Because when she caught the second number, reversed the direction and felt the telltale click of the third, she pulled on the handle and was almost pushed from the ledge by the swinging circular door. She grabbed at a handle that she hardly saw on the door's inside, just as the stone slipped from beneath her feet. Then she was hanging five feet out in the air over the sacred groin some fifty feet below.
The first thing she tried, after closing her eyes and mumbling a few laws of motion, was to swing the door to. When she swung out, however, the door swung closed; and when she swung in, the door swung opened. After a while, she just hung. She gave small thanks that she had dried her hands. When her arms began to ache, she wished that she hadn't, because then it would be over by now. She went over what she knew about taking judo falls.
Then the door swung closed, and someone grabbed her around the waist. She didn't open her eyes, but felt her body pressed against the tilting stone. Her arms fell tingling to her sides. The ligaments flamed with pain. Then the pain dulled to throbbing, and she opened her eyes. "How the hell did you get down here?" she asked Snake. With his help she staggered through the open door and stopped to rub her arms. "How did you know about the ladder?"
They were standing in the shaft now, with the ladder beside them running up into the darkness.
He looked at her with a puzzled expression.
"What is it?" she asked. "Oh, I'll be able to climb up there, never you worry. Hey, can you speak?"
Snake shook his head.
"Oh," she said. Something started at the edge of her mind again, a picture of something unpleasant. Snake had started up the ladder, which he had come down so quickly a minute ago. She glanced out the door, saw that the temple was empty, pulled the door to, and followed.
They ascended into complete darkness. Her arms were beginning to ache again, just slightly. She reached up for the next rung, and found it in its proper place. Then the next. And then again the next.
She started counting steps now, and when seventy-four, seventy-five, and seventy-six dropped below her, there was a missing rung. She reached above it, but there was none. She ran her hand up the edge of the ladder and found that it suddenly curved into the wall. "Hey, you," she said in the darkness.