Smale had done a good job of stripping the room--and me. I had my shirt and pants and shoes, but no tie or belt. I still had my wallet--empty, a pack of cigarettes with two wilted weeds in it, and a box of matches. Smale had missed a bet: I might set fire to my hair and burn to the ground. I might also stuff a sock down my throat and strangle, or hang myself with a shoe lace--but I wasn't going to. I looked at the window some more. The door was too tough to tackle, and the heavies outside were probably hoping for an excuse to work me over. They wouldn't expect me to go after the glass; after all, I was still sixty-three stories up. What would I do if I did make it to the window sill? But we could worry about that later, after I had smelled the fresh air. My forefinger found an irregularity in the smooth metal: a short groove. I looked closer, saw a screw-head set flush with the aluminum surface. Maybe if the frame was bolted together-- No such luck; the screw I had found was the only one. What was it for? Maybe if I removed it I'd find out. But I'd wait until dark to try it. Smale hadn't left a light fixture in the room. After sundown I'd be able to work unobserved. * * * * * A couple of hours went by and no one came to disturb my solitude, not even to feed me. I had a short scrap of metal I'd worked loose from my wallet. It was mild steel, flimsy stuff, only about an inch long, but I was hoping the screw might not be set too tight. Aluminum threads strip pretty easily, so it probably wasn't cinched up too hard. There was no point in theorizing. It was dark now; I'd give it a try. I went to the window, fitted the edge of metal into the slotted screw-head, and twisted. It turned, just like that. I backed it off ten turns, twenty; it was a thick bolt with fine threads. It came free and air whooshed into the hole. The screw apparently sealed the panel after the air was evacuated. I thought it over. If I could fill the space between the panels with water and let it freeze ... quite a trick in the tropics. I might as well plan to fill it with gin and set it on fire. I was going in circles. Every idea I got started with "if". I needed something I could manage with the materials at hand: cloth, a box of matches, a few bits of paper. I got out a cigarette, lit up, and while the match was burning examined the hole from which I'd removed the plug. It was about three sixteenths of an inch in diameter and an inch deep, and there was a hole near the bottom communicating with the air space between the glass panels. It was an old-fashioned method of manufacture but it seemed to have worked all right: the air was pumped out and the hole sealed with the screw. It had at any rate the advantage of being easy to service if the panel leaked. Now with some way of pumping air _in_, I could blow out the panels....