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Full recollection flooded over him.

Someone had shot him with a beamgun, that nasty little handweapon that delivered in one powerful, short jolt the same energy that was doled out in measured doses over a period of minutes in a standard nerve-burner. He remembered jerking aside at the last second, just before the weapon was fired, and it was evidently that which had saved his life. If the beam had hit him in the head or spine, he’d be dead now.

Then what? Guessing about something that had happened in the past was futile, and, anyway, guessing didn’t apply to situations like that. But he thought he could pretty well figure out what had happened.

After he’d been shot down, his assailant had probably dragged him off somewhere and stripped him, and then dumped him bodily into the sewer. The criminal had undoubtedly thought that The Guesser was dead; if the body had been found, days or weeks later, it would be unidentifiable, and probably dismissed as simply another unsolved murder. They were rather common in low-class districts such as this.

Which brought him back again to the room.

He sat up in bed and looked around. Class Six Standard Housing. Hard, gray, cast polymer walls–very plain. Ditto floor and ceiling. Single glow-plate overhead. Rough, gray bedclothing.

Someone had found him after that careening flight from the terror of the sewer and had brought him here. Who?

Who?

The sense of well-being he had felt upon awakening had long since deserted him. What he felt now was a queer mixture of disgust and fear. He had never known a Class Six. Even the lowest crewman on the Naipor was a Five.

Uneasily, The Guesser climbed out of the bed. He was wearing a sack-like gray dress that fell almost to his knees, and nothing else. He walked on silent bare feet to the door. He could hear nothing beyond it, so he twisted the handle carefully and eased it open a crack.

And immediately he heard low voices. The first was a man’s.

“… Like you pick up dogs, hey.” He sounded angry. “He bring trouble on high, that’n. Look, you, at the face he got. He no Sixer, no, nor even Fiver. Exec, that’s what. Trouble.”

Then a woman’s voice. “Exec, he?” A sharp laugh. “Naked, dirty-wet, sick, he fall on my door. Since when Execs ask help from Sixer chippie like I? And since when Execs talk like Sixer when they out of they head? No fancy Exec talk, he, no.”

The Guesser didn’t understand that. If the woman was talking about him–and she must be–then surely he had not spoken the illiterate patois of the Class Six people when he was delirious.

The woman went on. “No, Lebby; you mind you business; me, I mind mine. Here, you take you this and get some food. Now, go, now. Come back at dark.”

The man grumbled something The Guesser didn’t understand, but there seemed to be a certain amount of resignation in his voice. Then a door opened and closed, and there was a moment of silence.

* * * * *

Then he heard the woman’s footsteps approaching the partially opened door. And her voice said: “You lucky Lebby have he back to you when you open the door. If he even see it move, he know you wake.”

The Guesser backed away from the door as she came in.

She was a drab woman, with a colorlessness of face that seemed to match the colorlessness of her clothing. Her hair was cropped short, and she seemed to sag all over, as though her body were trying to conform to the shapelessness of the dress instead of the reverse. When she forced a smile to her face, it didn’t seem to fit, as though her mouth were unused to such treatment from the muscles.