essly searched out tunnels untraveled or
long forgotten, returning ever and again to those that went deepest,
learning the mazes, delving deeper still. Though what he sought there
he could not have said.

The left-hand way was subtle, as he passed onward through the narrow
stone, with many turnings and side passages. He held mostly to the
main shaft, learning its direction, following it on its slow, steady
course downward. Many times it narrowed, till he was ready to despair.
But always through perseverance and careful backtracking, he was able
to find a way through.

The narrowing and tight touching of the walls began to frighten him.
By this, more than any other token, he knew that the growing fear
inside him was not solely his own. Far back in the journey he had
realized that
in taking the quest he must know, in part, what it was to be human.
Perhaps the spirit of Shannon still lived more strongly than he knew.
And perhaps there were others as well. Often he had thought with human
voice, human words, till now it was impossible to separate the two. He
had known, and been, emotions that were not his own.....

But THIS fear. Sometimes from the deeps of his mind he could hear a
howling as of many tormented voices, rising out of him like a driven,
heart-frozen wind.

He stopped. He himself was afraid, and he did not know why. He must
master it and go on. He must master it and go on. Go on.....
Resistance was thick around him, his body's weakness, till he felt that
in standing still he walked against a current of water.

He hardened, and went forward. The passage began to open again,
growing wider. Several more of the branching ways, through a mesh of
stone, and a straight, subtly rising tunnel lay before him. Far off in
the distance he heard, unmistakably, a steady throbbing, echoing like a
fall of water---the deep, rapid pulsing of a heart. He pushed on,
harder, though the pulsing of yellow light grew stronger, pushing back
on him, darkening to gold, an airless wind urging him back.

The passage seemed endless, and still it went on, with no
indication..... Ahead of him, the tunnel opened out, almost beyond
the edge of sight. He continued. Farther. He had reached it: the
horn's spout. Over the lip, and in.....

*

The beginnings of the chamber greeted him like an opened book, lying on
its bindings, leaning downward. The rock of that flattened wedge,
angling slowly away from him, was