The door was shut. I shifted the box in my arms, knocked and waited. No answer. I shifted the box again, propping it against the wall with my hip, and tried the knob. The door was locked.

The last thing I wanted to do was lug this box all the way back up to my office and then try to find a refrigerator. I looked down the hall at the line of doors. They were all closed, and, presumably, locked, but there was a line of light under the middle one on the left.

I repositioned the box, which was getting heavier by the minute, lugged it down to the light, and knocked on the door. No answer, but when I tried the knob, the door opened onto a jungle of video cameras, computer equipment, opened boxes, and trailing wires.

“Hello,” I said. “Anybody here?”

There was a muffled grunt, which I hoped wasn’t from an inmate of the zoo. I glanced at the nameplate on the door. “Dr. O’Reilly?” I said.

“Yeah?” a man’s voice from under what looked like a furnace said.

I walked around to the side of it and could see two brown corduroy legs sticking out from under it, surrounded by a litter of tools. “I’ve got a box here for Dr. Turnbull,” I said to the legs. “She’s not in her office. Could you take it for her?”

“Just set it down,” the voice said impatiently.

I looked around for somewhere to set it that wasn’t covered with video equipment and coils of chicken wire.

“Not on the equipment,” the legs said sharply. “On the floor. Carefully.”

I pushed aside a rope and two modems and set the box down. I squatted down next to the legs and said, “It’s marked ‘perishable.’ You need to put it in the refrigerator.”

“All right,” he snapped. A freckled arm in a wrinkled white sleeve appeared, patting the floor around the base of the box.

There was a roll of duct tape lying just out of his reach. “Duct tape?” I said, putting it in his hand.