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alight. “He was sick to his stomach. Honest, I thought he was going to throw up. They didn’t clean up the blood yet, you know? It was laying all over the place, and he slipped in the blood. Had to hang on to that other guy. Tinker. You know.”
    â€œTinker?”
    â€œSome big guy way high up. Sloan Tinker. I don’t know who the hell he is. Cheever had to go in my office and lay down. I got this sofa in there. President Cheever almost threw up on my sofa.”
    â€œWell, congratulations. That would have been an honor indeed for your sofa.” Homer moved rapidly away from Crawley and climbed over the remnants of the shattered door to the great hall.
    â€œWhatsamatter with him?” said Crawley. “Queasy, I guess. Some people got no stomach. Can’t stand the sight of blood. Me, it never bothered me none.” He picked up a brick from one pile of rubbish and moved it slowly to another. “Like once I saw this accident. There was four, five people laying all over the road. I pulled my car over to the side—”
    â€œHey, Crawley,” said Captain McCurdy, “have you got the key to that room there? Room 196? It’s the only one down here that didn’t get its door blown off. We’ve got to get in there and look inside. You’ve got the master key?”
    â€œRight, you bet I do,” said Crawley. He felt around his neck for the key on the string. It wasn’t there. He patted his shirt pocket. “I got it right here someplace.”
    A head appeared at the edge of the hole and said hello to Captain McCurdy. “Oh, Bert, there you are,” said McCurdy. “Good. You can take over now. Tom hasn’t had any lunch and I’ve got to go up in the tower with Maderna from Buildings and Grounds. Now look here, Bert. Take it slow and easy. And that room there, with the locked door—take a good look in there. Crawley, here, he’s got the key.” McCurdy climbed up the ladder, followed by Tom, and Bert climbed down.
    Mr. Crawley was feeling cheated out of his story about the bodies on the highway. “I was just telling those guys about this terrible accident I saw on Route 128. There were these people all over the road, dead bodies.”
    Bert looked at the door of Room 196. “You’ve got the key to this room here?” he said to Crawley.
    â€œJeez, it’s on me someplace,” said Crawley. “I know I got it here someplace.” He felt feebly in his pants pockets. Then he looked at the locked door of Room 196. “Oh, 196,” he said. “That’s right; 196 is okay anyways. I already looked in 196. Now, as I was saying, there was all these corpses—”
    â€œYou already looked in there?” said Bert. “You mean, it’s all cleared out in there? What’s that sign mean on the door: Ethiopian Literacy? What the heck is that?”
    â€œDamned if I know. They got all these organizations here downcellar. Yeah, I already looked in there. See, that room isn’t even under the hole. The ceiling didn’t even get blowed off.”
    Bert shrugged his shoulders and began shoveling plaster dust and brick rubble out of Room 197, which had once housed the Harvard Sci-Fi Comics Library.
    â€œHey, look at that, will you,” said Mr. Crawley. He reached over and picked a dusty comic book out of Bert’s shovel. “An old Flash Gordon comic. What do you know?”
    Bert dumped his shovelful of plaster dust against the door of 196. “You swear you looked in here?” said Bert.
    Jerry Crawley leaned against the ladder and turned the pages of his comic book. “Oh, sure, I swear,” he said. He sealed his oath with a mighty belch.

Chapter Nine

    His great-aunts were gone, but the pain in his head was still there. He could feel it pulsing and throbbing in the dark. Why he should be on shipboard he didn’t know, but there he was. It was a small creaking wooden ship,