think it was 1881 or '82. They all died. A bunch of men from the
Explorers' Club in London tried for the South Pole in the 1850's.
Their ship was sunk by icebergs, but three or four of them
survived. They stayed alive by sucking dew out of their clothes and
eating the kelp that caught on their boat, until they were picked up.
They lost their teeth. And they claimed to have seen sea monsters.'
'What happened, Dex?' Henry asked softly.
Stanley looked up. 'We opened the crate,' he said dully. 'God help
us, Henry, we opened the crate.'
He paused for a long time, it seemed, before beginning to speak
again.
'Paella?' the janitor asked. 'What's that?'
'An island off the tip of South America,' Dex said. 'Never mind.
Let's get this open.' He opened one of the lab drawers and began to
rummage through it, looking for something to pry with.'
'Never mind that stuff,' the janitor said. He looked excited himself
now. 'I got a hammer and chisel in my closet upstairs. I'll get 'em.
Just hang on.'
He left. The crate sat on the table's formica top, squat and mute. It
sits squat and mute, Dex thought, and shivered a little. Where had
that thought come from? Some story? The words had a cadenced
yet unpleasant sound. He dismissed them. He was good at
dismissing the extraneous. He was a scientist.
He looked around the lab just to get his eyes off the crate. Except
for Charlie's table, it was unnaturally neat and quiet--like the rest
of the university. White-tiled, subway-station walls gleamed
freshly under the overhead globes; the globes themselves seemed
to be double--caught and submerged in the polished formica
surfaces, like eerie lamps shining from deep quarry water. A huge,
old-fashioned slate blackboard dominated the wall opposite the
sinks. And cupboards, cupboards everywhere. It was easy enough--
too easy, perhaps--to see the antique, sepia-toned ghosts of all
those old zoology students, wearing their white coats with the
green cuffs, their hairs marcelled or pomaded, doing their
dissections and writing their reports...
Footfalls clattered on the stairs and Dex shivered, thinking again of
the crate sitting there--yes, squat and mute--under the stairs for so
many years, long after the men who had pushed it under there had
died and gone back to dust.
Paella, he thought, and then the janitor came back in with a
hammer and chisel.
'Let me do this for you, perfesser?' he asked, and Dex was about
to refuse when he saw the pleading, hopeful look in the man's eyes.
'Of course,' he said. After all, it was this man's find.
'Prob'ly nothin in here but a bunch of rocks and plants so old
they'll turn to dust when you touch 'em. But it's funny; I'm pretty
hot for it.'
Dex smiled noncommittally. He had no idea what was in the crate,
but he doubted if it was just plant and rock specimens. There was
