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him.
    It was not until Maggie Frome repeated his name for the fifth time that he realized she was talking to him. She indicated a lanky, homely woman talking into an autonoter, seemingly on terms of amiable mutual contempt with the police.
    “Denzer,” Maggie hissed urgently, “that girl over there. The reporter. Name’s Sue-Mary Gribb, and I know her. Used to work with her on the Herald.”
    “That’s nice. Say, Maggie,” he moaned, “what the devil are we going to do about the Aztec Wine of Coca piece? The Front Office’11 have our heads.”
    “What I’m trying to tell you, Denzer! Give her the lab report. She’ll take it in for us!”
    The sun rose in pink glory for Arturo Denzer.
    Half blinded by the radiance of sudden, unexpected hope, he staggered back to the desk. Valendora and the plump youth were still at it, but he pushed past them, picked up the Nature’s Way National Impartial Research Foundation envelope and clawed his way back to Maggie. “Pencil!” he snapped. She produced one and Denzer scribbled a note to Joe, in Production:
    Joe, we’re in a jam. Fix this up for us somehow. Run it pp 34-35, push it through soonest, I’ve       already got all okays so just jam it in. God bless you. If Front Office asks where I am I’m dead.
    He thought of adding, “Will explain later,” but he wasn’t so very sure he could. He thought of kissing Sue-Mary Gribb; but she was another Female Integrationist, wearing slacks, carrying a corncob pipe; he only shook her hand briskly and watched her leave.
    It was not until she was out the door that he realized why she had been there in the first place.
    She was a reporter, gathering names. It was customary to run a list of A.R.P. violators in the newspapers. It was inevitable that someone who worked for Natures Way would see his and Maggie’s names on that list; and it was beyond hope that that someone would fail to show it to the Front Office.
    With the help of Sue-Mary Gribb he might have made his deadline, but his troubles were not over. Front Office was solid C.S.B.
    “Maggie,” he said faintly, “when you left the Herald, did you part friends? I mean, do you think they might give us a job?”
    The next thing was that they had to wait for their hearing and, in the way of police courts, that took some tune. Meanwhile they were all jammed together, noisy and fretful.
    The bull-pen roared: “Quiet down, you mokes! You think this is a debating society?” Denzer sighed and changed position slightly so as not to disturb Maggie Frome, again placidly dozing on his shoulder. (This could become a habit, he thought.)
    Well, that was something else the Century of the Common Woman had accomplished. They had integrated the lockups, for better or for worse. Not that Maggie, asleep, was deriving the benefit she might from the integrated, but still very loud, yammering of the inmates of the bullpen.
    They weren’t all A.R.P. violators. A sizeable knot in one corner were clearly common drunks, bellowing about the All-Star Game when they were not singing raucously. They were the chief targets of the bullpen’s repeated thunderings for quiet, as its volumetric ears registered an excessive noise level. They must wear out those tapes in a week, Denzer thought.
    A diffident finger touched his arm. “Mr. Denzer?” It was the research fellow from the Institute.
    Softly, to refrain from disturbing Maggie, he said: “Hello, Venezuela. Make yourself comfortable.”
    “Valendora, Mr. Denzer.”
    “Sorry,” said Denzer absently, inhaling Maggie’s hair.
    “I ask you, Mr. Denzer,” Valendora said, choosing his words with as much care as though he were taping a question for his computers, “is it proper that I should be arrested for being twenty-six feet away from where I would not be arrested?”
    Denzer stared at him. “Come again?” Maggie stirred restlessly on his shoulder.
    “I was two floors below the Foundation, Mr. Denzer, no more,” said the research man.