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I got my torch out of my pack, then slung the pack across my shoulders. As I sat and dangled my legs over the edge of the hatch my heart was pounding and I felt short of air. I took a deep breath and lowered myself inside. I had to wriggle, but I managed to get down to my knees, then to all fours. When I started to crawl forward my pack fouled on the top of the conduit.
‘That’s not going to work,’ Pitr observed helpfully.
‘Well I can’t squirm along on my belly,’ I shot back, head still in the conduit. I was having a problem making use of the torch, too. I couldn’t hold it in either hand, but if I tried to hold it in my mouth I wanted to gag.
‘Take the pack off and push it in front of you,’ Alyssa suggested.
I thought about it for a second, decided it was worth a go and re-arranged myself to try it out. It worked. Not only did it work, the pack gave me somewhere to stick the torch. Winner all round. I set off along the conduit, with each movement making a booming noise so loud that Noah could probably hear it. I had taken a dozen or so steps when I realised I hadn’t heard either of the others get down into the conduit after me. I stopped and listened again to make sure, then I yelled back over my shoulder. ‘I’m not doing this on my own.’
Nobody answered, but I could hear Pitr and Alyssa arguing. Swearing to myself, I shuffled backwards until I could put my head back up through the hatch. ‘What is your problem?’ I yelled, loud enough to cut through their bickering.
‘Alyssa should go next,’ said Pitr, at the exact same instant that Alyssa protested ‘I should go last.’
I glared at them both for a minute, then realised I didn’t have an argument either way. The only thing I could come up with was that Pitr was better equipped. I offered it. ‘Pitr has the torch, so he comes last’ I said. ‘Now stop arguing and let’s go.’
I ducked back down, made my way to my pack and started to push it along ahead of me. I had done a dozen more steps when I heard - and felt - somebody else climb into the conduit, and then a third person.
It didn’t take long for my knees to start to hurt, and I began to wonder if we would be able to crawl the couple of kilometres to the other side of the door. There was lots of muttering and swearing behind me, but I tuned it out and asked the drone to show me the map again. There were another hundred metres to go and then we had to go down. I gritted my teeth and concentrated on putting one knee in front of the other even though my knees burned every time I moved.
When we got to it, the way down was a square the whole width of the tunnel. I was glad we didn’t have to try to get across. It wouldn’t have been easy. I shone the torch down the hole and saw that it went down about twenty metres, and that there were ladder rungs stuck to the side of the shaft. Obviously whoever designed this had expected someone might need to come this way, which was comforting.
I pushed my pack as far to the side as I could and wormed my way around until I could get over the edge and on to the rungs. Holding on with one hand, I managed to sling my pack over the other shoulder. Just as I got ready to start going down, Alyssa’s face appeared in front of me, dimly lit by the reflections of light my torch made on the metal walls.
‘Tell Pitr he’ll need to be careful with his pack here,’ I said. ‘Wait until I get to the bottom, then I’ll shine my torch up so you can see what you are doing.’
Alyssa nodded, but she looked unhappy about something. She had a big frown pulled in over her eyes and her lips were pressed together so hard they looked like a thin line.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, but she just nodded jerkily.
I started down the rungs. I had to be careful. Although the rungs were a reasonable size, I had my torch in one hand shining down so I could see each rung before I stepped on it. When I reached the bottom I shone the torch around. We were in a smaller version of the tunnels we had used to leave Noah. There were no lights, but there was a thin line of matt black along the floor on one side and I could just about stand up in the middle. Everything seemed OK, so I flashed my torch up the shaft and hoped Alyssa would get the point. A few seconds later I heard scraping, then the tapping of someone coming down the rungs. When Alyssa was safely at the bottom I flashed my torch upwards to let Pitr know he was clear to come down. More scuffling, some swearing, then Pitr yelled ‘Look out!’
Without thinking I took a big sidestep and pulled Alyssa with me. A second later Pitr’s pack, loaded with water flasks, thudded onto the floor next to us. I swear I felt it brush my shoulder. I looked at it, and wondered why I hadn’t simply dropped mine when I was coming down.
‘Is everyone OK?’ yelled Pitr, panic in his voice.
‘Yeah, just don’t come down the same way,’ I drawled, trying to make it sound as if nothing had happened. Pitr hurried down the rungs and I heard him slip a few times. I thought about calling for him to be careful, but I didn’t want to distract him.
Alyssa was still clinging to my arm. It had taken me moment to notice, but as soon as I did I felt awkward. Boys weren’t supposed to touch girls. At the same time, it felt really nice. Alyssa was warm against my arm, and I felt something that was almost a vibration where she was touching me. I hadn’t realised I was looking down at her until she turned her face up to me. We both looked somewhere else very quickly and Alyssa promptly disentangled herself from my arm and stepped away. I was breathing more heavily than I should have been, and my heart was running on overdrive.
When Pitr got the bottom of the shaft, he looked around at the tunnel and smiled. ‘This is better,’ he said. Then he looked at the two of us and frowned. ‘What do you two look so upset about? The bag didn’t hit you.’
He picked up his bag from the floor, unhooked his torch and turned it off before stowing it in an outside pocket. After he had hooked his straps over his shoulders, he picked up my pack and handed it to me. ‘Which way, then?’
I consulted the drone and we set off. This bit was much easier. My back ached a bit because I couldn’t resist the urge to stoop, but it was a lot quicker than crawling. Thirty minutes or so later the drone directed me towards another set of rungs sticking out of the wall, this time going up. I climbed, without my pack, to check ahead and came back down to report that we were headed into a narrower conduit again. Pitr didn’t look pleased, and Alyssa was hugging herself and looking really unhappy I hooked my pack loosely over an arm again and turned back to the rungs.
‘I’ll wait a little way up the tunnel. Alyssa, when you get into the tunnel, tap my ankle and I’ll move forward. Pitr, you do the same to Alyssa and then she taps my ankle twice and I’ll move out. OK?’
Both nodded, and I started climbing. Everything went according to plan, at least at the beginning. We hadn’t been crawling long when I realised I could hear something behind me that wasn’t just the dull thumps of knees and hands. It was breathy and wet and I couldn’t make out what it was, but I kept hearing it and I kept straining to hear it better and recognise it.
The route started to get trickier. There were turns to left and right, then an awkward drop of just less than a metre which had to taken head first. Alyssa sounded like she had trouble with it, and landed with a louder crash than Pitr or I. The conduit narrowed and the odd noise got louder and more frequent. I realised it was coming from Alyssa.
The tunnel shrank smaller still; same width, but so low I was squirming along on my elbows. It felt as though there wasn’t enough air, and I hated it, but I could see that it looked like it opened out again in fifty metres or so. That was when Alyssa started to scream.