The archway to the vault of the elders was unaccountably blocked, and Rik realized suddenly that part of the ceiling there had fallen, carried by some fault in the granite of the mountain itself. But that was impossible! The elders had selected this site on the basis of the rigidity of the rocky strata that made it up. A fault could not have occurred for more years than Rik's own lifetime-- Or had that many years passed already? * * * * * There was no way of knowing; not until he had examined the clock. Rik moved away from the blockade and made his way into the next vault, and the next, finally finding an archway in the sixth vault from his own where the rock had not completely sealed the way into the elders' vault. Here he had expected to find the air fresher, already having theorized that the staleness elsewhere was due to the poor circulation occasioned by the blockaded central vault. But in fact the air there was even worse, and laden with an odor that made Rik suddenly afraid to see its source. Still, he was the first to awake. It was up to him to try and save himself and the others. Rik made an effort of will, and then squeezed through the narrow orifice into the main chamber. He looked once toward the slabs holding the bodies of the elders, then quickly away. It was true. All were in advanced stages of corruption already. Choking, Rik went to the center of the high room and looked into the horizontal face of the clock. The broad indicator arm was at its utmost numeral, and was pocked with rust. They'd lain here beyond the time-of-awakening by at least four times the years they'd planned! "It can't be right," Rik gasped, his brain reeling for want of clean, cool air. "The mechanism has failed somehow." Afraid to think about it, he tilted the clock up on its base until the pedestal which supported it lay on its side upon the floor. The square block of metal that based the pedestal was now uptilted beyond the vertical, exposing a gaping trap in the floor. Rik did not like the tarnished look of the metal underside of the pedestal-base, forged of an alloy supposed to be incorruptible. A sick thought took hold of his insides then, as he placed one foot upon the rocky staircase under the floor. The clock-indicator had halted at its utmost numeral. But what if they'd lain here even longer than that? There would be no way of knowing. No way at all. He descended the staircase swiftly then, glad at least that the air was better down in the pump chamber. "It would be, of course," he reminded himself, "if the pump went off, even. This air would never be circulated, never have its chance to become corrupt with our exhalations." And then his musing was halted in midthought as he came upon the pump. Or upon what had been the pump.