"But—but how—" I stammered. "You know you can't possibly—"

McGowan gestured impatiently. "I know everything you're going to say. We've gone over it thoroughly. Let's see, you've been here only two years, isn't it, Reed? And the average life here is five; and I have already been here seven. Yes, I've clung on here longer than most men do, knowing that some day my chance would come; and now it is near. For the moment we will not think of escape. If only I can succeed in getting rid of that monster up there, and doing it in my own special way, all this will have been worth while. Do you agree?"

I most emphatically agreed, and said so.

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 

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