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How could they have let this happen?” But there was no answer, not from the apes. Not from anyone else.
    Caesar pointed toward a structure that seemed to be an underground entrance. “There,” he said. “Is that it?”
    MacDonald peered, abruptly surprised out of his reverie. He nodded.
    Virgil sniffed and took out the Geiger counter. He switched it on; it clattered, but not too loudly. He pursed his lips and frowned as he studied the meter on the device. “We are at best brave and at worst mad to be here. This background radiation alone will give us at least three hundred roentgens an hour.”
    “Meaning?” Caesar looked at him.
    “That if we’re not out of here within two hours, we shall become . . . inmates.”
    “Hmf,” said Caesar. “Then we had better hurry.” He moved toward the entrance impatiently, MacDonald and Virgil hurrying to keep up.
    MacDonald climbed down past the rubble first, hoping to identify the tunnel. He sniffed the air as he moved. It smelled stale and musty; the tunnel was old and unused.
    He didn’t recognize it at first, though. He stopped at an intersection and stood there frowning in puzzlement. He lit a torch and waved it back and forth, searching for some familiar or identifying mark, until finally Caesar and Virgil climbed impatiently down themselves. Caesar was brusque. “You’ve got your bearings?”
    “I think so, yes. This is . . . was . . . Eleventh Avenue. Ape Management was one block east of here; the Archives Section two blocks west, at the corner of Breck Street and Ackerman. We want department 4SJ.”
    “Get us there—quickly,” ordered Caesar. “Let’s go.”
    MacDonald nodded and led them down one of the corridors toward a lower level.
    “I was here so often,” whispered MacDonald, half to himself. “When the city was alive.”
    “And existing on our labor,” snorted Caesar.
    MacDonald looked at him sharply. “They paid, Caesar. They all paid.”
    They groped their way along the dimly lit passage. It was damp and full of debris. The two apes wrinkled their noses in distaste, but they padded on through the rubble. The Geiger counter clicked in counterpoint.
    “Dead,” muttered MacDonald, “Dead . . . dead . . . all of them dead.”
    But he was wrong. Very wrong.
    The city was very much alive. Perhaps not on the scale it had been nine years before, but still alive enough to be dangerous.
    Down, down, farther down, buried in the bowels, deep enough even to have withstood the inferno that had raged above and leveled the rest of the city, were layer upon layer of levels, shielded by concrete and girders—the secret nerve center of the city’s control when it was alive and the center of its activity even in “death.”
    The rooms and corridors were a shambles, largely destroyed, crumbling, peeling, scarred, and burned.
    So were the people. Crumbling, peeling, scarred, and burned. Destroyed by the radiation around them.
    Their leader was Kolp. He was fat and sallow and had watery eyes. He had been lieutenant to Governor Breck, the man who had captured and tried to kill Caesar, He was changed now, his face ravaged by time and radiation. His beard was uneven across the scars. His hands were sometimes palsied, his movements rough and painful, and his voice harsh and grating. His eyes moved constantly, searching back and forth, darting quickly from corner to corner, fearful of sudden noises and unseen assassins. He sat before a shabby, dust-covered console and manipulated its useless dials.
    He was not alone. Sitting at another console was a woman named Alma. Once she had been beautiful. She still was, despite the damaging radiation. But her eyes were glazed with madness. Unable to cope with the terrible collapse of her world and everything in it, she had fled into insanity. Only occasionally did she test the waters of rationality, and each time, finding them still too fearful, she retreated once more into fantasy. It was the only response that protected her