ed ten seconds when it came to his topside address, but it
ultimately dilated the hatch for him, first handing him a claim check
for his ID card.

Gusterson's heart was ticking like a sledgehammer by now. He hopped
clumsily onto the escalator, clutched the moving guard rail to either
side, then shut his eyes as the steps went over the edge and became
what felt like vertical. An instant later he forced his eyes open,
unclipped a hand from the rail and touched the second switch beside
his headlamp, which instantly began to blink whitely, as if he were a
civilian plane flying into a nest of military jobs.

With a further effort he kept his eyes open and flinchingly surveyed
the scene around him. After zigging through a bombproof half-furlong
of roof, he was dropping into a large twilit cave. The blue-black
ceiling twinkled with stars. The walls were pierced at floor level by
a dozen archways with busy niche stores and glowing advertisements
crowded between them. From the archways some three dozen slidewalks
curved out, tangenting off each other in a bewildering multiple
cloverleaf. The slidewalks were packed with people, traveling
motionless like purposeful statues or pivoting with practiced grace
from one slidewalk to another, like a thousand toreros doing
veronicas.

* * * * *

The slidewalks were moving faster than he recalled from his last
venture underground and at the same time the whole pedestrian
concourse was quieter than he remembered. It was as if the five
thousand or so moles in view were all listening--for what? But there
was something else that had changed about them--a change that he
couldn't for a moment define, or unconsciously didn't want to.
Clothing style? No ... My God, they weren't all wearing identical
monster masks? No ... Hair color?... Well....

He was studying them so intently that he forgot his escalator was
landing. He came off it with a heel-jarring stumble and bumped into a
knot of four men on the tiny triangular hold-still. These four at
least sported a new style-wrinkle: ribbed gray shoulder-capes that
made them look as if their heads were poking up out of the center of
bulgy umbrellas or giant mushrooms.

One of them grabbed hold of Gusterson and saved him from staggering
onto a slidewalk that might have carried him to Toledo.

"Gussy, you dog, you must have esped I wanted to see you," Fay cried,
patting him on the elbows. "Meet Davidson and Kester a