“Oh thanks,” said Kitten drily. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The tunnel made another sharp bend. Abruptly they found themselves in a small, well-lit room full of banks of automated machinery. Mal and Kitten stretched luxuriously.

Down a short, broad rampway to their right were two wide channels of water, one slightly greener than the other. Clear plastic domed above both. One end disappeared into the floor, while the other flowed off into a black hole in the stone wall. Philip noticed Mal’s stare.

“The one on the left carries out the treated sewage. The other draws in seawater for purification.”

“Surely the two don’t open to the ocean next to each other,” asked Porsupah.

“No. The intake channel leads out almost at a right angle from here. It opens on an untouched section of coast. The sewage channel exits near the inlet. The current is strongest there and aids in carrying the mixture out to sea. We’ll be hugging the shore there, so the current shouldn’t bother us. And swimming out with a current will help considerably. I don’t know if we could make it against the intake pumps . . . The roof of both tunnels is uneven, but air shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What do you mean, ‘shouldn’t be’?” Kitten asked.

“Well,” Philip glanced at his wrist chronometer, “it ought to be getting dark out by now. I didn’t get a chance to look at any tide tables, and to ask would have been awkward, let alone suspicious. Sometimes when both moons are in the sky and Aug. is at its highest, the water level rises all the way to the roof of the channel.

“Not a drawback,” said Porsupah to Kitten. “It’ll do you well to hold your breath for a while.”

She looked at him appraisingly. “I don’t know whether to start with the whiskers on the left or the right. What do you think, Captain?”

But Mal was watching Philip. The youth had already removed the metal panel that protected one heavily instrumented locker. He’d magically produced several complex but tiny tools, including one intricate-looking screwdriver affair with a head that was geometrically insane.

Philip put the tools neatly aside, looked up. “Captain, I think you ought to station yourself by that door over there.” He added apologetically, “It’s the only entrance from the complex proper. Miss Kai-sung, Porsupah-al, if you could remove a section of that plastic doming large enough for us to slip through, it would save a little time. The left-hand channel—there are transparent pressure-sensitive bolts on each side. It takes four, two to a side, to release one section.”

Mal was sure the minutes were not being split into 60 equal parts. He found himself glancing anxiously from the access tunnel they’d used to the single doorway, then back to Porsupah and Kitten, who were working feverishly on their second bolt. Not having been removed for some time, the bolts were proving stubborn.

After a while, he found himself watching their guide intently. The youngster was working quickly and steadily. The long fingers moved spiderlike over the web of wiring, impulsistors, solid and fluid state components.