`Many people there?'

`Usual sort of number.'

`What did they look like?'

Soames tried to visualise them. `They all,' he presently
remembered, `looked very like one another.'

My mind took a fearsome leap. `All dressed in Jaeger?'

`Yes. I think so. Greyish-yellowish stuff.'

`A sort of uniform?' He nodded. `With a number on it,
perhaps?--a number on a large disc of metal sewn on to the left
sleeve? DKF 78,910--that sort of thing?' It was even so. `And
all of them--men and women alike--looking very well-cared-
for? very Utopian? and smelling rather strongly of carbolic? and
all of them quite hairless?' I was right every time. Soames was
only not sure whether the men and women were hairless or
shorn. `I hadn't time to look at them very closely,' he
explained.

`No, of course not. But----'

`They stared at ME, I can tell you. I attracted a great deal of
attention.' At last he had done that! `I think I rather scared
them. They moved away whenever I came near. They followed
me about at a distance, wherever I went. The men at the round
desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever I