THIS W A Y TO SOMEWHERE!

I followed the crowd.

By the time I got to the train, I was in the middle of a swarm of people, all madly pushing to get into thecars. “Hey, hold it! I don’t want to—! Wait a minute!”

I was carried forward, pressed like a rose in a scrapbook, borne protesting through the doors of the car, andsquashed up against the opposite door.

If you live in New York you will know this is not an impossibility. If you don’t, take my word for it.The doors slid shut with a pneumatic sigh and the train shot forward. Without a jar. That was when I beganto sweat full-time.

I had wondered, sure, but in the middle of downtown Manhattan you just don’t expect anything weird orout-of-place unless there’s a press agent behind it. But this was no publicity stunt. Something was wrong. Way off-base wrong, and I was caught in the midst of it.

I wasn’t scared, really, because I didn’t know what there was to be afraid of, and there was too muchfamiliarity about it all to hit me fully.

I had been in a million subway crushes just like this one. Had my glasses knocked off and trampled, had mysuit wrinkled, had the shine taken off my shoes, too often to think there was anything untoward here.

But the signs had been in a foreign language. No one I’d been able to accost would talk to me in anythingbut gibberish, and most of them looked at me as though my skin was green. The train was definitely not an ordinarytrain. It had started without a jerking rasp. If you know New York subways, you know what I mean.That was unusual. That was fantastic!

I bit my lower lip, elbowed my way into a relatively clear space in the car, and for the second time in mylife dragged out my square-folded lapel hankie to mop my face.

Then I saw Da Campo. He was sitting in one of the plush seats, reading a newspaper. The headline read:SELFGEMMEN-BARNSNEBBLE J’J’KEL-WOLO-BAGEDTAR!