We have walked through sleep and we have slept while we walked. The rise
is steeper. Our oil lamp is still burning and our shadows fall behind us
into the blackness. There will be light for perhaps ten more hours.
There is a dampness now in the passage, like that of the passage to Red
Lake. Our tiredness is so great we become afraid sometimes that after
one of our rests we may not be able to go on. I am worried about Nina.
She says nothing, but I think for a long while now she has been walking
on heart strength alone. We have seven hours of light before us.
The passage has ended. For a moment the thought came that we were on
Earth Surface. But Doctor Dorn says we are in a great cavern, larger
even than the Cavern of Red Lake. Our one light is as nothing in this
great blackness, and we walk close to the wall so we will not become
lost. In some places the walls are like glass as if from a very great
heat. There are more passages in the sides of this cavern than the mind
can imagine. But after this rest there is nothing else we can do but try
one of them.
For five hours we have been lost in passages that curve and turn and
join with each other as madly as if they were made by lost-mind men. Now
we have found our way back to the Great Cavern. We shall stay here the
two hours longer our light and lives will last.
It is easier now that our hope is nothing.
We can rest and wait, and even our fear becomes less in our tiredness.
The time has gone slowly, but the light from the lamp is becoming less
now. In a few seconds it will go out, and the Groles will come, and our
lives will be over. Perhaps for an instant before we die, we shall know
what the Groles are; or perhaps it happens so quickly we will never know
anything. This may be the better way. Nina trembles in my arms.
We wait in the blackness. The lamp has been out for many minutes but the
Groles have not come.
How can this be? Can the mind conceive that there are no such things as
Groles, that, like so many other things, they are only a lie of the
State?
These last words I write now.
The Groles are coming! We can hear their murmuring sounds through the
passages. We say goodbye to each other.