It was a stairway leading down, but it also led out into space—indirectly. And the situation had the aspects of a burlesque on Grand Hotel, but.... John Andrew Farmer scowled at the octopus that sprawled on his living-room couch, rubbed his stubbly jaw with a stubby fist, and said, “I love you.” Farmer was uncomfortable. He was almost always uncomfortable, for various reasons; though it rarely if ever occurred to him, as he considered each individual irritant, that this was his normal state of e