"Then it's settled. We'll leave today, if it can be arranged, and I feel sure it can. Robert—" to Stein—"if you'll come with me we'll try to make the necessary arrangements." Stein left, and Smith left, and I got up and looked into the mirror. I needed a shave again.
My college didn't have a laboratory worth counting when I went to school. We'd had a stadium, and a losing football team instead. Now the balding, bearded physicists sat in the front row when the appropriations were spooned out. I suppose that's all for the better. I really wouldn't know. The old fellow that met us at the front door looked like an airedale, and like an airedale he sniffed all around me before getting into combat range.
"So you're Peter Miller!"
"That's my name," I admitted. I wondered what all the dials and the gadgets were for. It looked to me like the front end of one of these computers I used to see in the magazines.
"I'm Kellner. You must be Stein, right? Never mind your coats. Just follow me," and off he trotted, and we trailed him into a bare office with what looked like the equipment of a spendthrift dentist.
"You sit here," and he waved at a straightbacked chair. I sat down, Stein shifted nervously from one foot to the other, and in a moment Kellner came back with a dozen others. He didn't bother to introduce any of them. They all stood off and gaped at who'd killed Cock Robin.
Kellner broke the silence. "Physical first?" There was a general nod. "Physical, psychological, then—we'll come to that later." To Stein: "Want to come along? Rather wait here? This is going to take some time, you know."
Stein knew that. He also wanted to come along. Those were his orders.
I felt self-conscious taking off my clothes in front of that ghoulish crew. The sheet they left me kept off no drafts, and I felt like a corpse ready for the embalmer, and likely appeared one. Stethoscope, a scale for my weight, a tape for my arm and the blood pressure, lights that blinked in my eyes and bells that rang in my ear ... when they were finished with me I felt like a used Tinker-Toy.