oise.

"We'll go up a way," Moss said, "where we can talk. This is no place to
give you details."

They took an escalator up. The commercial lift fell behind them, and
with it most of the crashing and booming. Soon they emerged on an
observation platform, suspended on the side of the Tube, the vast tunnel
leading to the surface, not more than half a mile above them now.

"My God!" Taylor said, looking down the Tube involuntarily. "It's a long
way down."

Moss laughed. "Don't look."

They opened a door and entered an office. Behind the desk, an officer
was sitting, an officer of Internal Security. He looked up.

"I'll be right with you, Moss." He gazed at Taylor studying him. "You're
a little ahead of time."

"This is Commander Franks," Moss said to Taylor. "He was the first to
make the discovery. I was notified last night." He tapped a parcel he
carried. "I was let in because of this."

Franks frowned at him and stood up. "We're going up to first stage. We
can discuss it there."

"First stage?" Taylor repeated nervously. The three of them went down a
side passage to a small lift. "I've never been up there. Is it all
right? It's not radioactive, is it?"

"You're like everyone else," Franks said. "Old women afraid of burglars.
No radiation leaks down to first stage. There's lead and rock, and what
comes down the Tube is bathed."

"What's the nature of the problem?" Taylor asked. "I'd like to know
something about it."

"In a moment."

They entered the lift and ascended. When they stepped out, they were in
a hall of soldiers, weapons and uniforms everywhere. Taylor blinked in
surprise. So this was first stage, the closest undersurface level to the
top! After this stage there was only rock, lead and rock, and the great
tubes leading up like the burrows of earthworms. Lead and rock, and
above that, where the tubes opened, the great expanse that no living
being had seen for eight years, the vast, endless ruin that had once
been Man's home, the place where he had lived, eight years ago.

Now the surface was a lethal desert of slag and rolling clouds. Endless
clouds drifted back and forth, blotting out the red Sun. Occasionally
something metallic stirred, moving through the remains of a city,
threading its way across the tortured terrain of the countryside. A
leady, a surface robot, immune to radiation, constructed with feverish
haste in the last months before the cold war became literally hot.

Leadys, crawl