ON THE SUBWAY
People must have been in a great hurry, for no one noticed anything wrong with Bill Chalmers as he dashed from his automobile one fine summer morning. Earnest and dressed in a blue cotton suit, he was immediately swept up by the mass of commuters also galloping from their cars toward the elevators and down to the trains of the Alewife Station, a cavernous structure of concrete and crisscrossed steel struts, one end of the Red Line through Boston. At the ground floor, Chalmers presented his pass and rushed through the turnstile. He was halfway down the stairs to the platform when he heard the taut string of electronic beeps and the doors began sliding on train Number One. A woman groaned. Another commuter, a tall nervous man with squeaky shoes, lunged ahead and ran alongside the train, shouting and slapping his magazine against the red paneled doors. But the train was already in motion, its steel wheels scraping and squealing so fiercely that several people had to turn up their head sets. The tall man swiveled and shot Chalmers an accusing stare, as if his lack of sufficient speed through the turnstile had caused a half-dozen people to miss their trains. What a jerk, Chalmers thought to himself and looked down at his watch. It was 8:22. Twenty-three minutes to his stop, a nine-minute walk to his building, two minutes on the elevator, and he'd be sitting at his desk by 9:00. Assuming the train on Track Two arrived and departed within four minutes, as it should. With some satisfaction he reminded himself that, unlike the ridiculously agitated man with the magazine, he had calculated his morning commute so that he could miss the first train and still arrive at the office on time. Abruptly, he began worryin...