"Number Five-six-nine-two," shrilled the loudspeaker. "Passenger Number Five-six nine two, your departure time is only five minutes from now. Cubical Thirty-seven. Passenger- Five-six-nine-two, please report immediately to Cubical Thirty-seven."

And where, Maxwell wondered, might No. 5692 be bound? To the jungles of Headache No. 2, to the grim, windswept glacial cities of Misery IV, to the desert planets of the Slaughter Suns, or to any of the other of the thousands of planets, all less than a heartbeat away from this very spot where he stood, now linked by the transmitter system, but representing in the past long years of exploratory effort as discovery ships beat through the dark of everlasting space. As they were beating out there even now, slowly and painfully expanding the perimeter of man's known universe.

The sound of the waiting room boomed and muttered, with the frantic paging of late or missing passengers, with the hollow buzz of a hundred different tongues spoken in a thousand different throats, with the shuffling or the clicking or the clop of feet across the floor. He reached down, picked up his luggage, and turned toward the entrance.

After no more than three steps, he was halted to make way for a truck carrying a tank filled with a murky liquid. Through the cloudiness of the liquid, he caught a suggestion of the outrageous shape that lurked within the tank- some creature from one of the liquid planets, perhaps, and one where the liquid was not water. Here, more than likely, as a visiting professor, perhaps to one of the colleges of philosophy, or maybe one of the science institutes.

The truck and its tank out of the way, he went on and reached the entrance, stepped through the opening onto the beautifully paved and terraced esplanade, along the bottom of which ran the roadway belts. He was gratified to notice that there were no waiting lines, as often was the case.