Beside, hadn't the legends said that Theseus slew the Minotaur with his bare fists? Maybe a proxy could do likewise!
Swinging his legs up out of the manhole, Burke scrambled to his feet, somewhat heavily. The burns on his wrists were hurting worse now, and he hardly felt in the best of shape to do battle with a monster.
But it seemed he had little choice. So, lamp in hand, he moved along the wall looking for an exit.
It wasn't till he'd worked his way through half-a-dozen pitch-black chambers that two things dawned on him:
First, the solution to the problem of his scorched, seared wrists was oil; and such was available in the jars that flanked almost every lamp-stand.
Second, the quickest way to the Minotaur was to follow his nose. Once he'd located the source of the strange, acrid smell, odds were he'd also have found the monster.
Doused liberally with oil, Burke's wrists felt better. And it was no feat at all to choose his path by odor.
Yet time still seeped away ... he had a bare fifteen minutes left now, if his watch and calculations proved right.
Then, just when despair was about to overtake him, a thin line of light gleamed far ahead.
A sheen of cold sweat came to Burke's palms. He moved forward more warily, more silently, than ever.
The light, it developed, shone from the crack beneath a door.
Like a shadow, Burke crept close; laid his ear against the panel, listening.
Ever so gently, he laid the fingers of his left hand against the portal; pressed slowly.
New light appeared, washing through the crack along the jamb.
A moment of taut waiting. Then Burke put his eye to the opening and peered through, into a large, sumptuously-furnished room. The room of a noble, perhaps, or even a king.
The only thing strange about it that Burke could see was that what appeared to be a large tank occupied the center of the room ... a tank of shimmering, blue-white metal, utterly unlike the bronze of the Minoans; precisely the same as the material of which the great ship in the cave was made.
The hair along the back of Burke's neck prickled. Moving first to one side and then the other, he checked as large a portion of the room beyond the door as possible.
With a quick push, he sent the door all the way back, swinging wide, while he poised rigid in the shadows.