The passage was narrow; its pave led downward.
For a moment we hesitated, the same foreboding in both our minds.

And yet--among the perils that crowded in upon us what choice had we?
There could be no more danger there than here.
Both ways were--ALIVE, both obedient to impulses over which we had no more control and no more way of predetermining than mice in some complex, man-made trap.

Furthermore, this shaft also ran downward, and although its pitch was less and it did not therefore drop as quickly toward that level we sought and wherein lay the openings of escape into the outer valley, it fell at right angles to the corridor through which we had come.
We knew that to retrace our steps now would but take us back to the forges and thence to the hall of the Cones and the certain peril waiting for us there.
We stepped into this opened way.

For a little distance it ran straightly, then turned and sloped gently upward; and a little distance more we climbed.

Then suddenly, not a hundred yards from us, gushed out a flood of soft radiance, opalescent, filled with pearly glimmerings and rosy shadows of light.
It was as though a door had opened into some world of luminescence.