he was a sick man and he knew it , but not too sick to appreciate the irony of the situation in which he found himself : after busting his hump to dig this fucker up with a variety of tools which looked as if they might have come out of the hugo gernsback whole universe catalogue , after doing what the rest of them probably could n't have done without working themselves to death in a kind of hypnotic trance , he might not be able to go inside when and if they came to the hatch bobbi believed was there .