did manage to produce something resembling a tune.
Evidently bearing a relation to this was the sharp slap Adam got when he
started to sing "The Whiffenpoof Song" while idling around a pile of
outsize blocks like a child's building bricks. What the human ear
relished, the giant ear flinched from.

There was a sort of vertical maze that verged on the four-dimensional,
for when they thought they were finding a way out the top they would
come abruptly to the side, or even the bottom, and have to begin anew.
This one was obviously impossible to figure out, thought Watkins. It
must be one of the ways in which the scientists induced neuroses in
their experimental subjects. He had a quick mind for puzzles and
intricacies of any kind, but this one stumped him cold.

"You think it's calculated to drive you crazy?" he asked Cal.

The New Englander considered for a minute. Then he nodded. "Possibly,"
he said.

"You think it might work?"

This time Cal pondered longer. At last he said, "Not if we don't let
it."

"I could develop a first-class neurosis," said Watkins to Mrs. Full, "if
I let myself really go."

"We must all keep our heads, Mr. Watkins," she told him. "Those of us
who have not given up--" She glanced at Summersby with a frown--"must
hold a tight rein on ourselves."

"That's right, ma'am," he said. They all called her "ma'am" or "Mrs.
Full." Nobody knew her first name. He wondered if she'd be insulted if
he asked her, and decided that she would.

Capriciously, then, on the heels of a series of punishments, the head
scientist went out of the room and came back with food for them. It
flung the food--three chickens--on the floor. Villa snatched one of them
up with a happy shout, but at once his dark face soured. "Raw? How can
we cook them?" His hand with the fowl dropped limply to his side.

"We can make a fire," said Calvin. Watkins was a little surprised that
it was Cal who made the suggestion first, but the Vermont man added,
"I've made enough campfires to know something about it."

"Mr. Full is an enthusiastic hunter," said his wife.

"A fire of what?" asked Villa, managing to look starved, helpless, and
wistful, all at once.

Summersby said, "There are plates of plastic over there, and plenty of
short rods. I don't know what these beasts use them for, but if they're
fireproof, we can construct a grill with them." He went without further
talk to a stack of the multicolored slabs and dowels, which lay