McGowan arose and led me to the other side of the cave. There I saw a small, dark opening, perhaps four feet in diameter. A tunnel! A man-made tunnel leading steeply upward through solid rock!
"For about four years we've worked on this," McGowan said with a tinge of pride in his voice. "We've hacked our way inches at a time with whatever crude implements we could smuggle here. More than a mile of solid rock lies between us and the surface, and we've gone more than three-quarters of the way already."
"But why didn't you let me in on this!" I gasped, a sudden surge of hope welling up in my throat so that I could hardly speak. I could hardly even think! My brain was churning crazily. To get out of these tunnels, to even glimpse a star again against the black night sky, or breathe fresh air once more—those were hopes that many of us had abandoned, as we gradually became living automatons and the radite ore took its insidious toll of us.
McGowan looked at me steadily and answered my question: "Because we don't trust everyone. Marnick has certain methods up there of extracting information, and if ever—Well, anyway, you've been rather a baffling entity since you came here. You still are. Right now we don't know whether to trust you, but we have to because we need you."
"But you can trust me!" I exclaimed in an excess of anxiety.
"We need you," McGowan went on coldly, "because we understand you're something of an expert with directional beam finders. We suspected that Marnick might have a network of beams raying downward, to detect any such escape attempt as this. We had to make sure, and that's why I had to get to the surface, although it meant torture. And I did find out, never mind how. He has a battery of directional beams. They won't reach through rock very far, but we can't be too careful now that we're getting near the surface. So, Reed: do you think you could detect any such beams, before we break through into them?"
"Yes, I'm sure I could," I answered, perhaps a little too eagerly.
"Good. Then you're in with us to the finish." He turned to the others. "Wilkinson—I think it's your turn tonight? Reed here will go up with you. Incidentally, you might veer a few degrees to the right; as near as I could judge, we're coming a little too close to Marnick's quarters. And you, Reed, keep a sharp lookout for those beams."
I entered the dark little tunnel behind Wilkinson, and we began the climb. He carried the lantern. It was rather precarious. The tunnel, I judged, was on a forty-five-degree angle, but wisely they had leveled out little hand and foot holds, so that we could rest occasionally.