Rite of Passage

“That’s the mark for home,” I said. The ducts corresponding to arteries have pushing fans, the ducts corresponding to veins have sucking fans. Between the chalk marks I make and the direction and feel of the wind, I always have a good enough idea where I am, even in a strange place like this one, to at least find my way home again. There was certainly more similarity here to the ducts at home than there was in the layouts of Alfing and Geo Quads proper. I didn’t think it would take me long to get my bearings.

When Zena had the grate in place, we set off.

I walked first down the metal corridor. Zena followed uncertainly behind me, tripping once and skidding, though there was nothing there to trip on except her feet. The duct itself, fully six feet wide and six feet high, was made of smooth metal. The darkness was complete except for the occasional grille of light cast into the dust at a grate opening, and the beam cast by my little light. As we passed them, I numbered the grates and the cross-corridors to give me a ready idea of how far from home I was.

As we passed the grates, occasionally noises penetrated from the outside world, but it was clearly another world than the one that we were in. The sounds of our world were the metallic echoes of our whispers, the sound of our sandals padding dully, and the constant sound of the fans.

I had read more than one novel set in the American West two hundred years before Earth was destroyed, where conditions were almost as primitive as on one of the colony planets. I remembered reading of the scouts who even in strange territory had the feel of the country, and I felt much the same way myself. The feel of the air, the sounds, all meant something to me. To Zena they meant nothing and she was scared. She didn’t like the dark at alL

At those points where the corridors joined there were sometimes fans to be ducked. The corridors also sloped at the junctions so that there were no straight corners, and this was disconcerting when the corridor you were meeting ran up-and-down, even when it was the equivalent of a capillary and could be gotten over with one good jump.

Zena balked at the first of these that we encountered and had to be prodded before she would cross it.

“I don’t want to,” she said. “I can’t jump that far.”

“All right,” I said. “But if you don’t come along, you’ll just be left here all alone in the dark.”

That made her mind up for her and she found that she could jump it, and with very little effort, either.

But I’ll have to admit that old-collecting-chute-hand or not, I wasn’t prepared for what we found next. In the darkness, there was no floor in front of us. Above us, no ceiling. My light showed our own corridor resuming on the far side of the gap, fully six feet away. The floor sloped sharply down and the air rushed strongly along. I had never encountered an up-anddown duct of this size before.

“Well, what is it?” Zena asked.

There were handholds at the side on which to cross the gap, and holding onto one of these, I leaned over and dropped a piece of broken chalk in a futile attempt to gauge the depth of the cross-duct. I listened, but I never heard a sound.

“It must connect one level with the next,” I said. “A main line. I bet it goes straight down to the First LeveL”

“Well, don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”

I wasn’t about to jump that distance, so I examined the hand- and footholds carefully. If you slipped and fell, and it was as far down as I suspected, all that would be left of you would be jam. I shone my light up and down, and the beam only managed to nibble at the blackness. The holds went up-and-down, too, as well as across, a ladder that went much farther than I could see.

“Maybe it connects with the Fourth Level down there,” Zena said, “but where does it go to up there?” She pointed straight up the duct.

I didn’t know. The Fifth Level was the very last, the outside, but this duct went beyond the Fifth. Air chutes don’t lead into blind corners and air doesn’t come from nowhere.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But as long as we’re here, why don’t we see where it goes?”

I reached over and put my toe in the inset in the wall. Then I grabbed the first handhold I could reach and swung out. They were good finn holds and while the distance straight down bothered me a little, as long as I couldn’t see how far down it was I wasn’t really scared. I once had the experience of walking along a board three inches wide while it was set on the ground — I went the whole length and probably could have walked on for a mile and never fallen off. Then the board was raised into the air and I was challenged to try again. When it was set on posts ten feet high, I wouldn’t even try it because I knew I couldn’t make it. This was something of a similar situation, and as long as I couldn’t see I knew I wouldn’t worry.