The soldiers did not budge. She tiptoed over to a lab bench and picked up a pencil that was lying there. She balanced it on the edge of a petri dish and ran silently back to her hiding place. Then she concentrated on the pencil. After a few seconds it trembled, tipped and fell from the dish. It rolled to the edge of the table. She gave it a small mental nudge and it fell to the floor with a clatter that was surprisingly loud. Neither soldier budged.

All right, Ruth! She took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the pillar. She walked slowly towards the soldiers, expecting to see the guns whip up, to feel the blow of the stun against her body.

Now she was directly in front of the two soldiers and she could see that their eyes were closed, even though they were standing up. She took a deep breath and walked between them, opened the door and stepped into the room.

It was very much like the room in Ark Three that hid the Door. Only there were four more soldiers inside, three leaning comfortably against the wall, the fourth collapsed in a heap on the floor. Ruth reached up to the bolt and forced it open. She was stronger now than she had been the first time she escaped from Ark Three, but the bolts still took all her strength. Luke's Esper powers were indeed impressive.

At last the door creaked open. She looked for and found the switch in the expected place and ran down the passage. It led straight on for about two hundred metres before coming to a dead end. There was the ladder going up to ground level.

She emerged from the passage in the middle of the forest and climbed over the concrete neck, which had been ingeniously disguised as a tree stump. How clever of Luke and the others to have found it!

She whistled softly a few bars from the Freedom Song. Within a minute a shadow appeared among the moonlit trees.

“Ruth? Is that you?”

“Yes. “

“Thank goodness, she's here! Wait there, Ruth. We have to cross the river.”

They appeared out of the darkness, Healhand and Swift, Stargazer and Treefeller, Arbor and Rowan and the Initiator. She was hugged by each of them in turn. It was strange. In spite of the danger and the dark she was happier than she had ever felt in her life before.

“Where have you been?”

“What took you so long?”

“Are the others safe?”

“How is Tomi?”

She answered the torrent of questions as best she could and then told them the plan. “ ... and Tomi says will you stay here, close to the exit, because in a short while all the slaves are going to leave the city.”