Good, and I thought back on the sayings of the short man with the wide shoulders. Very good.

That's a strange attitude, he said. You're just a paid technician.

I take a certain pride in my work.

He gave me a look I did not understand, then, That sounds strangely like a twentieth-century attitude.

I shrugged.

I'm old-fashioned. Can't get away from it.

I like that, he said. I wish more people were that way, these days.

What's Demmy up to, now?

He's sleeping.

Good.

They ought to promote you.

I hope not.

Why not?

I don't like responsibilities.

But you take them on yourself, and you handle them well.

I was lucky, once. Who knows what will happen, next time ... ?

He gave me a furtive look.

What do you mean, 'next time'?

I mean, if it happens again, I said. I just happened to be in the control room ...

I knew then that he was trying to find out what I knew, so neither of us knew much, though we both knew that something was wrong.

He stared at me, sipped his beer, kept staring at me, then nodded. You're trying to say that you're lazy?

That's right.

Crap.

I shrugged and sipped mine.

Back around 1957, fifty years ago, there was a thing called AMSOC, and it was a joke. It was a takeoff on the funny names of alphabetized scientific organizations. It stood for the American Miscellaneous Society. It represented something other than a joke on the organization man, however. This was because Doctor Walter Munk of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Doctor Harry Hess of Princeton were members, and they had come up with a strange proposal which later died for lack of funds. Like John Brown, however, while it lay moldering in its grave, its spirit kept churning its feet.

It is true that the Mohole Project died stillborn, but that which eventually came of the notion was even grander and more creative.