along.”
He followed her out the door. On the whole he felt grimmer than ever.
“You don’t make it sound as though it’s up to you to decide,” he said, a
little maliciously.
At that she stopped in her tracks and swung on him. Her normally pretty
face was drawn into an astonishing, unmistakable expression of pure disgust
which left him speechless. He had long since become resigned to being
rather unattractive, as well as superfluous; but somehow it had failed to
occur to him that he might even be disgusting as well.
After an instant, however, she turned her back on him and resumed her march
down the empty corridor.
“No,” she said, in a light neutral voice which gave no hint of the spasm of
emotion her face had just betrayed. “That’s up to the Director.”
30 fames Blish
The Director’s room was seemingly in the innermost keep of the fortress
that was room a-10-prime, but somehow it was light and airy 4 the same. Not
greatly to Jorn’s surprise, it was opulent as well, though its opulence was
of a rather standardized sort: wooden desks instead of metal ones, chairs
with dull red cushions instead of gray, a patternless carpetalso dull
red-instead of a scuffed series of coats of rubber-base paint. There were
five people there, not counting himself and the girl, among whom he recog-
nized, with pleasure, only Dr. Haryt Chase-Huebner.
Very little of this, however, held his attention more than a moment.
Thereafter he had eyes only for the Director.
The Director was a man.
“This would be Mr. Jorn Birn,” the Director said, looking up from a