‘Good evening,' Nicole said in her soft, slightly husky voice.

‘It's this way,' Duncan found himself mumbling. ‘I don't have a head for abstractions; I mean, all this religio-political philosophy -- it makes no sense to me. Couldn't I just concentrate on concrete reality? I ought to be baking bricks or turning out shoes.' I ought to be on Mars, he thought, on the frontier.

I'm flunking out here; at thirty-five I'm washed up, and she knows it.

Let me go Nicole, he thought in desperation. Don't give me any more tests, because I don't have a chance of passing them. Even this programme about the ocean's bottom; by the time it's over I'll have forgotten all the data. I'm no use to the Democratic-Republican Party.

He thought about his former buddy Al, then. Al could help me. Al worked for Loony Luke, at one of his Jalopy Jungles peddling the little tin and cardboard ships that even defeated People could afford, ships that could, if luck was with them, successfully make a one-way trip to Mars. Al, he said to himself, could get me a jalopy wholesale.

On the TV screen, Nicole was saying, ‘And really, it is a world of much enchantment, with luminous entities far surpassing in variety and in sheer delightful wonder anything found on other planets. Scientists compute that there are more forms of life in the ocean -- ‘

Her face faded, and a sequence showing unnatural, grotesque fish took its place. This is part of the deliberate propaganda line, Duncan realized. An effort to take our minds off Mars and the idea of getting away from the Party -- and from her. On the screen a bulbous-eyed fish gaped at him, and his attention, despite himself, was captured. Jeez, he thought, it is a weird world down there. Nicole, he thought, you've got me trapped. If only Al and I had succeeded; we might be performing right now for you, and we'd be happy. While you interviewed world-famous oceanographers Al and I would be discreetly playing in the background, perhaps one of the Bach ‘Two Part Inventions'.