All right then! She told the nagging voice in her head.

Don't keep on so. I'm going.

She opened the door again and slid through, shutting it quietly behind her. Like a brown shadow she crept along the wall to her right. There were no other slaves in sight. Perhaps they normally had no business on this floor, which would be why Swift, on some Lords' business, was the only one to have found the secret way out.

Slowly she crept around the perimeter, never daring to take a short cut out of the hidden way, the shadow path. At last there was a door. She pulled it open and found herself in a different world.

Gone was the spotless polished floor, the air-conditioning, the brilliant light. Here, when lights had burned out no one had replaced them, so that pools of darkness disguised the piles of refuse in the corners and the dust and grit that lay heavily upon the landings and the stairs. There was a smell of unwashed humans and stale cooking.

She hesitated on the first step and grasped the railing, sticky with the hands of countless slaves. Two floors down, they had said. How could such a slum have been allowed? Weren't the people of Ark One committed to building a better world?

Yet right in the middle of their model city was this. Well, at least she wasn't likely to meet a Lord or a soldier in these surroundings.

She had almost reached the bottom of the first flight when a figure came through the door and scurried past her, head bent. She reached out to clutch its arm. “I've got to see Seventy-Three. Can you tell me where to find her, please?”

The eyes were raised, surprised, fearful. “Who are you then?”

“My name's…” Ruth stopped, aware of the trap too late. She didn't have a name. Only a number. That was one of the 'privileges' of being a slave, that one did not even have a name. “Never mind. Just show me where I can find Seventy- Three.” The other hesitated, crouching against the stair rail. “Oh, come on, you can see I'm not a Three-eyes, can't you?” “All right then. I'll take you down and show you a place

where you can wait for her. That's all.”

“Thank you.”

Again she caught a glimpse of shifting suspicion behind the pale eyes. Then the slave turned and trotted briskly down to the next floor, kicking refuse out of the way with hard bare feet. They emerged at the outer perimeter of the living quarters where, she had been told, the slaves slept. Ruth followed her guide at a trot around the long curved corridor and finally through one of many identical doors.

“Stay here. Someone'll come.”