me by the fire place.

"It beats a roller coaster, doesn't it?" the chauffeur said. "Got me
scared the first few times before I found out it was safe. Nothing to
worry about, never you fear."

With his stomach throttling his throat, Lee asked, "How deep are we
going underground?"

"That we are not supposed to know; that's why all the instruments are
cut off. The other day I had a passenger, one of those weathermen, a
professor. He laughed when I told him I didn't know how deep it was. Got
a little doodad out of his pocket; aneroid barometer, or something, he
said it was. But he got a surprise; in the first place the thing didn't
work, so he said the whole tunnel was probably pressurized. In the
second place he never got where he wanted to go. They stopped the car at
the next control and shot him right back whence he came."

"But why?"

The chauffeur looked mysterious. "Seems The Brain doesn't like people
with doodads in their pockets even if they mean no harm. The Brain is
most particular about such things; maybe somehow it peers into this car
this moment, maybe it records every word we say. How do we know?" He
shrugged his shoulders. "Not that I give a damn. I've got nothing to
conceal. The hours are right and the pay's right; that's good enough for
me."

* * * * *

Lee experienced an old, familiar sensation: that creepy feeling one got
on jungle patrol, knowing that there were Jap snipers up in the trees,
invisible with the devilish green on their faces and uniforms.

"Strange," he thought, "that in the very center of civilization one
should feel as haunted as in the jungle hell."

Then, just as he began to wonder whether the dizzy spiralling plunge as
if in the belly of a shark would ever end, the tunnel levelled. Now the
car shot straight as a bullet and just as fast it seemed.

As his stomach returned to something like normal position, the feeling
of oppression changed into one of flying through space, of being
dynamically at rest. Again just as the duration of this dynamic flight
evoked the feel of infinity, the motion changed. So fast did it recede
that the momentum of his body almost hurled Lee from the back seat into
the front.

Doors snapped open and as Lee staggered out somewhat benumbed in limb
and head, his eyes grew big as they met the most unexpected sight. The
car rested on the concrete apron of what appeared to be a super-duper
bus terminal plus service stati