snapped closed behind him.

He struck hard and rolled. The chute opened into the commissary in the
third deep-level of the building, and the place was black as the
inside of a pocket. He tested unbroken legs with a sigh of relief, and
limped across to where the door should be.

In the corridor there was some light--dim phosphorescence from the
Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. He walked
swiftly, cursing the clack-clack his heels made on the ringing stone.
When he reached the end of the corridor he tried the heavy door.

It gave, complaining. Good, good! It had been a quick, imperfect job
of jimmying the lock, so obviously poor that it had worried him a
lot--but why should they test it? There was still another door.

He stepped into the blackness again, started across the room as the
door swung shut behind him.

A shoe scraped, the faintest rustle of sound. Carl froze. His own
trouser leg? A trick of acoustics? He didn't move a muscle.

Then: "Carl?"

His pocket light flickered around the room, a small secretary's
ante-room. It stopped on a pair of legs, a body, slouched down in the
soft plastifoam chair--a face, ruddy and bland, with a shock of sandy
hair, with quixotic eyebrows. "Terry! For Christ sake, what--"

The man leaned forward, grinning up at him. "You're late, Carl." His
voice was a muddy drawl. "Should have made it sooner than this,
sheems--seems to me."

Carl's light moved past the man in the chair to the floor. The bottle
was standing there, still half full. "My god, you're _drunk_!"

"Course I'm drunk. Whadj-ya think, I'd sober up after you left me
tonight? No thanks, I'd rather be drunk." Terry Fisher hiccupped
loudly. "I'd always rather be drunk, around this place."

"All right, you've got to get out of here--" Carl's voice rose with
bitter anger. Of all times, of _all_ times--he wanted to scream. "How
did you get in here? You've _got_ to get out--"

"So do you. They're on to you, Carl. I don't think you know that, but
they are." He leaned forward precariously. "I had a talk with Barness
this morning, one of his nice 'spontaneous' chats, and he pumped the
hell out of me and thought I was too drunk to know it. They're
expecting you to come here tonight--"

Carl heaved at the drunken man's arm, frantically in the darkness.
"Get _out_ of here, Terry, or so help me--"

Terry clutched at him. "Didn't you hear me? They _know_ about you.
Personell supervisor! They think