He almost trapped himself. Barely in time he found that the underside of the steel door was smooth, no handle, and that it latched automatically by a spring catch.
That settled why no one worried that the studs might gain unplanned access to sluts. But it also settled something else. Hugh had considered snatching this very chance, if he found things quiet at the other end: Wake Barbara, bring all four of them back via the tunnel-then outside and away, by any of a dozen weak points, away and off to the mountains on foot, reach them before light, find some stream and ford it endwise to throw off hounds. Go, go, go! With almost no food, with nothing but a makeshift knife, with no equipment, a “nightshirt” for clothing, and no hope of anything better. Go! And save his family, or die with them. But die free!
Perhaps someday his twin sons, wiser in the new ways than himself and toughened by a life fighting nature, could lead an uprising against this foul thing. But all he planned to do, all he could hope for, was get them free, keep them free, alive and free and ungelded, until they were grown and strong.
Or die.
Such was still his plan. He wasted not a moment sorrowing over that spring catch. It merely meant that he must communicate with Barbara, set a time with her, because she would have to open the hatch at the far end. Tonight he could only reconnoiter.
He found that tape from his knife handle would hold the spring catch back. He tested it from above; the lid could now be swung back without turning the clasp.
But his wild instincts warned him. The tape might not hold until he was back. He might be trapped inside.
He spent a sweating half hour working on that spring catch, using knife and fingers and holding the light ball in his teeth.
At last he managed to get at and break the spring. He removed the catch entirely. The manhole, closed, now looked normal, but it could be opened from underneath with just a push.
Only then did he let himself down inside and close it over him.
He started out on knees and elbows with the light in his mouth, and stopped almost at once. The damned skirt of his robe kept him from crawling! He tried bunching it around his waist. It slid down.
He inched back to the manhole shaft, took the pesky garment off entirely, left it under the manhole, crawled away without it, naked save for the knife strapped to his arm and the light in his teeth. He then made fair progress, although never able to get fully on hands and knees. His elbows had to be bent, his thighs he could not bring erect, and there were places where valves and fittings of the pipes he crawled past forced him almost to his belly.
Nor could he tell how far he was going. However, there were joints in the tunnel about every thirty feet; he counted them and tried to match them in his mind with the engineering drawing. Pass under two manholes . . . sharp left turn into another tunnel at next manhole . . . crawl about a hundred and fifty feet and under one manhole- Something more than an hour later he was under a manhole which had to be the one closest to Barbara.
If he had not lost himself in the bowels of the palace- If he had correctly remembered that complex drawing- If the drawing was up to date- (Had two thousand years made any difference in the lag between engineering changes and revisions of prints to match?) If Kitten knew what she was talking about in locating Barbara’s billet by a method so novel to her- If it was still Barbara’s billet- He crouched in the awkward space and tried to press his ear against the shaft’s cover.
He heard a baby cry.
About ten minutes later he heard hushed female voices. They approached, passed over him, and someone stepped on the lid.
Hugh unkinked himself, prepared to return. The space was so tight that the obvious way was to back up the way he had come, so he found himself trying to crawl backward through the tunnel.