The lamp is lit and the book is blank.
SURVEY BOOK 0 / 0 LEGS
TRAVERSE DOES NOT CLOSE
THE KNOTfour ways meet here
W / S choose · E or the number takes it
CAVING
You came down the rope with a tape, a carbide lamp and an empty book. Behind you the sump has broken through. Measure every leg you walk — length, bearing, inclination — because the way out is the one passage you can prove. Unsurveyed passage on your map is a guess, and a guess is wrong.
The lamp is still burning.
Nothing has moved. The water has.
Measure it or lose it.
- W S
- On a leg, crawl on and back. At a station, they move the highlight down the list of ways out.
- A D ← →
- Look around the passage.
- E
- At a station, take the way you have chosen. Out in a leg, it starts the tape — and you must stand still until it reads.
- 1 – 5
- Take that way out directly, without moving the highlight first.
- SPACE
- Rush. You go faster and the lamp drinks nearly four times as fast.
- C
- Close a traverse from a station: add up a loop of measured legs. If the sum is not zero, a leg in that circuit is not what you measured.
- M R ESC
- Sound / start over / pause.
A traverse is the honest check. Two ways round the same loop, measured from both ends, should add up to nothing. When they do not, one of the legs is bad — and a bad leg puts every station beyond it in the wrong place on your map. Measure it again from the far end.
The sump closes the low road about two minutes in. Above the water there is a climb, a squeeze taken on your side, and a river with the roof down to the water that you have to swim.
You came out into the rain.
Cold air on your face.
THE CAVE AGAINST YOUR BOOK