walk ahead. We'll follow. Tina will direct you."

It was too dark for Larry to see Tugh's face, but the cripple's voice
was sardonic.

"You give me orders?"

"Yes--it just happens that from now on I do. If you want to go with us
to the Power House, you walk in front."

Tugh started off with Larry close after him. Larry whispered to the
girl:

"Don't let's be fools, Tina. Keep him ahead of us."

The tunnel steadily dwindled in size until Larry could barely stand up
in it. Then it opened to a circular cave, which held one small light
and had apparently no other exit. The cave had years before been a
mechanism room for the palace temperature controls, but now it was
abandoned. The old machinery stood about in a litter.

"In here?" said Tugh. "Which way next?"

Across the cave, on the rough blank wall, Tina located a hidden
switch. A segment of the wall slid aside, disclosing a narrow, vaulted
tunnel leading downward.

"You first, Tugh," said Larry. "Is it dark, Tina? We have no
handlights."

"I can light it," came the answer.

The door panel swung closed after them. Tina pressed another switch. A
row of tiny hooded lights at twenty-foot intervals dimly illumined the
descending passage.

* * * * *

They walked a mile or more through the little tunnel. The air was
fetid; stale and dank. To Larry it seemed an interminable trip. The
narrow passage descended at a constant slope, until Larry estimated
that they were well below the depth of the river bed. Within half a
mile--before they got under the river--the passage leveled off. It had
been fairly straight, but now it became tortuous--a meandering
subterranean lane. Other similar tunnels crossed it, branched from it
or joined it. Soon, to Larry, it was a labyrinth of passages--a
network, here underground. In previous centuries this had been well
below the lowest cellar of the mammoth city; these tube-like passages
were the city's arteries, the conduits for wires and pipes.

It was an underground maze. At each intersection the row of hidden
hooded lights terminated, and darkness and several branching trails
always lay ahead. But Tina, with a memorized key of the route, always
found a new switch to light another short segment of the proper
tunnel. It was an eery trip, with the bent, misshapen black-cloaked
figure of Tugh stumping ahead, waiting where the lights ended for Tina
to lead them further.

Larry had long since lost his