"Well, you didn't want to do anything, anyhow. What does it matter?" His voice was bitter. "It's all the same, every day. I'll bring you back something. I'm going up to second stage. Maybe I'll be close enough to the surface to--" "Don't! Don't bring me anything! Not from the surface!" "All right, I won't. But of all the irrational nonsense--" She watched him put on his boots without answering. * * * * * Moss nodded and Taylor fell in step with him, as the older man strode along. A series of loads were going up to the surface, blind cars clanking like ore-trucks up the ramp, disappearing through the stage trap above them. Taylor watched the cars, heavy with tubular machinery of some sort, weapons new to him. Workers were everywhere, in the dark gray uniforms of the labor corps, loading, lifting, shouting back and forth. The stage was deafening with noise. "We'll go up a way," Moss said, "where we can talk. This is no place to give you details." They took an escalator up. The commercial lift fell behind them, and with it most of the crashing and booming. Soon they emerged on an observation platform, suspended on the side of the Tube, the vast tunnel leading to the surface, not more than half a mile above them now. "My God!" Taylor said, looking down the Tube involuntarily. "It's a long way down." Moss laughed. "Don't look." They opened a door and entered an office. Behind the desk, an officer was sitting, an officer of Internal Security. He looked up. "I'll be right with you, Moss." He gazed at Taylor studying him. "You're a little ahead of time." "This is Commander Franks," Moss said to Taylor. "He was the first to make the discovery. I was notified last night." He tapped a parcel he carried. "I was let in because of this." Franks frowned at him and stood up. "We're going up to first stage. We can discuss it there." "First stage?" Taylor repeated nervously. The three of them went down a side passage to a small lift. "I've never been up there. Is it all right? It's not radioactive, is it?" "You're like everyone else," Franks said. "Old women afraid of burglars. No radiation leaks down to first stage. There's lead and rock, and what comes down the Tube is bathed." "What's the nature of the problem?" Taylor asked. "I'd like to know something about it." "In a moment." They entered the lift and ascended. When they stepped out, they were in a hall of soldiers, weapons and uniforms everywhere. Taylor blinked in surprise. So this was first stage, the closest undersurface level to the top! After this stage there was only rock, lead and rock, and the great tubes leading up like the burrows of earthworms. Lead and rock, and above that, where the tubes opened, the great expanse that no living being had seen for eight years, the vast, endless ruin that had once been Man's home, the place where he had lived, eight years ago.