he gasped.

There was no use in looking for the outer door. He had found the answer
to their last problem, and he had to get back to the box with that
answer and thrash it out with all of them. There might be a salvation
for them and there might not.

Leaving the screen showing the city, he jumped down off the table, raced
back through the room and into the next, the dining hall. Still there
were no signs of any of the giants. He had crossed the threshold of the
third room when he heard a door open on his right. There was no time to
gape around; he covered thirty feet in five strides, dodged under the
hanging shelf of the strange yellow machine, like a low desk covered
with cogwheels, and ran along beneath it till he came to the extreme end
of the contrivance.

A pair of feet, either of which would have outweighed a draft horse,
went past him; he dared not lean forward to see the rest of the brute,
but it was undoubtedly an adult. It went into the playroom.

After twenty or twenty-five minutes, during which Summersby thought over
the problem and agreed with himself that he couldn't find the solution
alone, the giant came out of the playroom, crossed near his hiding
place, and went out through a door beside the huge picture. It was not
in a hurry, so he decided it had not noticed his absence from the box.

He dragged an easy chair over to the nursery door. It was just four
times the size of Summersby's Morris chair at home, and about eight
times as heavy. As he was crawling up the leg to the seat, he recalled
that he had a bad heart. If he hadn't been clinging to the plastic with
both arms, he would have shrugged.

He intercepted the beam and opened the door. Having no more than half a
minute to get through before it shut, he had to leave the chair where it
was. He hoped none of the adults would realize that its position had
changed.

The playroom was clean and neat. Likely it would remain unvisited
through the night. He went to the box and only then remembered it was
shut tight. What did the kids do when they opened it during the day? He
had seen them at it twice. They laid their hands on top of the box,
there on the left.

Hauling over enough junk to make a pair of steps, he got onto the roof
of the box. There was a bar, set into the coaming. He pressed it, leaned
over, and saw the wall slide back. A second push returned it to its shut
position. He opened it again, swung his legs over the edge, pressed the
ba