"Here's your pass, Dr. Lee." He took mechanically the yellow slip which Bondy handed him....
He had already opened the door when somebody sharply called: "Dr. Lee, one moment please."
He whirled around. "Yes?"
"Will you please read what's written on your slip?"
Suspiciously he looked at the yellow paper; what more torture were these fellows going to inflict? Then his eyes popped as he read: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39: Cortex capacity 119%, Sensitivity 208%, Personality integration 95%, Service qualification 100%...." There were more data, but he didn't read them as wide-eyed he stared at the medics. With their faces beaming they looked like identical twins to him; Lee never knew who said the words:
"Congratulations Lee. That has been your last test. We just had to find out how you would take a serious frustration. You've passed it with flying colors. Shake."
CHAPTER IV
Apperception 36, Lee's lab within The Brain, looked much like Apperception 27 except for its interior fittings. As a matter of fact, all the several hundred Apperception Centers were built after the same plan, like suites in a big office building in many respects. They were spread over The Brain occipital region; they were built inside the concrete wall of the "dura matter" which in turn lay within the shell of the "bone matter", a mile or so of solid rock. Each apperception center had its own elevator shaft which went through the concrete of the "dura matter" down to "Grand Central", the traffic center below The Brain. Each one was also connected at the other end of its corridor with the glideways which snaked through the interior of The Brain. There were, however, no transversal or direct communications from one apperception center to the next. Because of the extraordinary diversity and secrecy of the projects submitted to The Brain' processings, each apperception center was completely insulated against its neighbors.
Life hadn't changed so much from what it had been in the Australian desert Lee had found; at least not his working life. For all he knew some nuclear physicists might be working in the lab next door; or they might be ballistics experts working with The Brain on curves for long-range rockets to be aimed at the vital centers of some foreign land; it might be some mild looking librarian submitting the current products of foreign literature to the analysis as to "idea-content"; or else it could be a lab to plot campaigns of chemical warfare; or some astronomer, happily abstracted from all bellicose ideas, might employ The Brain's superhuman faculties in mathematics to figure comet courses and eclipses which in turn would form material for the timing and the camouflaging of those man-made meteorites science would use in another war. Directly or indirectly, he knew, practically every project submitted to The Brain would be of a military nature. Of this there could be no doubt.