t," Altamont said. "We didn't have to bother
fussing around with that flag, after all. That hump, over there, looks
as though it had been a small building, and there's nothing
corresponding to it on the city map. That may be the bunker over the
stair-head to the crypt."

[Illustration: ]

They began unloading equipment--a small portable nuclear-electric
conversion unit, a powerful solenoid-hammer, crowbars and intrenching
tools, tins of blasting-plastic. They took out the two hunting rifles,
and the auto-carbines, and Altamont showed the young men of Murray
Hughes' detail how to use them.

"If you'll pardon me, sir," the Tenant said to Altamont, "I think it
would be a good idea if your companion went up in the flying machine
and circled around over us, to keep watch for Scowrers. There are
quite a few of them, particularly farther up the rivers, to the east,
where the damage was not so great and they can find cellars and
shelters and buildings to live in."

"Good idea; that way, we won't have to put out guards," Altamont said.
"From the looks of this, we'll need everybody to help dig into that
thing. Hand out one of the portable radios, Jim, and go up to about a
thousand feet. If you see anything suspicious, give us a yell, and
then spray it with bullets, and find out what it is afterward."

They waited until the helicopter had climbed to position and was
circling above, and then turned their attention to the place where the
sheet of fused earth and stone bulged upward. It must have been almost
ground-zero of one of the hydrogen-bombs; the wreckage of the
Cathedral of Learning had fallen predominantly to the north, and the
Carnegie Library was tumbled to the east.

"I think the entrance would be on this side, toward the Library,"
Altamont said. "Let's try it, to begin with."

He used the solenoid-hammer, slowly pounding a hole into the glaze,
and placed a small charge of the plastic explosive. Chunks of the
lavalike stuff pelted down between the little mound and the huge one
of the old library, blowing a hole six feet in diameter and two and a
half deep, revealing concrete bonded with crushed steel-mill slag.

"We missed the door," he said. "That means we'll have to tunnel in
through who knows how much concrete. Well--"

* * * * *

He used a second and larger charge, after digging a hole a foot deep.
When he and his helpers came up to look, they found a large mass of
concrete