father
said. "We'll just have to string wires out."

Conn used his flashlight and found the power unit for the room lights;
all the overhead lights were wired to one unit, if wired were the word
for gold-leaf circuits cemented to the walls and covered with
insulating paint. For the heavy stuff, like the ventilator fans,
they'd have to find the central power plant. He looked around the big
room, poking into some of the closets that lined it. Radiation-proof
clothing. Tools. Arms and ammunition. First-aid kits. Emergency
rations. All the vehicles were plated in shimmering collapsium.

The crowd started coming in: the work-gangs selected for the first
exploration work, most of them old hands of Rodney Maxwell's; the
engineers they had recruited; Mohammed Matsui--he had a gang of his
own, the same one he had been using in tearing down the converter at
Tenth Army; the stockholders and officials; the press. And everybody
else Tom Brangwyn's police hadn't been able to keep out.

The power plant was at the extreme bottom; Matsui began looking it over
at once. Above it they found the service facilities--air-and-water
plant; pumps for the artesian well; sewage disposal. Then repair ships,
and a laboratory, and laundries and kitchens above that.

"Where do you suppose it is?" Kurt Fawzi was asking. "Up at the very
top, I suppose. Let's go up and work down; I can't wait till we've
found it."

Like a kid on Christmas Eve, Conn thought. And there was no Santa
Claus, and Christmas had been abolished.

The place was built in concentric circles, level above level. Combat
equipment nearest the tunnel exit and nearest the vertical shaft, and
ambulances and decontamination units and equipment for relief and
rebuilding next. Storerooms, mile on circular mile of them. Not the
hasty packrat cramming he'd seen at Tenth Army; everything had been
brought in in order, carefully piled or racked, and then left. More
stores for the next three levels up; then living quarters. Enlisted
men's and women's quarters, no signs of occupancy. Enlisted kitchens
and mess halls, untouched.

Most of the officers' quarters were similarly unused, but here and
there some had been occupied. A sloppily made bed. A used cake of soap
in the bathroom. An empty bottle in a closet. Officers' commissary
stores had been used from and replaced; the officers' mess hall and
kitchen had been in constant use, and the officers' club had a
comfortably scuffed and lived-i