"For what it's worth, I don't think most of us are crazy," Sam replied. And then allowed, a touch wryly, that, "Then again, I'd probably say that even if I was."

He had returned in expression to utter mildness, attention split between conversation partner and flow of traffic onto the bus. "I don't know what they have planned," he admitted. "There weren't many details. If the town's not so small it shares a library with the county, it's probably workable."

Which turned his thoughts around again to the night before, and the research that needed doing. Not to mention a brief flash of hope for some method of communication with the outside world. Mildness slipped briefly into abstraction.