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back."
     
                  The words grew and swelled, augmented themselves. Soon everybody in the circle was singing, tonelessly and hoarsely. It was astonishing that they could sing at all, considering the dust.
     
                  The heavy repeated thumping had begun to jar along Alvin's spine. He ought to get out; the male dancer had told him to. Or should he stay on, hoping they'd stop dancing eventually, and he'd be able to get his blood samples? He wasn't a dancer ... but if he joined the dance he'd be ... A curious hankering was growing in him.
     
                  He stood a moment longer, balancing between desire and common sense. Then, with a rush, he was pulling at the hands of a couple who were moving past him. Softly their fingers parted; they must have recognized that his motive was not to disrupt. Alvin stepped between them and joined his hands to those on either side. Their hands were swollen, warm, slippery with sweat and gritty with dust.
     
                  In a moment Alvin was moving with the others, singing with the others. Had he done the right thing? For an instant he longed to shake his hands free and run. But he might be able to get his samples this way, and ... the shuffling step and the thudding were soothing to him.
     
                  He was not, for the nonce, so taken up with the dance as to be unable to observe what was in the center of the circle. Through the enveloping dust he saw a man squatting on his hunkers and beating on a wooden plant with a heavy mallet. A tall woman, seemingly elderly, stood beside him. There was a handkerchief in one of her hands and a long feather in the other. The pair were the hub of the circle, the point around which the dancers moved.
     
                  At their feet, looking like a heap of old clothes, lay the babies and children of the commune. A few of them were sitting up, watching the dancing, but most of them lay limply, whether asleep, or sick, or narcotized by the drumming. The pall of dust hovered over everything.
     
                  The singing died away. Alvin made two or three rounds of the circle in silence. Then the elderly woman with the feather chanted, "I have seen the kingdom, I have seen the kingdom, There I met my mother, There I met my mother ..." and the others took it up.
     
                  One of the children in the center stirred, moaned, and sat up with a sort of howl. With a shock Alvin saw it was not a child at all, but the girl whom he had drawn out of the dance earlier. She must have passed out.
     
                  She got to her feet, weaving back and forth and still making the howling noise. The dancers nearest her unclasped their hands. In a trice she was in the circle again.
     
                  The dance went on. Alvin found that whenever he went past, the woman with the feather eyed him sharply. It was not a hostile look, but a probing one. She seemed to be expecting something from him.
     
                  He was panting. His hands began to tremble. The woman came and stood before him, moving slowly as he moved, so that she always faced him. She was whirling the feather rapidly before his face, and as she whirled it she made a sharp panting noise—hu, hu, hu—like an exhausted runner. Alvin couldn't take his eyes from the feather, and didn't want to. He felt very odd. He didn't know what was happening to him.
     
                  Abruptly he broke from the hands that were holding his and staggered toward the. center of the circle. The medicine woman followed him, still making the panting noise and twirling the feather. From time to time she would draw her hand sideways before his face at the level of his eyes, or fan him with the hand that held the handkerchief.
     
                  Alvin realized he was still singing the words of the song and keeping time with his feet