He started to spin around as the heavy object went by him, but another warning yelped in his mind. He twisted a little, but it was too late. Something burned horribly through his body, like a thousand million acid-tipped, white-hot needles jabbing through skin and flesh and sinking into the bone. He couldn't even scream. He blacked out as if he'd been a computer suddenly deprived of power. II _Of course_, came the thought, _a very good way to put out a fire is to pour cold water on it. That's a very good idea._ At least, it had put out the fire. _Fire?_ What fire? The fire in his body, the scalding heat that had been quenched by the cold water. Slowly, as though it were being turned on through a sluggishly turning rheostat, consciousness came back to The Guesser. He began to recognize the sensations in his body. There was a general, all-over dull ache, punctuated here and there by sharper aches. There was the dampness and the chill. And there was the queer, gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. At first, he did not think of how he had gotten where he was, nor did he even wonder about his surroundings. There seemed merely to be an absolute urgency to get out of wherever he was and, at the same time, an utter inability to do so. He tried to move, to shift position, but his muscles seemed so terribly tired that flexing them was a high-magnitude effort. After several tries, he got his arms under his chest, and only then did he realize that he had been lying prone, his right cheek pressed against cold, slimy stone. He lifted himself a little, but the effort was too much, and he collapsed again, his body making a faint splash as he did so. He lay there for a while, trying to puzzle out his odd and uncomfortable environment. He seemed to be lying on a sloping surface with his head higher than his feet. The lower part of his body was immersed in chill, gently-moving water. And there was something else-- The smell. It was an incredible stench, an almost overpowering miasma of decay. He moved his head then, and forced his eyes open. There was a dim, feeble glow from somewhere overhead and to his right, but it was enough to show him a vaulted ceiling a few feet above him. He was lying in some sort of tube which-- And then the sudden realization came. He was in a sewer. The shock of it cleared his mind a little, and gave added strength to his muscles. He pushed himself to his hands and knees and began crawling toward the dim light. It wasn't more than eight or ten feet, but it seemed to take an eternity for him to get there. Above him was a grating, partially covered with a soggy-looking sheet of paper. The light evidently came from a glow-plate several yards away. He lay there, exhausted and aching, trying to force his brain into action, trying to decide what to do next. He'd have to lift the grating, of course; that much was obvious. And he'd have to stand up to do that. Did he have the strength?