water from a tub which had not yet been emptied down the disposal chute. The fire hissed and spluttered when he threw on the water. The flames died, but he used more water to kill the fire entirely, not wanting any smoke in the chimney while he was climbing it.
Belatedly, he realized it might be a good idea to protect his hand – best to take good care of it, as he only had the one. Working in the dark, he tore cloth into strips and bandaged it. Then he started up the chimney, which was warm, though he had not had the fire burning for long; with three cloaks over his other clothing, he was soon uncomfortably hot.
He climbed past a junction where another chimney joined the one he was ascending. He forced his way on upward, and then, to his dismay, found that the chimney narrowed to a chokepoint too small for him to get through. Looking up, he saw a span of stars. His hand reached up, counted one, two, three bricks, then found an open space which he supposed was the roof. He made a tentative effort to chip away at the mortar holding the bricks, then abandoned it. Speed was essential. He might be half the night removing the bricks – and even then, having gained the roof, he might find no easy way to exit from it.
He decided to climb back to where the chimney branched. If he could not find an escape route, he could always return to attack the bricks barring him from the roof. He descended carefully, reached the junction, and followed the unexplored shaft.
He found it strangely clean – there seemed to be no soot in it at all. As it went down, it began to widen. Soon it was almost too wide for him to brace his back against one side and his knees against the other. Hearst found himself getting nervous, fearing a fall. If it got much wider, he would have to give up and climb back again.
Then he found a wooden ladder pegged into the side of the shaft. He accepted its assistance gratefully, and climbed down it. All around-him, the shaft opened out. He wondered what on earth could be below. He paused, linking his right arm through the ladder, and scraped the soot out of his nose. Now he could smell something curiously foul – a compound stench of wet and rot, of bad meat and maggots, of stinking potatoes, of sewage. He peered downwards into the darkness, but found himself unable to see anything.
He had rested long enough. He climbed on down.
Suddenly, without a moment's notice, the ladder tore free from the wall. Hearst fell. Falling, he shrieked. His scream of terror echoed from the walls. Then he smashed home into-
He was buried in it.
He forced his head out, spat, breathed, gagged, then forced himself to breathe again. He had fallen into a pit filled with everything he had been smelling earlier. He spat repeatedly, fighting nausea. He dared not open his eyes. His clothes, his face, his hair – everything was covered in evil-smelling slime. He was neck-deep in the stuff.
Hearst struggled to the wall. It curved overhead. Working his way right round the pit, he found it the same all the way round. It was as if he stood in the bottom of an hourglass. It was impossible to climb that curving wall. There was only one way out: a slimy round pipe set in the wall at neck height.
Hearst struggled into the pipe and began to crawl. It was narrow, and it stank. After a long, hard struggle the smell got worse, as it was joined by the stink of something scorching. The pipe was getting warm; he guessed it emptied into another fire chasm.
He felt his way carefully, stopping when the heat grew intense. The muck coating his eyelids had dried by now; he flaked away the crust and opened his eyes. As he expected, he saw firelight reflecting from the walls ahead. So this was the end! He was going to die in a sewer. He was, he realized, already very thirsty. How long would he last? A day? Two days? Maybe longer.
Unless there was a way past the fire.
He crawled forward, and found himself confronted by a man-wide chasm. It went down a long, long way, widening as it went; below was a veritable lake of fire. On the other side of the chasm was a rock ledge, one horse-length wide, studded with stone bollards. In the rock wall behind the ledge there was a door, revealed by the glowering, shadowy light of hellfire.
Hearst, crouched in the sewer pipe, could not jump across the chasm, even though it was only man-wide. However, he still had the length of rope he had found under the loose flagstone in his prison cell. He could make a noose and throw it so it landed on one of the stone bollards. Then he could swing across the chasm, open the door and-
And what if the door refused to open?
Hearst declined to think about that. Swiftly, he made a lasso out of his bit of rope. On the third try, he managed to drop it over the nearest bollard. He hauled on the rope to tighten the noose. The bollard toppled over and fell into the chasm. As it fell, the rope snapped taut and was wrenched from his hand. He gave a small, involuntary cry – and then was ashamed of himself for doing so.
Hearst backed into the sewer, until he was in the cooler sections, away from the fire. By means of long and involved contortions, he managed to strip off the three cloaks he wore over his other clothing. He cut the cloaks into strips and tied the strips into ropes. Each cloak made a rope long enough to bridge the chasm even after he had fashioned a loop at one end.
He was ready to try again.
He was very tired now. His body was weary from crawling, scrambling and climbing, and from the shock of his plunge into the pit. He was starting to suffer occasional muscle cramps. He crawled back to the fire chasm and tried again.
The first time he threw a rope, the loop at the end dropped neatly over a bollard. He pulled on it. The bollard did not move. But would it hold firm when it supported his full weight? For that matter, would the rope hold? He would soon find out. He wrapped the end of the rope round his right forearm, careful to keep it clear of his razor- sharp hook. He gripped the rope in his hand, pulled it taut then advanced.
As he hauled himself out of the pipe, a blast of heat flushed his face, neck and belly. When he was out of the pipe as far as his navel, he felt his body starting to sag in the middle. He paused, winding the slack of the rope round his right forearm. He wriggled forward. Soon the rope was taking half his weight, with his feet supporting the rest. He was now suspended over the fire chasm; he felt as if he was cooking. The far side was just out of reach.
His toes worked their way to the edge of the sewer. He lifted one foot, and explored the edge of the sewer with his boot. Then he kicked off, jerking his knees in to his chest.
He swung across the chasm. Knees tucked in to his chest, he slammed into the far side. His feet took the brunt of the impact. There was a ripping sound: his cloth rope was tearing. Desperately he reached up with his left hand, took the full weight of his body in that hand, wound in the slack with his right forearm, then repeated the process.
His hand slammed home on level rock. He had gained a purchase on the top! In a few seconds, he had hauled himself up onto the rock ledge. He rolled away from the heat and lay panting. His body was wringing wet with sweat; his mouth was a desert. Slowly, he gathered his strength and got to his knees. He stood up. He felt the blood swoon from his head; dizzy, he collapsed to his knees. He crawled to the door, one horse-length from the chasm.
He rested by the door for a while, then, when he had recovered somewhat, he got up and inspected it. There was no handle on the inside. He tried to lever it open, and failed. The hinges were on the far side. When he threw his weight against it, it did not even creak. It was a solid door. He would have to cut a hole in it. Either that, or die.
He decided to work in the middle, cutting a hole he could reach through to lift whatever bar secured the door. Of course, if the door was bolted shut, the bolt would be to one side, out of reach. With that happy thought, he set to work with knife, hook and chisel.
Morgan Hearst had by now entirely lost track of time. He worked methodically, without thought, pausing only when his arms cramped, and he had to straighten them to ease the muscle spasms. He was very tired now; as he worked, he had occasional hallucinatory dreams for two or three breaths at a time.
At last he managed to make a small hole which he could poke his chisel through. Peering through the hole, he made out the dim outlines of a small, bare room. Or was it a section of a corridor? He could see very little of it. But what he could see was a slit window admitting grey dawniight.
He had run out of darkness.
Hearst worked harder. Every time he stopped to look at his steadily widening hole, the light on the far side was brighter. Eventually, brilliant daylight was streaming in through the slit window. Panting, sweating, swearing
