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majestic, and he, more than anyone else, was responsible for Freda’s promotion to higher levels. He wrote her fitness reports. For that reason she dropped by his office less often than she would have liked, because some executives would grade an administrator down for currying favor.
    However, Gaynor appreciated flattery insinuated unobtrusively into the conversation. Freda had detected his pleasure from his habit of blinking his eyes slowly and nodding slightly when a compliment was concealed in the conversation. Also, he was handsome, and he seemed to like her.
    “How was your weekend?” he asked as a polite prelude when she entered.
    “Interesting in more ways than one,” she answered, “and that’s why I called. I appreciate you working me into your busy schedule so promptly.”
    With an imperceptible nod and a slow blink, he said, “My door is always open.”
    “Saturday I visited a bonsai exhibit in Bakersfield in the company of Hal Polino, Paul’s graduate-student assistant.”
    “Ah, I see.” There was an implied rebuke in his remark. “You accompanied Mr. Polino?”
    “Yes. He was basically my reason for going. As a student, I felt his interest would be stimulated by specific examples of applied plant science. But more, when Mr. Polino originally reported to me of Paul’s progress on Tropica, I thought I detected in his remarks an attitude toward the Planet of Flowers quite different from the nostalgia of beginning earth-alienation which Doctor Berkeley mentioned.”
    “Ah, I see.” Doctor Gaynor’s eyes were beginning to glow. “Doctor Berkeley, I think, was overimpressed by a nostalgia that will pass, like the memory of a pleasant country we visited when we were young.”
    “Student Polino and I discussed the alienation effect, as Doctor Berkeley calls it, and as you just expressed more poetically and accurately.” Freda was rewarded by another blink and nod. “But Mr. Polino’s reaction was entirely different. He thinks the planet is malevolent, that there is evil beneath its beauty. He described it in terms which turned my concern away from the planet and toward him. He is so distraught that he considers the planet a menace to human life. I thought it might be advisable to place him under covert psychiatric observation, for the good of the Bureau as well as his own. If the Senate Committee were to conduct an in-depth investigation of your petition, a field interviewer might approach the young man. If he were under psychiatric observation, of course, any testimony given by him would be voided. Possibly a bonus vacation might be arranged.”
    “No. That would be too obvious. If I sent him off the base, and an in-depth investigation were held, he would be the first the field investigator would interview… Polino, Hal… Let me see.”
    He swiveled in his chair, his silver-gray smock rustling with starch, and pulled a file from his desk drawer. “Polino, Harold,” he said again, looking at a file card he had selected. “Harold Michelangelo Polino, to be exact.” He inserted the card into a computer typewriter, pressed a button, and the typewriter began to hum with the flick of its type ball. A sheet of paper slowly emerged from the typewriter.
    Leaning sideways, intent on the record of Harold Michelangelo Polino, in his silver hair and his silver smock with his dead white face immobile, Doctor Gaynor reminded her of a bust cast from platinum as he scanned the record. Suddenly he looked over and smiled. “As you know, Doctor Caron, these reports are confidential, but since I repose special trust and confidence in you as a department head, and since this report was turned in by Paul Theaston, I will read you an excerpt: ‘Subject student has wide-ranging imagination which permits him to observe phenomena from varying points of view. In pure research, this faculty might be valuable. Certainly it adds to his intrinsic interest as a person, but it detracts from his ability to focus on