ne," he reached out to touch the door. It felt slightly
warm, so he allowed his fingertips to slide over the upper handle. A
tentative tug produced no movement of the door.

"That's it, though," he mumbled quietly. "Well, now to do our little act
with the others!"

He moved to the second door, where all the rods were set at "two." Here
he fell to manipulating the rod handles, pausing now and then to shove
hopefully against the door. Some twenty minutes later, he tried the same
routine at the third door.

Eventually, he returned to his starting point and rotated the rods there
at random for a few minutes. Having, apparently by accident, arranged
them in a sequence of one-two-three, he contrived to lean against the
door at the crucial instant. As it gave beneath his weight, he grabbed
the two lower handles and pushed until the door rose to a horizontal
position level with its hinged top. It settled there with a loud click.

* * * * *

Barnsley stooped to crawl through into an arched passage of the same
pearly plastic. He straightened up and walked along for about twenty
feet, flashing a white-toothed grin through his beard while muttering
curses behind it. Presently, he arrived at a small, round bay, to be
confronted by three more doors.

"Bet there's a dozen of you three-eyed clods peeping at me," he growled.
"How'd you like me to poke a boot through the panel in front of you and
kick you blubber-balls in all directions? Do you have a page in your
data books for that?"

He forced himself to _feel_ sufficiently dull-witted to waste ten
minutes opening one of the doors. The walls of the succeeding passage
were greenish, and the tunnel curved gently downward to the left.
Besides being somewhat warmer, the air exuded a faint blend of heated
machine oil and something like ripe fish. The next time Barnsley came to
a set of doors, he found also a black plastic cube about two feet high.
He squatted on his heels to examine it.

_I'd better look inside or they'll be disappointed_, he told himself.

From the corner of his eye, he watched the movement of shadows behind
the translucent panels in the walls. He could picture the observers
there: blubbery bipeds with three-jointed arms and legs ending in
clusters of stubby but flexible tentacles. Their broad, spine-crested
heads would be thrust forward and each would have two of his three
protruding eyes directed at Barnsley's slightest