Small crowds collected around certain men. Here were the sources of information and rumor. One person worked in a chemical plant, another had overhead a remark, a third was related to a clerk in a state agency. True, false and other kinds of news radiated through the dormitory from these dense clusters. It was said that we would be allowed to go home first thing in the morning: that the government was engaged in a cover-up; that a helicopter had entered the toxic cloud and never reappeared; that the dogs had arrived from New Mexico, parachuting into a meadow in a daring night drop; that the town of Farmington would be uninhabitable for forty years. (5)