the Nipe, even through these echoing tunnels. He was still miles
away.

"He's still sitting motionless," said Captain Greer. "Thinking, I
suppose. Or sleeping. It's hard to tell."

"All right. Let me know if he starts moving, will you?"

"Will do."

_Poor unsuspecting beastie_, Stanton thought. _Ten long years of hard
work, of feeling secure in his little nest, and within a very short time
he's going to get the shock of his life._

Or maybe not. There was no way of knowing what kind of shocks the Nipe
had taken in the course of his life, Stanton thought. There was no way
of knowing whether the Nipe was even capable of feeling anything like
shock, as a matter of fact.

It was odd, he thought, that he should feel a strong kinship toward both
the Nipe and his brother in such similar ways. He had never met the
Nipe, and his brother was only a dim picture in his old memories, but
they were both very well known to him. Certainly they were better known
to him than he was to them.

And yet, seeing his brother's face on the TV screen, hearing his voice,
watching the way he moved about, watching the changing expressions on
his face, had been a tremendously moving experience. Not until that
moment, he thought, had he really known himself.

Meeting him face to face would be much easier now, but it would still be
a scene highly charged with emotional tension.

His foot kicked something that rattled and rolled away from him. He
stopped, freezing in his tracks, looking downward, trying to pierce the
dully glowing gloom. The thing he had kicked was a human skull.

He relaxed and began walking again.

There were plenty of human bones down here. Mannheim had told him that
the tunnels had been used as air-raid shelters when the sun bomb had hit
the island during the Holocaust. Men, women, and children by the
thousands had crowded underground after the warning had come--and they
had died by the thousands when the bright, hot, deadly gases had roared
down the ventilators and stairwells.

There were even caches of canned goods down here, some of them still
perfectly sealed after all this time. The hordes of rats, wiser than
they knew, had chewed at them, exposing the steel beneath the thin tin
plate. And, after a while, oxidation would weaken the can to the point
where some lucky rat could gnaw through the rusty spot and find himself
a meal. Then he would move the empty can aside and begin gnawing at the
next in line. He could