"Two or three weeks. An expert job of quick surgery, really."
"No! No!" Miss Erwin broke into a fit of sobbing and blindly rearranged the flowers.
"Do you mean to say?—"
"Some medical students on a horror spree. Damned age of—what did that Washington press secretary say?—'atomic hyper-specialization'! That means young brains growing in channels until they explode through the wall. You remember the physicist who killed his colleagues when the English won the Nobel Prize."
"It can't be," said Miss Knox. She watched the hurt man grimace somewhere along his razor edge of nightmare.
"It's the only likelihood. Well, we can't do anything for him now, and you look a little beat. Come on, I'll buy you coffee from the vending machine on the Administration roof."
Dr. Brooks stood up, lifted Miss Knox gently beneath the arms and sat her on the motorbed, then swung a hairy shin over the driving seat. They rolled through the doorway.
"Who was that big shot in the motorchair?" Miss Knox asked. "Dr. Gesner?"
Dawn had just begun to spread. They crossed within a widening circle of mushroom-shaped arches containing portraits which drew farther away until they resembled portal guards, and then converged again in full austerity on the opposite side of the great dome.
"Director himself—they can't reach Gesner anyplace," Brooks said.