Below Minus One, there wasn’t much to see until you got to the bottom. Those levels were really just there to provide access during inspections and maintenance. Boxes of tools and other gear were stacked here and there. Some of it looked to be left over from the early phases of the project. In one of them Jules found a cache of climbing gear: long, neatly coiled ropes of the kind used by mountaineers, a couple of climbing harnesses, and a device called a descender that could be used to ratchet one’s way up a rope or, on a different setting, to slide smoothly down it. He took the initiative to sling this stuff over his back and climb the ladder partway up the shaft above Level Zero in the hopes he might be able to see or hear something. He anchored a rope up there so that he could use the descender to come back down rapidly if he had to. But after going to all that effort he came back down with nothing to report. It was quiet up there and he daren’t climb too high lest he be detected.