apparently done things faster and better. The machine had lowered industrial man to the use of less than seven per cent of his abilities, compared to the nine per cent average for primitives. Remo remembered the lecture.

At his peak, Remo-who eight years before had been officially executed in an electric chair for a crime he did not commit, only to be revived to work for an organization that did not exist-at his peak, this man Remo could use nearly half the power of his muscles and senses.

Forty five to forty eight per cent or, as his main instructor had said, "a moment of just more darkness than light." This poetic phrase had been translated for upstairs into a maximum operating capacity of 46.5 plus or minus 1.5.

Now Remo could feel the dark in the gym grow heavier as the peak descended day by day. One had to laugh. So much effort, so much money, so much danger in even setting up the organization, and now upstairs the only two officials in the country who knew exactly what he did were ruining him. Faster than Seagrams Seven and Schlitz chasers, without as much fun.

The organization was CURE. It did not appear in any government budget nor in any report. The outgoing President verbally told the next incoming President.

He showed him the scrambler phone where he could reach the head of CURE, and then later, as they smiled to the world from the back seat of a limousine headed to the inauguration, confided:

"Now, don't you fret none about that group I was tellin' you about yesterday. They do everything real quiet and only two of 'em know what in a cow's ass they're doing.

"It's just that a crooked prosecutor'll be discovered by some newspaperman who just happens to get some damm information. Or some evidence'll turn up during a trial and the D.A. will win one that was going down the chute. Or someone who you'd just never think would goes and turns state's evidence and testifies. It's just the extra little edge to make things more workable."