ered Gray tersely, keeping his head down. A whisper is
a good disguise for the voice. The other nodded.

"Don't straggle. No fun, getting lost in here."

The leader broke in. "We'll circle again. Be careful of that Project
bunch--they'll be using ordinary light. And be quiet!"

They went, through connecting passages. The noise of Dio's party grew
ominously loud. Abruptly, the leader swore.

"Caron or no Caron, he's gone. And we'd better go, too."

He turned off, down a different tunnel, and Gray heaved a sigh of
relief, remembering the body he'd left in the open. For a time the noise
of their pursuers grew remote. And then, suddenly, there was an echoing
clamor of footsteps, and the glare of torches on the wall of a
cross-passage ahead.

Voices came to Gray, distorted by the rock vaults.

"I'm sure I heard them, just then." It was Jill's voice.

"Yeah." That was Dio. "The trouble is, where?"

The footsteps halted. Then, "Let's try this passage. We don't want to
get too far into this maze."

Caron's leader blasphemed softly and dodged into a side tunnel. The man
next to Gray stumbled and cried out with pain as he struck the wall, and
a shout rose behind them.

The leader broke into a run, twisting, turning, diving into the maze of
smaller tunnels. The sounds of pursuit faded, were lost in the tomblike
silence of the caves. One of the men laughed.

"We sure lost 'em!"

"Yeah," said the leader. "We lost 'em, all right." Gray caught the note
of panic in his voice. "We lost the markers, too."

"You mean...?"

"Yeah. Turning off like that did it. Unless we can find that marked
tunnel, we're sunk!"

Gray, silent in the shadows, laughed a bitter, ironic laugh.

* * * * *

They went on, stumbling down endless black halls, losing all track of
branching corridors, straining to catch the first glint of saving light.
Once or twice they caught the echoes of Dio's party, and knew that they,
too, were lost and wandering.

Then, quite suddenly, they came out into a vast gallery, running like a
subway tube straight to left and right. A wind tore down it, hot as a
draught from the burning gates of Hell.

It was a moment before anyone grasped the significance of that wind.
Then someone shouted,

"We're saved! All we have to do is walk against it!"

They turned left, almost running in the teeth of that searing blast. And
Gray began to notice a peculiar thing.

The air was charged