"Did you hear that?"
She nodded, with wide, frightened eyes. "Yes. It's not the first time." Suddenly she rose, frowning, as if with pain. "Come," she added, "now we must go back."
There was nothing else to do. We went back silently to the airship, and turned its nose toward the city.
But when I left her at her apartment, promising to see her later, I had one last hope in my mind. I went to the Bureau.
The Bureau was a vast system of halls and offices, occupying two floors of the great building. I was sent from one automatic device to another—there were no human clerks—in search of the representative who had spoken to me before. Finally I found him in his apartment, down the corridor only a hundred feet or so from my own. He was pouring over a metal sheet on his table, where innumerable shifting figures were thrown by some hidden machine, and he was calculating with a set of hundreds of buttons along its edges. He spoke to me without pausing or looking up, and throughout my interview he continued with his figuring as if it had been entirely automatic—as perhaps it was.
"What is it, Baret?" he said I felt like a small child before the principal of the school.
"I have come to ask you whether it is necessary for me to go," I answered. He nodded slightly, never looking up.
"It is necessary," he said. "Your visit was pre-arranged and definite." I made a gesture of remonstrance.
"But I don't want to go," I insisted. "I like this place, and I am willing to fall into its life if I can remain under any conditions."
"It is impossible," he objected angrily.