There were plenty of bones down here. Mannheim had said that the tunnels had been used as air-raid shelters when the sun bomb had hit the island during the Holocaust. Thousands had crowded underground after the warning had come, and they had died when the bright, hot, deadly gas had roared down through ventilators and open stairwells. There were even caches of canned goods down here, some of them still sealed after all this time. But the rats, wiser than they knew, had chewed at them, exposing the steel beneath the tin plate. After a while, oxidation would weaken a can to the point where some lucky rat could bite through it and find himself a meal. Then he could move the empty can aside and gnaw the next one in the pile, and the cycle would begin again. It kept the rats fed almost as well as an automatic machine might have. * * * * * The tunnel was an endless monochromatic world that was both artificial and natural. Here, there was a neatly squared-off mosaic of ceramic tile; over there, on a little hillock of earth, squatted a colony of fat mushrooms. In one place, he had to skirt a pool of water; in another, climb over a heap of rust and debris that had once been a subway car. One man, alone, walking through the dark towards a superhuman monster that had terrorized Earth for a decade. A drug that would knock out the Nipe would have been useful, but that would have required a greater knowledge of the Nipe's biochemistry than anyone had. The same applied to anesthetic gases, or electric shock, or supersonics. The only answer was a man called Stanton. And the voice near his ear said: "A hundred yards to go, Barbell." "I know," he whispered. "He hasn't moved?" "No." _Wouldn't it be funny if he were dead?_ Stanton thought. _If his heart had stopped, or something. Wouldn't that be a big joke on everybody? Especially me._ Ahead the tunnel made a curving turn, and there was a large area that had once been a major junction of two tunnels, one below the other. The Nipe had taken over a part of that area to build his home-away-from-home. Stanton approached the turn and took off the infra-red goggles. Enough light spilled over from the Nipe's lair to illuminate the tunnel. He put the goggles on the trackway. He wouldn't need them again. He went on around the curve, slowly and quietly. He didn't want to fight down here in the tracks, and he didn't want to be caught just yet. Cautiously, he lifted himself up to the platform, where long-gone passengers had once waited for long-gone trains. Now that he was out of the trench that the tracks lay in, he could move more easily. He moved away from the tracks. "Barbell! He's heard you! Watch it!" But Stanton had already heard the movement of the Nipe. He jerked off the communicator and threw it away. He didn't want any encumbrances now.