing her face and accentuating the boniness of her cheekbones. The flush was of short duration, for fear and anger seldom walk hand in hand, and pallor is very likely to accompany fear.
The Chief Monitor smiled thinly, his eyes also intent on the glass. "I'm afraid that you have merited a reprimand," he said. "From what I have heard your conduct this morning was inexcusable. Without first securing permission from the Council you witnessed a surgical experiment which turned out very badly. Your own rash haste may have been responsible for the failure. The surgeons were not yet ready to conduct the final test but you frightened them into complying with your demand. I do not like what happened. I do not like it at all."
The Chief Monitor was not only soft-spoken. He was so mild-mannered and non-aggressive in aspect that it seemed incredible that he could have risen to a position of authority so great that he could have reversed a century of enlightened human progress with a single spoken word. He had pale brown hair and pale eyes, and he did not look at all like a man accustomed to issuing commands. But then, quite suddenly, the brown eyes would flash with an ice-crystal brilliance and hardness and in such moments his supremacy was not difficult to understand.
His eyes were ice-crystal cold now.
"I have often wondered," the Chief Monitor said, speaking with a candor that sharply increased the gaunt woman's fear, "How I would feel if I had experienced the stirring. Would I rebel as courageously as that pair?"
The gaunt woman knew how dangerous it was to share the inmost thoughts of a man so powerful, but she could do nothing to turn the conversation into safer channels and was afraid to oppose him even slightly.
"I see I startle you," the Chief Monitor went on calmly, the slight smile still on his lips. "But should we not all examine ourselves critically from time to time, and ask ourselves the really great and important questions. We all are what we are, and only a fool is afraid to face the truth about himself."