"But are the drafted men the only ones taken?" inquired Downey, anxiously.
"No, we are broad-minded. We offer the same distinguished lot to criminals--and to aliens without a passport. That is how you gained your chance, young man. As it happens, we are now far down the list. Your turn will come in just three days."
With a groan, Downey stared at the gray, knife-lined walls that hedged him about like a fortress prison. For the first time in his life he regretted--and bitterly regretted--the care he had always taken to keep in prime physical condition. He chewed his lips in mortification to think that he had come to the twenty-third century only in order to nourish some tottering dodo with his life blood. But for one reason above all others he was stabbed with grief: a vision had burst over him of Judith's eager face and burning bright blue eyes; and with a rush of vehement emotion it came to him that he could not, must not die! How would she fare, alone and friendless in this strange century? To escape from the bleak steel walls appeared impossible; yet for her sake, more than for his own, he must find a way to avert the threatened doom.
Two days had gone by. Up and down the length of a long curtained room Downey slowly paced, with drooping head and drawn white face. Sumptuously upholstered chairs and carven tables were ranged about him, as if to lend luxury to his final hours. But it was not these that he observed; his eyes were drawn constantly to the door, which was crossed with steel bars, beyond which two kilted figures stood beside an ugly black apparatus resembling a machine-gun.
Bitterly he reviewed in his mind his fruitless efforts to free himself. The windows were locked and grated; the single door was guarded, and he was under constant surveillance. Every effort had been made to render his last days comfortable--but what comfort could he take when he was held like a doomed ox in the stall, awaiting the slaughter? He had hardly slept and barely taken food; and the final irony, he thought, occurred when he was handed a steel plaque which read, "The Purple Badge of Heroism. Died for his country this Thirty-Third day of May, in the year 314 of the New Era."
"Well, guess I'm as good as dead already," he reflected as he stared at these words.