They walked to the end of it, turned right and traversed another equally deserted corridor. As they walked along it Teleman found that he could no longer keep to himself thoughts which had badly shaken him and forced him, for Alicia's sake, to pretend otherwise.
"I'm afraid that we have made a mistake in coming here," he said. "We did not know that the couple whose identity we have assumed had such a completely documented past history. The Monitors know about the dwelling! They know that we took refuge in the dwelling. Don't you realize what that means? We may have walked into the deadliest kind of trap. We thought the couple had escaped from the mating center by stealth, without having been granted any emergency leave at all. But apparently they had a five hour leave and simply took the risk of extending it. And the Monitors know about the cottage. They know we were there, so every guard here must have been alerted. The guard at the desk must know exactly who we are."
"I did not want to alarm you," Alicia said. "But the same thought occurred to me. Darling, what shall we do? If we are trapped—"
She moved into the circle of his arms, and he silenced her for a moment with a kiss. Alicia rubbed her body against him, and Teleman felt a strong urge to tear the garments from her body and take her there in the corridor, to press her down on the hard floor ... but he pushed back the tide of desire and spoke quickly.
"I'm afraid we are. I'm afraid we're in the deadliest kind of danger. Why they did not seize us immediately I do not know. Perhaps they intend to seize us in the privacy of our compartment, without causing any commotion, without letting the others here know what is going on. It is entirely possible that they planned it that way. That frustrated old woman we encountered on the strip; if she is the Monitor in charge such a capture might appeal to her in a cruelly whimsical way. To let us think ourselves safe and then to take us by surprise!"
"If you are right, darling, what shall we do?"
"We'd better not go to our compartment. I had no intention of doing so, but I spoke as I did in the anteroom because I didn't want to frighten you. I wanted to get you out of there as quickly as possible."
"You still haven't answered me. What shall we do?"
"We've got to escape from this place in some way. But first we've got to find out more about it. How many deserted corridors are there, how many doors and windows, how many compartments where nothing but records are stored, or mating center furniture. How many compartments which are seldom visited, where we can hide...."
Had Teleman known, events were to take place in the next forty hours which were to shake the entire structure of the society of which he was a part, and make all of his desperately seized-upon plans for escaping from the mating center completely unnecessary. But he had no way of knowing, no way of even suspecting that he was to become an instrument of destiny and overthrow a tyranny unique in human history.