_All they wanted was to see their own
children. How could Brendan refuse?_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity October 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A curved section of the dome, twenty feet thick with the stubs of
re-inforcing rod rusty and protruding through the damp-marked concrete,
formed the ceiling and back wall of Brendan's office. There was a
constant drip of seepage and condensation. Near the mildew-spotted
floor, a thin white mist drifted in torn swirls while the heating
coils buried in the concrete fought back against the cold. There was
one lamp in the windowless dark, a glowing red coil on Brendan's desk,
well below the eye level of the half-dozen men in the room. The heavy
office door was swung shut, the locking bars pushed home. If it had not
been, there would have been some additional light from the coils in the
corridor ceiling, outside the office. Brendan would have had to face
into it, and the men in front of him would have been looming shadows to
him.
But the door was shut, as Brendan insisted it must be, as all doors to
every room and every twenty-foot length of corridor were always shut as
much of the time as possible--at Brendan's insistence--as though the
dome were a sinking ship.
Conducted by the substance of the dome, there was a constant _chip,
chip, chip_ coming from somewhere, together with a heartless gnawing
sound that filled everyone's head as though they were all biting on
sandpaper.