He walked around to the third room again. The knife beyond the door was gone... of course.

So there was no fourth room to make up the square.

He sat on the bare floor of the third room and closed his eyes. If he wasn't careful, the strangeness of the place was going to overwhelm him.

He opened his eyes. He looked speculatively up at the hatch set in the ceiling of the third room. Surely he would break out of this odd cycle if he climbed up another level.

He stood up straight. The lamp fitting was just out of his reach, but he found that if he -- jumped -- he could just grab it with both hands.

He hung there for a moment, gently swinging, the burn scars around his chest itching slightly. Then he arced backwards, swung both feet forwards and slammed them into the roof hatch.

It fell back with a soft thump. Another swing, one-armed this time, and Teal had grabbed the edge of the hatch-frame. Then it was simple to haul himself up into the room. Orange's rope trailed after him.

The fourth room was empty -- another copy of the first, with the usual lamp fitting and the six exits. He took a few deep breaths and let his heart rattle to rest; and then, with a kind of confidence -- surely there was nothing else that could be thrown at him -- he strode forward and pushed open a door.

He almost cried out.

Through the door in the wall he was looking into the first room again -- but the whole room was tipped on its side. Orange looked as if she was clinging to a wall, a huge hairy spider. A rope trailed from her trunk out of a door ahead of her.

He shoved the door closed hastily, fighting back a sudden wave of nausea. Suppose he'd stepped forward... surely sideways would suddenly have become down, and he would have fallen full-length onto poor Orange. And if she'd looked up as he stood there, would she have seen him sticking sideways out into the air like an outstretched arm?

He didn't even try to work out the explanation this time. With some reluctance he turned and walked across to the door opposite Orange's. What next? Unconsciously he pulled his stone knife from his belt.

He opened the door.

It was the Eighth Room.

For the first time in a hundred thousand generations, starlight entered human eyes.

Orange had no way of telling the time.

She couldn't even count well enough to keep track of her thumping heartbeats. Holding her rope she hummed a song to herself.

She sang it over and over, ever faster.

The rope had been slack for too long now, surely. Trembling, she shuffled to the open door and fanned out one great ear.

Silence.

Was he dead?