For a segment there were the lower entrances to the cellars of
the giant buildings overhead. We passed a place where the
tunnel-corridor widened into a great underground plaza. The sewerage
and wire-pipes lay like tangled pythons on its floor. Half across it,
by the glow of temporary lights strung on a cable, a group of
repairmen were working. We passed them, headed in to where the tunnel
narrowed again and there were now occasional cubby entrances to
underground dwellings.

It was a rabbit warren from here to the river, haunted by criminals
and by miserable families, many of whom never saw the daylight for
weeks at a time. The giant voices of the city hardly carried down
here, so that an oppressive silence hung upon everything.

"That next crossing, Gregg. They said they'd wait for us there."

Occasional escalators led upward. In advance of us was a narrow
intersection. There were a few lights in the bullseyes of the
subterranean dwelling rooms, but most of them were dark.

"Easy, Snap. Not so fast."

I pulled Snap to a walk. We edged over against the tunnel side. We had
passed a small lighted audiphone cubby, evidently the one from which
Dud and Shac had paged us. They should have been here waiting; but
there was nothing but the empty, gloomy tunnels.

"Something is coming!" Snap clutched at me; we drew our cloaks around
us and waited in a shadowed recess. Down a side incline, a segment
behind us, a small automatic food truck came lurching. It pulled up at
an arcade entrance. Its driver slid the portals, deposited his cases
of food, locked the panel after him; and in a moment he and his truck
were gone up the incline.

We heard, in the ensuing silence, a low groan near at hand; then
abruptly it stopped. We saw, within twenty feet of us, two dark
figures lying on the pavement grid in a black patch of shadow where
the mailtube came down in a curve and disappeared into the tunnel
wall.

We bent over the figures of two men. They lay together, one half upon
the other, black-garbed figures with white, staring faces. One
twitched a little and then lay still.

They were Shac and Dud Ardley.

"Murdered, Gregg! Good Lord!"

Both were dead, but we could see no marks on either of them.

I found my wits. "Snap, we can't stand like this wholly visible."

I pulled Snap away. We darted a few feet. The light of the tunnel
intersection was directly over us. "Not here, Snap! Run!"

Under the curving vacuum tube a litt