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time.”
    The first shifts were down that afternoon. The traps were closed on top, and in the sooty glow of fat lamps they were gently scraping away the sand that started the tunnels themselves. A man was sitting in front of each air pump pushing and pulling rhythmically on the bellows so that cool air from under the hut panted out into the base of the shafts and the lamps flickered now and then as the draft from a powerful thrust caught them. Black fumes from the lamps rose wisply into the gloom at the top of the shaft and were sucked into the outlet pipes and out the tops of the chimneys.
    Every half hour the pumper changed place with the digger so that one set of tired muscles could take a rest and another set could be brought into play on a different task.
    The digger excavated a space a little larger than the tunnel was going to be, and after about nine inches of forward progress he selected four matched bedboards with tongues and slotted ends from the workshop chamber. First he laid the baseboard, about two feet long, then an upright side board leaning slightly inward. On top he held the roof board which was only about twenty-two inches long, then fitted the other side board in and packed sand tightly behind each board. As the tunnel section tapered slightly toward the roof, the weight of the earth above held the whole frame rigidly, and there was no need for nails or screws.
    Under the baseboard he dug a little channel about nine inches deep, and into this he fitted the air pipe line, wrapped more tarred paper around the joint, and packed the sand in tightly around it so the pipe line was airtight and safely out of harm’s way under the floor of the tunnel.
    They worked steadily for several hours packing the sand they excavated into the dispersal chambers and taking things very carefully this first day so there would be no blunders. They did roughly three feet in each tunnel. The stooges reported to the trapfuehrers about half-past four, and when they had given the “all clear” the trapfuehrers opened up and the diggers scuttled up the ladders. A few minutes later, after a scrub under the tap, another brushdown and combing the sand out of their hair, they were on appell.
    The next shift reported as soon as appell was over. This was the dispersing shift, and it meant that the traps had to stay open while the sand was being hauled out. It came up in metal jugs hauled on a rope, and as the first jugs came up in each shaft the controllers signaled the first of the penguins. A penguin reported to each trap, his trouser bags already in place inside his pants. He stood on the blankets on the floor so no sand would be spilled, his bags were filled, and he strolled out into the compound where Jerry Sage and the diversionists gave him cover.
    One by one the penguins reported, collected their sand, and disposed of it. Then they strolled back for their next turn. The controllers sent them in by several different routes to every trap door so no ferret would notice the same men doing the same things several times in one night.
    By nine o’clock nearly half a ton of yellow sand had vanished into the grey dust of the compound, the tunnelers came up from below, and the traps were shut till the morning.
    Morning appell was at nine-thirty. It lasted about twenty minutes as usual, and by ten o’clock all the traps were open again and the duty shift was slipping underground. Johnny Marshall was first down “Tom” and knew there was trouble as soon as he put his foot on the bottom of the shaft and felt it squash into soft sand. He lit the fat lamp and saw the mouth of the infant tunnel nearly blocked with sand that had cascaded out into the base of the shaft.
    The top boards of a couple of the first box frames had collapsed in the mouth of the tunnel, and several hundredweight of sand had crashed down. Just as well no one had been under it. Marshall felt a little dread as he realized that directly above the spot of the fall stood the