There was the opening. Unlike the Glomar Explorer, Humpty Dumpty didn’t seem to be divided up into airtight compartments. Didn’t seem to be was probably the kicker, though. If the outer door vanished and appeared whenever it wanted to, why couldn’t internal bulkheads do the same?

I’ll go in. You wait here till you’re sure it’s okay, Jerry wrote. Half a second later, he added, If you hear me scream, get the hell out.

Go ahead, cheer me up, Steve answered. But he didn’t say no.

Even I think I’m the expendable one, Jerry said to himself as he walked into the opening. It was partly that. It was also partly that he was younger, faster, bigger, and stronger than the man from the RAND Corporation. So here he was, boldly going where no man had gone before.

He wondered what he’d do if some mouse-sized six- or eight-legged thing scurried over his shoes. Besides piss his pants, anyway. Ships had rats, right? But that had to be impossible. Didn’t it? What if it wasn’t? What if the thing managed to hide somewhere on the Glomar Explorer before anyone caught it? What if it was pregnant, or about to lay eggs? What if it made rabbits in Australia look like good news by comparison?

What if you quit making like a writer and do your job? Jerry had to be stern with himself. He also had to fight not to keep looking at his feet.

Two openings lay along this corridor. The twisting yellow line ran past them. The one on the right came up first. When Jerry looked inside, he found he was likely walking on a wall, because everything in that chamber seemed ninety degrees out of true for him.

He took pictures of the … laboratory? He wasn’t sure, but that was his first guess. He thought some of the gadgets on tall stands might be for heating things up. He didn’t care to try to find out by experiment, though. Glassware—if it was glassware—lay in drifts on the wall that was now doing duty for the floor. Some had shattered, but more was intact. That said something either about how hard Humpty Dumpty had come in or how tough the alien utensils were.

Something tugged on Jerry’s cord.

He whirled in horror. There stood Steve, looking as apologetic as anyone could with a mouthpiece hiding most of the expression on his face. Didn’t mean to scare you, but I want to see, too, he wrote.

FUCK! Jerry underlined it for good measure. If some future scholar researching humanity’s first contact with aliens wanted to get sniffy about his language, tough. As his heart slowed, he tried again: Let’s look across the corridor.