And they answered: "Since the Council
does not know of this hole, there can
be no law permitting to enter it.
And everything which is not permitted by law
is forbidden."

But we said: "We shall go, none the less."

They were frightened, but they stood by
and watched us go.

We hung on the iron rings with our hands and our feet.
We could see nothing below us. And above us
the hole open upon the sky grew smaller and smaller,
till it came to be the size of a button. But still we
went down. Then our foot touched the ground.
We rubbed our eyes, for we could not see.
Then our eyes became used to the darkness,
but we could not believe what we saw.

No men known to us could have built
this place, nor the men known to our
brothers who lived before us, and yet it
was built by men. It was a great tunnel.
Its walls were hard and smooth to the
touch; it felt like stone, but it was not stone.
On the ground there were long thin tracks
of iron, but it was not iron; it felt smooth
and cold as glass. We knelt, and we crawled
forward, our hand groping along the iron