The hall grew quiet. No one seemed worried or apprehensive but Curtiss, Allen, Franklyn and Raisin Face. Everyone else had simply acted as though they knew the computer would do what it wanted, and there was no way to fight it.

The other four moved restlessly around the tiled hall, arguing or talking, constantly pacing and examining. Chatting within the confines of that huge cold room, they stood among the seventy-six cots and argued. They moved to the opposite end of the long hall, where the prisoners had first stumbled in, and they stood under the huge scoreboard-type affair that hung from the ceiling.

They talked and talked, but they could not find common ground. Allen wanted to smash and destroy, to unify the people, use their consolidated strength and break out, find the white people and take them by surprise. He limped back and forth excitedly, but the others were tired of hearing him.

Curtiss saw the need for radical action, but he wanted to stay and learn. "That's because you don't have those silly birds to go back to anymore," Allen said, endangering his good standing with the one person he considered almost to be an ally.

Franklyn ate lemon candy and mumbled about "Allen's big mouth," but he stayed with the radical group because he believed his sister had passed through this same hall when she had been reclaimed, and he knew instinctively it would take radical, or at least, different behavior to find her.

Raisin Face was as ever, the enigma. She puffed and wheezed, and Allen suspected that her only reason for moving with them was their greater entertainment factor.

There was a whistle, shrill like the piping they had heard in the eduvision tapes of the old Navy. Curtiss looked up and around. They all expected to hear a metallic voice saying: "Now hear this, now hear this, now . . ."

Instead, the people were gasping and turning toward the board over the heads of Allen, Frank and Curtiss. Raisin Face stepped back toward the middle of the floor and looked up. "Come here!" she cried. Allen and the others moved to join her. The board was coming to life. Information went jattering across: June 6 2066 . . . 76 dissidents . . . Ten A.M. . . . Pigeon City . . . 112th and Lenox . . .

That information posted, the screen went blank. There was humming and chattering from the board. Most of the people were glad, Allen recognized, and he loathed the whirring and clicking of the computer. It almost always made his foot ache the way rain agitated Raisin Face's arthritis.

The board came back to life and a display appeared consisting of miniature electronic representations of the seventy-six cots at the end of the hall. Allen and Curtiss looked at each other and said nothing. Franklyn was still, and they watched nervously as instructions appeared under the seventy-six cots.

"Proceed to the pallets." The computer spelled it out for them.

One by one, and then in groups of three and four, the milling, tired people shuffled over to the cots. When they were at the pallets, a miniature human silhouette appeared in the corresponding electric symbol on the board.

Allen saw that it would be useless to hang back and so he limped over with the others and took his place at a cot. When everyone was positioned, an ominous hissing sound began to come from somewhere, but Allen could not be sure where. He sat up and saw that Curtiss too was rising and looking quickly around. Their eyes met and the realization hit them at the same time as the chemical: Gas!

Franklyn tried to fight it. He wanted to stay alert, he wanted to do whatever he had to do to find Irene, but the familiar freezing feeling was spreading in his head, and he began for he second time in less than twenty-four hours to cease to care.

Allen sank back, wondering why he bothered to fight. The gas was a new experience for Curtiss and him. Their masks had protected them on the way down, but now Allen thought, "For what?" and part of his mind was surprised at himself, while the growing spreading part ate away his will.

Low double doors under the board banged open, but Allen didn't care. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming, and in fact it didn't make any difference to him if he was or not. Not really.

Not even when he saw that the doors had swung open to admit a little car-sized machine which buzzed directly into the room, rolling straight for the seventy-six people lying helplessly on their cots.

The machine began to move from bed to bed. Allen could not always see it, humming and clicking as it made its evil automatic rounds. His foot ached and he longed to sit up and rub his eyes, but he was too tired. The little monstrosity took pressures, gave injections and whirred around corners like a mechanical mouse.

Allen wondered if the others were aware of what was happening, and then he drifted off.

He dreamed the machine was coming down his row of beds. He tried to move away, but his body would not obey his mind. It paused at his side, chattering and whirring. Allen felt its cold loathsome touch, here, now there, gently probing. He didn't know what the thing was doing and he was afraid to wonder for fear he would find out.

He became aware that he had been injected with something.

Sensation was returning. He sat up and rubbed his wrists. Curtiss was recovering too, and Allen saw that his friend was laughing.

"What's supposed to be so funny?" he asked.

"You are, brother," Curtiss readily replied. "You and your Trojan Horse."

Allen had to admit Curtiss had a point. After he had gone out of his way to stay undoped, here he was, recovering just like everyone else. Allen smiled and nodded, but he began almost immediately to try to regain control of the situation.

"How long do you think we've been out?" he asked no one in particular. There was no reply. The doctor machine had finished, and it rolled away through the doors at the far end of the hall.

The board lit up with the date and time, and Allen shouted, "What's the score?" The people snickered. The seventy-six pallets reappeared on the screen, and as they watched, green circles appeared around three of the beds. Allen stood, and the silhouette in one of the cots with the circle vanished. In place of the human figure, a yellow number 3 appeared.

Two green circled silhouettes remained. By counting from the bed he had just vacated, Allen was able to determine where the remaining green circled beds were. Two rows over and one bed down, Allen came upon Franklyn.

"Get away from me and stay away," Franklyn grumbled.

Allen shrugged and went to the remaining green circled cot. Curtiss was ready. He sprang to his feet and stretched. The little human figure in his pallet on the screen winked out and then a yellow number 3 appeared in its place.

"What's the matter with Candy Man?" Curtiss said.

Allen looked at his friend and laughed. "You're just asking that question now?"

Curtiss said, "We have to go, we want to find out what's going on, right?"

"Yeah," Allen replied. "Trojan Horse."

"Let's see if someone else wants to come in his place."

Raisin Face scrabbled off her cot and joined the two men. "Me," she said.

Franklyn refused to cooperate. Allen pleaded with him to change places with Raisin Face, but he refused to budge. Finally, the old lady came to him and raised her cane, and Franklyn responded. He moved to Raisin Face's cot and sat on the edge. A silhouette reappeared in her cot, and now all three green circled cots were empty, with a yellow 3 across each. The number 3 door clicked, and Curtiss walked slowly to it. It swung open at his touch. Allen and Raisin Face hobbled to join him.

They stood at the door and looked back.

"Doesn't Frank want to find his sister?" Curtiss said.

"Maybe he will," Allen sounded strangely unhappy. "He has to do things his own way, that's all. Irene will find him, or he'll find her . . ." Allen tried to sound confident but he knew he was not succeeding. Before them stretched the long coldly-lit corridor.

"Good luck," someone called from the group that remained behind. In that moment, the people from Pigeon City were closer than ever before.

Click HERE for Part VIII