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switchboard circuits going, so that I can hear you all, all of you good people who want to discuss something, anything. The number is 394-950-911111, so call in, folks, about anything at all, whatever’s on your mind, good, bad, indifferent, interesting, or dull—just call Cavorting Cary Karns at 394-950-911111 and the whole radio audience out there will hear you and what you have to say, your opinion, a fact that you know that you think everyone else should know—” From the speaker of the transistor radio came the sound of a phone ringing. “Hello—we’ve got a caller already!” Cavorting Cary Karns declared. “Yes sir. Yes ma’am, I mean.”
    “Mr. Karns,” a shrill female voice said, “there ought to be a stop sign placed at the intersection of Fulton Avenue and Clover, where all the little schoolchildren, and I see them every day—”
    Something hard, some dense object, bumped Joe’s left hand. He took hold of it. A phone.
    Sitting down, he placed the phone and the transistor radio in front of him and then he got out his cigarette lighter and zipped the butane flame on. It illuminated a meager circle,but within the circle he could make out the phone and the transistor radio. A Zenith transistor radio, he noted. Evidently a good one, from the size of it.
    “Okay, folks out there,” Cavorting Cary Karns merrily prattled. “The number is 394-950-911111; that’s where you’ll reach me and through me the whole world of—”
    Joe dialed. At last he had painstakingly dialed the whole number. He held the receiver to his ear, listened to a busy signal for a moment, and then heard, from both the receiver and the radio, the voice of Cavorting Cary Karns. “Yes sir, or is it ma’am?” Karns asked.
    “Where am I?” Joe said into the phone.
    “Hey there!” Karns said. “We’ve got somebody out there, some poor soul, who’s lost. Your name is, sir?”
    “Joseph Fernwright,” Joe said.
    “Well, Mr. Fernwright, it’s a downright pleasure to talk to you. Your question is, Where are you? Does anybody know where Mr. Joseph Fernwright of Cleveland—you are in Cleveland, aren’t you, Mr. Fernwright?—does anybody out there know where he is, at this moment? I think this is a valid question on Mr. Fernwright’s part; I’d like to hold the lines open for anyone who can call in and give us some idea, at least a general idea, of the vicinity in which Mr. Fernwright is currently. So you other people, who don’t know where Mr. Fernwright is, could you not call in until we’ve located Mr. Fernwright? Mr. Fernwright, it shouldn’t be long; we’ve got a ten million audience and a fifty-thousand-watt transmitter going and—wait! A call.” Tinny sound of a phone ringing. “Yes sir or ma’am. Sir. Your name, sir?”
    A male voice, from the radio and from Joe’s phone, said, “My name is Dwight L. Glimmung of 301 Pleasant Hill Road, and I know where Mr. Fernwright is. He’s in my basement. Slightly to the right and a little behind my furnace. He’s in a wooden packing crate that came with an air-conditioning unit that I ordered from People’s Sears, last year.”
    “You hear that, Mr. Fernwright?” Cavorting Cary Karnswhooped. “You’re in a packing crate in Mr. Dwight L.—what was the rest of your name, sir?”
    “Glimmung.”
    “Mr. Dwight L. Glimmung’s basement of 301 Pleasant Hill Road. So all your troubles are over, Mr. Fernwright. Simply get out of the packing crate and you’ll be just fine!”
    “I don’t want him to bust the crate, though,” Dwight L. Glimmung said. “Maybe I better go down there into that basement and pry a few boards loose and let him out.”
    “Mr. Fernwright,” Karns said, “just for the edification of our radio audience, how did you happen to get into an empty packing crate in the basement of Mr. Dwight L. Glimmung of 301 Pleasant Hill Road? I’m sure our audience would like to know.”
    “I don’t know,” Joe said.
    “Well, perhaps then Mr.