That last idea--it had much to commend it. For one thing, almost any manhole where he might come up, save only this one, would put him in a position to keep a whole skin and escape the palace, even without the thread of Daedalus to guide him. For another, any attempt on his part now to slay the Minotaur was doomed to failure in advance. Obviously. Theseus had made off with the Smith & Wesson. Without it, or equivalent, no one could hope to meet the monster and live. * * * * * Lamp in hand, Burke went over to the manhole and sat down on the edge, legs dangling, in preparation for the drop into the drainage tunnel below. Only then, as he momentarily hesitated there, bracing himself, his mind turned to the one subject he most wished to avoid. Ariadne. It had to come, of course. He'd known it all along. You couldn't ignore a woman in a moment of crisis such as this one--not when she meant as much to you as Ariadne did to him. So, what would happen to her, if he dropped down through this manhole into the sewer? Answer: she'd die. In less than half an hour she'd die, without note, in the destruction of this strange, gleaming palace men called Knossos. And nothing he, Dion Burke, or anyone else, could do would save her, so long as the Minotaur lived. Now the question became, did he care about escaping, living, if he had to do it alone, without his lovely Ariadne? Burke forced himself to hesitate on that one. He didn't want to react to it hastily, or casually, or emotionally, or without due thought and consideration. The only difficulty was, a man's feelings weren't something he could put on or take off at will, like a suit of clothes. They were part of him, incorporated into every cell of meat and blood and bone and tissue. And there was the answer to his basic question: win or lose, live or die, he'd leave Knossos only with Ariadne at his side. Beside, hadn't the legends said that Theseus slew the Minotaur with his bare fists? Maybe a proxy could do likewise! Swinging his legs up out of the manhole, Burke scrambled to his feet, somewhat heavily. The burns on his wrists were hurting worse now, and he hardly felt in the best of shape to do battle with a monster. But it seemed he had little choice. So, lamp in hand, he moved along the wall looking for an exit. It wasn't till he'd worked his way through half-a-dozen pitch-black chambers that two things dawned on him: First, the solution to the problem of his scorched, seared wrists was oil; and such was available in the jars that flanked almost every lamp-stand. Second, the quickest way to the Minotaur was to follow his nose. Once he'd located the source of the strange, acrid smell, odds were he'd also have found the monster. Doused liberally with oil, Burke's wrists felt better. And it was no feat at all to choose his path by odor. Yet time still seeped away ... he had a bare fifteen minutes left now, if his watch and calculations proved right.