They thud into one another in the darkness like a loosely connected train bumping to a halt. Rodolfo has stopped—with any luck, he has found the first vertical shaft. Wing finally moves forward, and Goto Dengo follows straight up the vertical shaft and finally into a bulb at its top where a bubble of air has been trapped. The bulb is just barely wide enough to accommodate four men. They pause there, all jammed together in a cluster of bodies, heaving as they exhale the nitrogen- and carbon-dioxide-tainted air that they’ve been living on for the last sixty seconds, and breathe in fresh lungfuls. Goto Dengo feels his ears popping as pressure is relieved.