Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Author:Robert O'Brien [O'Brien, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141333335
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2011-01-05T13:30:00+00:00

The Air Ducts

And so it was.

By teaching us to read, they had taught us how to get away.

Justin climbed easily up the open door of his cage and vanished over the top with a flick of his tail. He came back an hour later, greatly excited and full of information. Yet it was typical of Justin that even excited as he was, he stayed calm, he thought clearly. He climbed down the front of my cage rather than his own, and spoke softly; we both assumed that by now the other rats were asleep.

‘Nicodemus? Come on out. I’ll show you how.’ He directed me as I reached through the wire bars of the door and felt beneath it. I found the small metal knob, slid it forward and sidewards, and felt the door swing loose against my shoulder. I followed him up the side of the cage to the shelf above. There we stopped. It was the first time I had met Justin face to face.

He said: ‘It’s better talking here than around that partition.’

‘Yes. Did you get down?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you get back up?’

‘At the end of this shelf there’s a big cabinet — they keep the mouse cages in it. It has wire mesh doors. You can climb up and down them like a ladder.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I remember now.’ I had seen that cabinet many times when my cage was carried past it. For some reason — perhaps because they were smaller — the mice were kept in cages-within-a-cage.

Justin said: ‘Nicodemus. I think I’ve found the way to get out.’

‘You have! How?’

‘At each end of the room there’s an opening in the base board at the bottom of the wall. Air blows through one of them and out of the other. Each one has a metal grid covering it, and on the grid there’s a sign that says: Lift to adjust air flow. I lifted one of them; it hangs on hinges, like a trapdoor. Behind it there is a thing like a metal window — when you slide it open, more air blows in.

‘But the main thing is, it’s easily big enough to walk through and get out.’

‘But what’s on the other side? Where does it lead?’

‘On the other side there’s a duct, a thing like a square metal pipe built right into the wall. I walked along it, not very far, but I can figure out where it must go. There’s bound to be a duct like it leading to every room in the building, and they must all branch off one main central pipe — and that one has to lead, somewhere, to the outside. Because that’s where our air comes from. That’s why they never open the windows. I don’t think those windows can open.’

He was right, of course. The building had central air conditioning; what we had to do was find the main air shaft and explore it. There would have to be an intake at one end and an outlet at the other.

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