was designed to close off.

"Well, at least she didn't collapse at the bottom of the shaft," he
said. "Come on, let's see what happened." And he climbed into the shaft.

We followed him like zombies. At least that's how I felt. The shaft was
about twenty feet deep. There were foot- and hand-holds. It got stuffy
right away, and warmer, in spite of the shaft being open at the top.

At the bottom there was a short horizontal passage. We had to duck to
get through it. When we could straighten up we were in a large and
luxurious bomb-resistant dugout, to give it a name. And it was stuffier
and hotter than ever.

There was a lot of scientific equipment around and several small control
panels reminding me of the one in the back of the plane. Some of them, I
supposed, connected with instruments, weather and otherwise, hidden up
in the skeletal structure of the cracking plant. And there were signs of
occupancy, a young woman's occupancy--clothes scattered around in a
frivolous way, and some small objects of art, and a slightly more than
life-size head in clay that I guessed the occupant must have been
sculpting. I didn't give that last more than the most fleeting look,
strictly unintentional to begin with, because although it wasn't
finished I could tell whose head it was supposed to be--the Pilot's.

* * * * *

The whole place was finished in dull silver like the cabin of the plane,
and likewise it instantly struck me as having a living personality,
partly the Pilot's and partly someone else's--the personality of a
marriage. Which wasn't a bit nice, because the whole place smelt of
death.

But to tell the truth I didn't give the place more than the quickest
look-over, because my attention was rivetted almost at once on a long
wide couch with the covers kicked off it and on the body there.

The woman was about six feet tall and built like a goddess. Her hair was
blonde and her skin tanned. She was lying on her stomach and she was
naked.

She didn't come anywhere near my libido, though. She looked sick to
death. Her face, twisted towards us, was hollow-cheeked and flushed. Her
eyes, closed, were sunken and dark-circled. She was breathing shallowly
and rapidly through her open mouth, gasping now and then.

I got the crazy impression that all the heat in the place was coming
from her body, radiating from her fever.

And the whole place stunk of death. Honestly it seemed to me that this
d