being a clerkor a mechanic or a soldier, or even a
laborer for that matter. Good laborers were the salt of
the earth! They weren't smart, maybe, but they had a
well, a sort of natural, relaxed joy of living. O'Leary was
a broadminded man, and many times he had thought al-
most with a touch of envy how comfortable it must be to
be a wipea laborer, he corrected himself. No responsi-
bilities. No worries. Just an easy, slow routine of work
and loaf, work and loaf.
Of course, he wouldn't really want that kind of life,
because he was Civil Service, and not the kind to try to
cross over class barriers that weren't meant to be
"Evening, Cap'n."
He nodded to the mechanic inmate who was, theoreti-
cally, in charge of maintaining the prison's car pool, just
inside the gate. "Evening, Conan," he said. Conan, now
he was a big buck greaser, and he would be there for the
next hour, languidly poking a piece of fluff out of the air
filter on the prison jeep. Lazy, sure. Undependable, cer-
tamly. Bat he kept the cars goingand, O'Leary thought
approvingly, when his sentence was up in another year or
so, he would go back to his life with his status restored,
a mechanic on the outside as he had been inside, and he
certainly would never risk coming back to the Jug by
trying to pass as Civil Service or anything else. He knew
his place.
So why didn't this girl, this Sue-Ann Bradley, know
hers?
n
Every prison has its Green Sleevessometimes they
are called by different names. Old Marquette called it
"the canary"; Louisiana State called it "the red hats";
elsewhere it was called "the hole," "the snake pit," "the
Klondike." When you're in it you don't much care what
it is called; it is a place for punishment.
And punishment is what you get.
Block 0 in Estates-General Correctional Institution was
the disciplinary block, and because of the green strait-
jackets its inhabitants wore it was called the Green Sleeves.
It was a community of its own, an enclave within the
larger city-state that was the Jug. And like any other com-
munity, it had its leading citizens . . . two of them. Their
names were Sauer and Flock.
Sue-Ann Bradley heard them before she reached the
Green Sleeves. She was in a detachment of three unfor-
tunates like herself, convoyed by an irritable guard, climb-
ing the steel steps toward Block 0 from the floor below,
when she heard the yelling.
"Owoo-o-o," screamed Sauer from one end of the cell
