“That there one is to the Bridge, Cap’n,” he said. “If you’ll start in there, sir, I’ll follow up.”
I thrust head and shoulders into the opening. Inside it was smooth metal, with no handholds. I clawed at it trying to get farther in. The pain stabbed at my chest.
“Cap’n, they’re workin’ on the door,” Thomas said. “They already been at it for a little while. We better get goin’.”
“You’d better give me a push, Thomas,” I said. My voice echoed hollowly down the duct.
Thomas crowded into the chamber behind me then, lifting my legs and pushing. I eased into the duct. The pain was not so bad now.
“Cap’n, you gotta use a special kinda crawl to get through these here ducts,” Thomas said. “You grip your hands together out in front of ya, and then bend your elbows. When your elbows jam against the side of the duct, you pull forward.”
I tried it; it was slow, but it worked.
“Cap’n,” Thomas said behind me. “We got about seven minutes now to get up there. I set the control on the converter to start up in ten minutes. I think we can make it O.K., and ain’t nobody else comin’ this way with the converter goin’. I locked the control panel so they can’t shut her down.”
That news spurred me on. With the converter in operation, the first step in the cycle was the evacuation of the ducts to a near-perfect vacuum. When that happened, we would die instantly with ruptured lungs; then our dead bodies would be sucked into the chamber and broken down into useful raw materials. I hurried.