The Improvised Elevator
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 4319
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Astra had wanted to check that the platforms wouldn't disintegrate, or do
anything
else unpleasant, when she stepped on them. She hadn't expected that the
platforms
would be in such perfect balance that
a small amount of added weight would make them sink. Her weight was
substantially greater than that of
the rock that she had thrown, but still small in relation to the weight of
the platform
itself. So she was fairly confident that standing on a platform would not
cause it
to descend uncomfortably fast.
Did she want to go down, though? She couldn't see the bottom of the pit, and coming up again might not be straightforward. Astra had always been one to take decisive action. She found "she who hesitates is lost" to be a more congenial saying than "look before you leap". So, casting caution to the winds, she jumped onto a platform, and it began to descend - faster than the one she had thrown the rock on, but not alarmingly so. She went down for a long time - five minutes or more. Estimating her speed of descent at three feet a second, that meant she was now some 900 feet down. This was quite some pit. The light had been dim to start with, and as she went down it soon got too dark to see even the nearest wall, only a few feet away. Eventually, though, she was able to detect a dim glow far below, which got brighter as she got nearer to it.
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JH
9/18/1999 1:52:40 PM
Extending Enabled
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