She stepped out into the round room and set off along the passage. Reith followed five or six paces behind, trying to simulate the Pnumekin gait. He had forced the girl to carry the charts; even so, he was at her mercy. She could run screaming to the first Pnumekin they came upon, and hope for mercy from the Pnume ... The situation was unpredictable.

They walked half a mile, up a ramp, down another and into a main adit. At twenty-foot intervals the narrow doorways opened into the rock; beside each was a fluted pedestal with a flat polished upper surface, the function of which Reith could not calculate. The passage widened and they entered Fer Junction, a large hexagonal hall with a dozen polished marble pillars supporting the ceiling. In dim little booths around the periphery sat Pnumekin writing in ledgers, or occasionally holding vague and seemingly indecisive colloquies with other Pnumekin who had come to seek them out.

The girl wandered to the side and halted. Reith stopped as well.

She glanced at him, then looked thoughtfully toward a Pnumekin in the center of the room: a tall haggard man with an unusually alert posture. Reith stepped into the shadow of a pillar and watched the girl. Her face was blank as a plate but Reith knew her to be reviewing the circumstances which had overwhelmed her pale existence, and his life depended on the balance of her fears: the bottomless gulf against the windy brown skies of the surface.

Slowly she moved toward Reith and joined him in the shadow of the pillar. For the moment at least she had made her decision.

"The tall man yonder: he is a Listening Monitor. Notice how he observes all?

Nothing escapes him."

For a period Reith stood watching the Listening Monitor, becoming each minute more disinclined to cross the chamber. He muttered to the girl, "Do you know another route to the freight docks?"

She pondered the matter. Having committed herself to flight, her personality had become somewhat more focused, as if danger had drawn her up out of the dreaming inversion of her former existence.

"I think," she said dubiously, "that another route passes by way of the work halls; but it is a long way and other Listening Monitors are on hand."

"Hmmf." Reith turned to watch the Listening Monitor of Fer Junction.

"Notice," he said presently, "he turns to look this way and that. When his back is toward us, I'll move to the next pillar, and you come after me."

A moment later the Monitor swung around. Reith stepped out into the chamber, sauntered to the nearest of the marble pillars. The girl came slowly after him, still somewhat indecisively, or so it seemed to Reith.

Reith could not now peer around the pillar without the risk of attracting the Monitor's attention. "Tell me when he looks away," he muttered to the girl.

"Now."

Reith gained the next pillar and, using a file of slow-moving Pnumekin as a screen, continued on to the next. Now a single open area remained. The Monitor swung about abruptly, and Reith ducked back behind the pillar: a deadly game of peek-a-boo. From a passage to the side a Pnume entered the chamber, coming softly on forward-padding legs.

The girl hissed under her breath, "The Silent Critic ... take care." she drifted away, head downcast, as if in an abstraction. The Pnume halted, not fifty feet from Reith, who turned his back. Only a few strides remained to the north of the passage. Reith's shoulder blades twitched. He could bear to stand by the pillar no longer. Feeling every eye in the chamber pressing upon him he crossed the open area. With each step he expected a cry of outrage, an alarm. The silence became oppressive; only by great effort could he control the urge to look over his shoulder. He reached the mouth of the passage and turned a cautious glance over his shoulder-to stare full into the eye sockets of the Pnume. With pounding heart Reith turned slowly and proceeded. The girl had gone ahead. He called to her in a soft voice, "Run ahead; find the Class Eighteen passage."

She turned back a startled glance. "The Silent Critic is close at hand. I may not run; if he saw he would think it boisterous conduct."

"Never mind the decorum," said Reith. "Find the opening as fast as possible."

She quickened her step, with Reith coming behind. After fifty yards he risked a glance to the rear. No one followed.

The corridor branched; the girl stopped short. "I think we go to the left, but I am not sure."

"Look at the chart."

With vast distaste, she turned her back and brought the portfolio from under her cloak. She could not bring herself to handle it and gave it to Reith as if it were hot. He turned the pages till she said, "Stop." While she studied the colored lines, Reith kept his gaze to the rear. Far back, where the passage met Fer junction, a dark shape appeared in the opening. Reith, every nerve jerking, willed the girl to haste.

"To the left, then at Mark Two-one-two, a blue tile. Style Twenty-four--I must consult the legend. Here it is: four press points. Three-one-four-two."

"Hurry," Reith said, through gritted teeth.

She turned a startled look back down the passage. "Zuzhma kastchai!"

Reith also looked back, trying to simulate the Pnumekin gait. The Pnume padded slowly forward, but with no particular sense of purpose, or so it seemed to Reith. He moved off along the passage and overtook the girl. As she walked she counted the number marks at the base of the wall: "Seventy-five ... eighty ...

eighty-five ..." Reith looked back. There were now two black shapes in the corridor; from somewhere a second Pnume had appeared. "One hundred ninety-five

... two hundred ... two hundred and five..."

The blue tile, filmed with an antique red-purple luster, was only a foot from the floor. The girl found press-points and touched them; the outline of a door appeared; the door slid open.

The girl began to shake. "It is Quality Eighteen. I should not enter."

"The Silent Critic is following us," said Reith.

She gasped and stepped into the passage. It was narrow and dim and haunted by a faintly rancid odor Reith had come to associate with the Pnume.

The door slid shut. The girl pushed up a shutter and put her eye to the lens of a peephole. "The Silent Critic is coming. It suspects boisterous conduct, and wants to issue a punishment ... No! There are two! He has summoned a Warden!"

She stood rigid, eye pressed to the peephole. Reith waited on tenterhooks. "What are they doing?"

"They look along the corridor. They wonder why we are not in view."

"Let's get moving," said Reith. "We can't stand here waiting.„

"The Warden will know this passage ... If they come in..."

"Never mind that." Reith set out along the passage and the girl came behind him.

A queer sight they made, thought Reith, loping through the dark in the flapping black cloaks and low-crowned hats. The girl quickly became tired and further diminished her speed by looking over her shoulder. She gave a croak of resignation and halted. "They have entered the passage."

Reith looked behind. The door stood ajar. In the gap the two Pnume were silhouetted. For an instant they stood rigid, like queer black dolls, then they jerked into motion. "They see us," said the girl, and stood with her head hanging. "It will be the pit ... Well, then, let us go to meet them in all meekness."

"Stand against the wall," said Reith. "Don't move. They must come to us. There are only two."

"You will be helpless."

Reith made no comment. He picked up a fist-size rock which had fallen from the ceiling and stood waiting.

"You can do nothing," moaned the girl. "Use meekness, placid conduct..."

The Pnume came quickly by forward-kicking steps, the white undershot jaws twitching. Ten feet away they halted, to contemplate the two who stood against the wall. For a half-minute none of the group moved or made a sound. The Silent Critic slowly raised its thin arm, to point with two bony fingers. "Go back."