TO PAY THE PIPER
BY JAMES BLISH
Clearly, re-educating Man's brain wouldn't
fit him for survival on the plague-ridden
surface. Re-educating his body was the answer;
but the process was so very long....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The man in the white jacket stopped at the door marked "Re-Education Project—Col. H. H. Mudgett, Commanding Officer" and waited while the scanner looked him over. He had been through that door a thousand times, but the scanner made as elaborate a job of it as if it had never seen him before.
It always did, for there was always in fact a chance that it had never seen him before, whatever the fallible human beings to whom it reported might think. It went over him from grey, crew-cut poll to reagent-proof shoes, checking his small wiry body and lean profile against its stored silhouettes, tasting and smelling him as dubiously as if he were an orange held in storage two days too long.
"Name?" it said at last.
"Carson, Samuel, 32-454-0698."