by Andrew Dorn
They had nowhere to go.
They would have to climb down and risk it.
Risk contact with the sludge.
From the corner of her eye, Anna noticed movement above, in the sky. She craned her head, curious despite herself. A huge shadow crossed over the rim of the sinkhole, flying fast across the tormented landscape.
“Look!” Anna whooped with joy.
The Starwind was swooping down into the sinkhole, occulting the washed out sky with its pearlescent whiteness. The characteristic whirr of the powerful electric engines buzzed with intensity as the nacelles rotated 90 degrees down. The craft made its way to where Anna and Declan stood, a few meters away from the sludge. The door of the cabin slid open and a rope ladder, fixed to the interior of the hatch, was thrown out. Gerry Patterson popped his head out of the open door.
“Grab the ladder!” Gerry called, holding onto the door’s frame.
The ladder dropped from the airship, swinging in a wide arc from the turbulence in the air. The Starwind possessed impressive hovering capabilities but it wasn’t enough to steady the ladder’s descent.
“Grip my belt,” Anna said to Declan.
Arms outstretched, she managed to clutch the ladder only to have it spin away from her grip, the wind carrying it away. Cursing under her breath, she steadied herself, her eyes on the rope’s movement as it bobbed in the air, barely out of reach.
“Anna!”
She swung her head and saw Declan staring at his feet. The sludge had crowned over the top of the boulder, a meter away from their position. It was ready to pounce, gathering volume even as it lurched forwards.
The ladder swung back towards Anna and she lunged out. “Got it!”
Buffeted by the wind, the ladder swung with a jerk into a wide circular motion, away from the boulder... and from Declan.
“Declan!”
Anna, hanging to the ladder, could only stare with helplessness as the young man, in an all-or-nothing effort, kicked out with his legs. He hung in the air for a full second before his hand caught hold of the ladder’s bottom rung. The impact rocked the ladder into a spin but Anna held on as the two of them swung about, a whisker away from the goo. There was a sharp popping noise as the gooey snake burst apart, catapulting a shower of sludge into the air. Declan whipped out from the ladder, in a last-gasp effort to avoid the spray. He lost his grip, scrambled to recover, jerking the ladder to and from. Anna saw he was in trouble and lowered herself the best she could. She grabbed hold of his shirt, holding him steady. He glanced up and saw her struggle to maintain her position on the ladder. He was about to call out to let him go when he felt the airship zoomed upward with a powerful thrust, lifting them out of danger.
“Yes!” Gerry yelled in triumph from above.
Declan did a thumbs up gesture then shifted his stance to better secure his hold. He smiled to Anna. She returned his smile with a grin of her own, eyes bright with elation. Declan gazed up at the Starwind as it continued to gain altitude. Usually he was sitting at the controls, not dangling from a ladder, but even from this odd position, the ship still made his heart flutter with pride, and excitement.
Or perhaps it was Anna’s brilliant smile.
He wasn’t quite sure anymore.
26 Emmeline
EMMELINE WAS BRUISED all over her body but otherwise unhurt. She considered that a significant victory.
Now if only I can get out of this place.
She had no idea where she was but at least there was no sludge about, a fact she did not understand but catalogued away for subsequent use. She glanced upward to the hole she had fallen into.
There was a blotch of dark rock, but nothing else... no opening of any kind.
Either the hole had sealed itself, or she had ended up much deeper than she thought. In either case, it was not good news.
“Hello?” She called out. “Anybody there?”
She remained rooted to the spot for a full minute, listening to her own voice as it echoed away into the gloom.
Surely the others are still up there, searching for me.
Unless they’ve been cornered by the slime.
If that was the case, she thought, she was now on her own; and it was not a pleasant outlook. She listened to the quietness of the gloom, her rapid breathing the only sound in her ears.
There was no noise from above, from where the surface awaited, but there was some from below.
A rumble.
A deep-rooted vibration coming from the depths. It reminded her of the vibration produced by big subwoofers in especially equipped movie places. It was not earthshaking, and it wasn’t painful in any sense; but it was disconcerting and a reminder something weird was going on.
Her eyes adjusted to the low-light and she discovered it wasn’t pitch black in the underground tunnel.
Strange.
There was illumination coming from the far end of what she now realized was a narrow passageway. The light was faint, but it was there... and there was only one way to find out what it is.
Might as well check it out. It might lead me to the exit... if there’s one in this hole.
The passageway was on an incline and the further she moved down, the hotter it became. She mopped her brow, recalling the heat she had endured while visiting a working engine room of an hydro-electric dam. The light radiated softly, basking the cramped tunnel in a yellowish tinge as she made her way deeper. The further she went, the stuffier it became. She paused, taking long pulls of air which burned in her chest.
The air was shallow in the stifling tunnel and even though Emmeline was in good health, it was taking a toll. She removed her shirt and tied it around the waist, keeping only a tank top, drenched in sweat.
I must be a complete mess.
The thought made her smile. There was no one around to critique her appearance and even if there were, she was certain they would be equally horrid.
But what I wouldn’t do for a shower right now, she thought, a wistful look in her eye.
The path wove its way deeper and Emmeline thought there would be no end to it, that she would reach the Earth’s mantle, some 100 kilometers deep... and 1000 degrees warmer. Perhaps she was descending into a trap... similar to the one lanternfish used to snare their prey.
Except that she was the catch.
The twisting passageway grew wider as she rounded a bend and soon after, she found herself inside a large chamber.
So this is where the glow comes from.
Emmeline wasn’t sure what to think. To her eyes, the chamber looked artificial, a place built with purpose, but she knew Mother Nature could play tricks of her own. It was conceivable that erosion or the passage of time or a combination of these factors had formed the chamber.
She simply didn’t know.
The ceiling was interesting. It was slick, with no seams, and curved with finesse into the walls. And it glowed from within. Emmeline stared at it, speculating about the chemical process behind the glow, about the high strangeness of it all.
I wish Simon could see this. He might have been able to figure it out.
There was something else embedded in the ceiling’s surface: a sea of microscopic things scurrying about, moving across the surface from one wall to the next, spread out into every interstices and asperities. Emmeline realized the tiny organisms swam and moved inside a thin translucent membrane, which hugged the ceiling like a second skin.
She hunched down, keeping an eye to the ceiling, and started walking faster. She had the sinking sensation of having interrupted an unfinished process and decided not to hang about to find out if her hunch was true. The chamber had only one way out and Emmeline strode toward it, without looking back. She exited the chamber, breathing hard, her face beaded with perspiration. The glow which she had become accustomed to, faded from sight and she was plunged into absolute darkness.
The dark was so opaque, so impenetrable, she couldn’t even see her hand a few centimeters away from her face. She took a step
forward, blind, making her way down the inky depths. It was a hopeless task. She could kill herself by plunging down a crevasse, so total was the dark. The gloom wasn’t a welcomed companion at the bottom of a hole. It was a recipe for disaster.
What she needed was a light source.
Wait a minute, maybe I can take the light with me.
It was a crazy thought, the craziest she had had all day. It was way better than groping in the dark, with her hands in front of her, inching along as if she was trapped in a haunted house of a deserted amusement park.
She spun around. It took a few minutes of figuring out where she was and of banging into walls but to her relief she made it back to the chamber.
Now if only what I am about to do wasn’t so crazy, I wouldn’t be so nervous.
She had no idea how dangerous her next move would be, or even if it would work.
She removed the shirt knotted around her waist. Then, in a gradual and careful manner, she wrapped it around her right hand as tight as she could. In the entrance to the chamber, the ceiling was at arm’s length, the perfect distance for what she had in mind. Taking position, she closed her eyes to better focus on the task. Her hand was shaking and she willed it to stay still.
You shouldn’t do this,... you can still go back.
To the dark passageway? Never!
Then do it!
She raised her arm over her head, using her toes to push against the ground. Then, without hesitation, she slapped the ceiling’s translucent membrane. The soft envelope ruptured with a squishing sound, the noise startling her in the tomb-like stillness of the chamber. She turned her head, averting the droplets of liquid falling from above. She started to rub the shirt on the ceiling, in a brisk back and forth motion, doing her best to saturate the fabric with the bioluminescent matter. A minute later, the shirt thoroughly soaked, she dropped her hand to the side and withdrew from the chamber. Up ahead, the passageway waited, shrouded in utter darkness.
Here goes nothing.
She took three steps forward into the dark, holding her arm up as if an old-fashioned torch made of rags and lamp oil. The shirt was soaked with the bioluminescent stuff she had snagged from the chamber. Her hope was the stuff would work the same way it did within the chamber. She waited a minute in the dark, motionless, hoping the glow would appear. Two minutes passed by, then three more. She was still in the dark.
Come on, you buggers!
Her right arm was growing numb from holding it up for so long. With a growl, feeling like a complete fool, she lowered it with rage. A pale glow flared up from the fabric, a blob of creamy light lighting up the dark. She lifted her arm again, making quick motions in the air. The glow increased in strength, the light carving out a path into the pitch-black darkness. Emmeline wasted no time. Thrusting her arm out, she pushed forward in the passageway, a cone of bioluminescence following her every step.
She strode with a resolute pace, her mind set on locating a way out to the surface as quickly as possible. The glowing shirt was already beginning to dim, pressuring her to go faster. The passageway weaved up and down, left to right, but to her growing dismay angled downwards. The incline refused to level off, going further into the depths, away from the surface, away from safety.
She stopped walking.
I’m off the deep end.
I have screwed up big time and now I’m lost in a freakin’ underground maze with nothing but a stupid glowing shirt to guide me.
There was a scream unlike any she had ever heard before. When her throat began to hurt, she realized with crashing awareness she had been the one wailing her guts out.
I’m done.
The glowing bioluminescence on the shirt wavered, and she had to twirl her arm around with force to revive it. Time was running out.
I have to...
... either follow the path down into the depths... or sit in the dark and hope to be rescued, however low the odds.
... choose.
There was only one real choice. She had to press on and accept whatever she would find down there, into the unknown. There would be no rescue. It was up to her, and no one else.
And with that thought, she disappeared down the passageway, a cloak of darkness trailing each of her steps.
27 Voice in the Dark
SIMON FOUGHT DOWN the urge to smash his fist into the wall. He ached for sunshine, fresh air, the wind’s caress on his cheek, the song of a bird in his ear, Emmeline at his side. He could not accept being trapped underground, once again.
It was too much to take.
But if he wanted to find Emmeline, he had to hang on. There would be time, afterwards, to curse the heavens and all the accompanying gods.
The good news was that, at the moment, he was out of arm’s way of the sludge. The bad news was that he was stuck inside a narrow shaft, his shoulders scraping the rocky sides. To make matters even worse, there were loud noises overhead, noises he identified as being the sharp crack of rocks being crushed. The fear of being buried alive was very much in his mind. A gruesome death, if there ever was one, especially for a geologist.
Wiggling his body like a boxer evading jabs and uppercuts, he forced his way down the shaft, senses on high alert.
After a moment, he realized with relief the shaft was getting larger, less constraining, making progress easier. He plucked out a compact utility tool and unscrewed the tiny LED-powered lamp from the bottom. After a few seconds of fumbling about, his fingers searching for the tiny button, he flicked the light on. The LED beam was powerful enough to light up the passage for a few meters before it ceded to darkness... but it helped banish the claustrophobia creeping inside him.
He had to stay focused on the task at hand.
Find Emmeline.
The narrow passage angled in a descending path into the shadows. Simon wondered how deep the tunnel went. It was a good question to which he had no answer. This was new territory for him. The world of man-made tunnels was his forte, his expertise. He had explored the Cave of Crystals in Mexico, the Skocjan cave in Slovenia, renowned for its Middle Earth aspect, and the huge Sarawak chamber in Borneo, the largest in the world, big enough to hold dozens of jumbo jets; but those had been well-known tourist attractions.
Here, he considered the passageways to be new, not ancient.
And he was the first person to probe them.
The initial geological survey conducted by LTI had made no mention of such an extensive network of underground passages. So either the survey had missed it, which was unlikely, or the passages weren’t there before.
The sludge.
It came to reason it was the root cause for all that had gone down since day one.
He stood still and put his hand out to the passageway’s wall. It was cool to the touch despite the pervasive heat.
He mopped his brow, wincing at the pain in his head.
There’s something down here.
He couldn’t explain it, it was more a feeling than a certitude, but he had the unmistakable impression of being watched.
“Hello?” Simon said out loud. “Anybody there?”
He shone his miniature lamp up and down the tunnel, hearing his voice bounce away into the gloom.
Nothing.
There’s nobody there.
It’s just your imagination.
Playing tricks on you.
He resumed walking, pushing onward without glancing back.
Stop imagining things.
He rounded a bend in the passageway and noticed the tunnel had grown in size. It was still a tight fit but the oppressive sensation he had felt earlier was less intense.
But there was a problem: it was a dead end. Up ahead was a wall of sheer rock.
No!
He took a step forward, eyeing the distant wall.
And never saw the crevasse at his feet.
He sensed the floor evaporate beneath his feet and found himself hurtling down a precipitous slope. He tried to grab hold of something, anything, to break h
is descent. It was like bouncing down a ski hill after a spill, with the hope that friction from the snow would lessen the fall. Stabilizing his body as he picked up speed, he tucked in his arms and legs to protect himself from injury. He was sliding feet first into the abyss, the light from his lamp ricocheting from side to side like a fireworks display gone amok. His lower back hit something hard and a bright spike of pain made him see stars. He contorted his body with a jerk, only to have his shoulder hit an outcropping of rock whizzing past. Pain exploded in a rush, firing more stars inside his brain. He was losing consciousness, the world graying out, his peripheral vision shrinking down to a pinpoint of light.
The pinpoint of light exploded outward with a flash and he was free-falling. He was a marionette without strings, a pebble tossed into a well, no longer master of his destiny.
Silence.
He opened his eyes.
There was light.
And it wasn’t coming from his lamp.
It was all around him, soft and diffuse, with a golden hue giving it an ethereal, phantasmagoric aspect. He was lying down on his back and staring up at the ceiling. It reminded him of a living painting. A painting composed of miniature canals crisscrossing the rocky surface of a vault-like space. He corrected himself. They weren’t canals. They were more like veins, akin to those inside his own body.
He got up with difficulty, his back feeling numb all the way to his left shoulder blade. Above, he could make out the narrow opening in the ceiling. The opening he had fell from like an out-of-control fool. It beckoned him but it was out of reach, a good 6 meters in the air. It could have been 30 meters high for all he cared. He would need to sprout wings to attain it, something he felt sure would not happen in the next hour.
He straightened up and made his way out of the cramped antechamber. The layout of tunnels and passageways reminded him of an ant colony. Of a gigantic ant colony, to be sure, one he would have loved to explore with an infinite supply of industrial strength insect repellent. He sniffed the air. It differed from before. There was a stench of moldy leaves and of a strong chemical, ammonia or such. It wasn’t a smell he would classify as enjoyable, for it was strong, but at least it didn’t make him gag ... or killed him on the spot.