at them all again. He went from
wall to wall, kicking the straw. Then he scowled at the sand box, the
only place a thing that size could be stashed away. He was suddenly on
his knees, tossing sand left and right.

Avoiding certain places, he checked the pile. Nothing! Not a scrap of
leather or a piece of green paper!

"If you are through," said Villa heavily, "I wish to use the box."

"Go ahead, Viva." Watkins walked across the room, groping for a
cigarette, then remembering he had none left. "What happened out there?"
he asked loudly. "Were we doped? Something in the chickens?"

"We were awake for a long time after we ate," said Adam. "Not even these
people could make a drug act on six of us in the same minute, after that
long; too many differences in metabolism. If that's the word I want."

"They weren't even in the room when we dropped off," said Mrs. Full.

* * * * *

That was a tip-off. Watkins momentarily forgot his great loss. "They
left, and in a minute, we were asleep. They must have pumped some sort
of gas into the lab. Sleep gas."

"Is there such a thing?" asked Cal. "An anesthetic vapor that would
permeate such a large place so quickly?"

"Is there such a thing as a four dimensional maze?" asked Adam shortly.

Watkins grinned. He wasn't the only one who needed his morning coffee.

Then he thought of his briefcase again. He tried to push the moving wall
to one side; no go. He got mad again. "It's no good to them," he said.
"What do they want with it?"

"It couldn't have been so important that--" began Full.

"Important?" Watkins was yelling now, and although he disliked raising
his voice and making scenes, he did it now, with furious pleasure. "Cal,
you never saw anything more important in your life than that case, and I
don't care how many blue-ribboned cows you've gaped at!"

"What was in it?" asked Villa.

"Money, goddammit, money!" It didn't matter if his secret came out now.
In this insane place, God knew where, the cautious habits of half a
lifetime slid away. "The best haul I'd made this year. The contents of
the safe of Roscoe & Bates, that's what was in it! Better than
twenty-two thousand in good, green cash!"

"The contents of a safe?" Calvin Full frowned. "You mean you were a
messenger, taking it somewhere, and got on that roller coaster with--"

Adam Pierce laughed abruptly. "No, he wasn't a messenger," he said. "He
wasn't any messenger. He's a sa