"I hope you don't expect me to be surprised, Jim, if this door doesn't last very long. The previous twenty-two doors at this location, Jim, did not last very long either." Still whistling to himself, he installed the last of the hinge screws. "Why don't you just _give_ me the doors, instead of causing yourself all this work?" demanded James Ypsilanti. "'Inmates will not be issued materials,' Jim. I've quoted that section of the rules to you many times, Jim." "But couldn't you just _lean_ the door up against the door jamb and leave it?" argued the inmate. "You go to a ridiculous amount of trouble." "It is not ridiculous, Jim. I am a carpenter, Jim. Good-by." After lunch, James Ypsilanti crawled into his escape tunnel. He liked to go in there every day and daydream. The tunnel ended abortively at the wall of the prison, for the prison wall extended down into solid bed rock for a meter, and it was fabricated of one-meter thick compressed steel. It was the nearest thing to an exit that the prison had. Officials had always come and gone through the massive, englobing wall by matter transmitters. "Smarties couldn't find me though, when I was in my escape tunnel," he chortled, as he stretched out in the cave under the concrete. "They can walk through walls, but they couldn't find _me_." Then his tone became baleful. "The smarties'll never find me." * * * * * As James Ypsilanti chopped on the door next day, the carpenter stood cheerily watching. "Carpenter, why don't you fix the damn heating plant? Then I wouldn't have to be chopping up your doors all the time to keep warm." "I am a carpenter, Jim, not a heat-plant fixer, as you well know from our previous negotiations on the subject." "What will you do, carpenter, when I have used up all your doors?" the convict jibed. "Why, Jim, we will have to send out for some more," the carpenter answered condescendingly. "Still, I wish you would let _me_ work on that heat plant," urged Ypsilanti. "I might fix it." "'Inmates will not be permitted to disassemble or otherwise interfere with the machinery of the institution,'" quoted the carpenter. "Need I say more, Jim?" "Okay," said James Ypsilanti, resuming his destructive work on the new door. "Scram, stupid." The carpenter departed. "That dope," Jim said between blows, "is even foggier in the head than my lousy lawyer was, and that's going some." "Jim," said the carpenter, returning and sounding very pleased with himself, "look here at what I have found, Jim." James Ypsilanti turned to look at what the carpenter held in his hand. It was a carpenter's square sheathed in plastic. "Found enough of them to last me a lifetime, Jim," said the carpenter complacently. "I'll never have to buy any."