Twenty-Third Awake, 24 Juli 2207
We have walked through sleep and we have slept while we walked. The rise is steeper. Our oil lamp is still burning and our shadows fall behind us into the blackness. There will be light for perhaps ten more hours.
There is a dampness now in the passage, like that of the passage to Red Lake. Our tiredness is so great we become afraid sometimes that after one of our rests we may not be able to go on. I am worried about Nina. She says nothing, but I think for a long while now she has been walking on heart strength alone. We have seven hours of light before us.
The passage has ended. For a moment the thought came that we were on Earth Surface. But Doctor Dorn says we are in a great cavern, larger even than the Cavern of Red Lake. Our one light is as nothing in this great blackness, and we walk close to the wall so we will not become lost. In some places the walls are like glass as if from a very great heat. There are more passages in the sides of this cavern than the mind can imagine. But after this rest there is nothing else we can do but try one of them.
For five hours we have been lost in passages that curve and turn and join with each other as madly as if they were made by lost-mind men. Now we have found our way back to the Great Cavern. We shall stay here the two hours longer our light and lives will last.
It is easier now that our hope is nothing.
We can rest and wait, and even our fear becomes less in our tiredness.
The time has gone slowly, but the light from the lamp is becoming less now. In a few seconds it will go out, and the Groles will come, and our lives will be over. Perhaps for an instant before we die, we shall know what the Groles are; or perhaps it happens so quickly we will never know anything. This may be the better way. Nina trembles in my arms.
We wait in the blackness. The lamp has been out for many minutes but the Groles have not come.