Picture Pack: Tarra’s Front Porch
The morning air was cool and wet, just starting to heat up as the sun was rising over the hill tops to the east. Today the sun cycle was in synch with the clock, which happened about once a week. It was going to a superb day! It was better to have daylight in your favor down in the sinkhole where the light never quite came in directly, it was always in shadow at the bottom since it was so deep. Bjorn had timed the Safari quite well. Just then Tarra noticed dust coming from the direction of the main road, it looked like Bjorn was on schedule and would be arriving in a few more minutes.
The manor house was up on a rise, giving a good view of the surrounding countryside despite the tall trees surrounding the house. The dogs noticed too and were barking, running part way down the tree lined lane and looking back at Tarra to make sure she knew they were on the job. Their tails were wagging, which meant they knew who it was.
Bjorn came growling down the lane in the Ripsaw and stopped in front of the porch in a cloud of dust. He had a hard wall popup camping trailer behind the vehicle, the one they used when they went to the lake. Tarra knew just what to do, she hopped off the chair, slipped on the backpack, pulled the gear bag over her shoulder and dragged the cooler down the steps on it’s rollers towards the trailer. Sven popped out of the Ripsaw and came down to help her stow her gear in the trailer. “Hey there Queenie, how’s it going?”
“Hello yourself. Nice to see you guys are on time, I like it when my subjects are punctual.”
The dogs were jumping up on Sven and trying to lick his face. “Hello, you big ugly mutt, it’s good to see you guys too, yes I know you like me. What? You want a treat? Here you go.” Sven always had a couple of cookies in his pockets for the dogs. “All right, all right, that’s enough. Get down you guys I have work to do.” Sven opened the door into the trailer bottom and helped Tarra get the cooler inside and out of the way, and stowed her bags.
Tarra climbed up the ladder up the back of the Ripsaw using the track as a step up, and crawled across the roof to the hatch and dropped her feet down the opening. She knew how to get into the beast. Plopping into the right rear seat, she looked over and scanned Jake up and down. He looked OK, just like a city kid would out here on a remote moon in the country. He was wearing practical clothes for the outing, not too extreme, not too city either.
“Hi, I’m Jake. I’m staying with my cousins the Langers for a while.”
“Hello yourself, I’m Tarra” she stated coyly. “My friends call me Sheera, Queen of the Jungle.” She extended her hand to see what he would do… Jake took her hand lightly and nodded.
Sven had clambered in after Tarra and sat down in front. He turned back around and said “Tarra, this is Jake. Don’t bite him too badly, he’s new. Play nice and you just might get a prize later on.”
“Oh? And what might that be?”
“We might let you sleep indoors instead of out with the Lupes and Grizz tonight.” Sven chuckled turning back around.
Ariel grinned and winked at Tarra, she was sitting in between the two front seats on the jump seat between Bjorn and Sven.
“Ahhh!” Tarra gaffed with her mouth and eyes wide. “You beast! That’s no way to treat a Queen, is it Jake.”
“No, it’s not!” Jake jumped in to Tarra’s defense, taking the bait. “She can take my spot” he said gallantly with a big smile. Sven smirked, Jake had no idea what he was in for. Sven had ignored her advances for quite a while, and now she had a new target. He knew Jake would be good for something. Tarra smiled at Jake who smiled back as the Ripsaw began moving out of the drive and back down the lane. The dogs were barking and running along, excited for the interruption in their day. The dogs trailed the vehicle part way down the lane, then turned and ran buoyantly back towards the house to begin their rounds of the ranch. Ariel squeezed Bjorn’s leg and grinned, they both knew what Tarra was up to even if Jake didn’t.
Jake and Tarra hit it off right away, talking about all of their travels, families and the like as the Ripsaw made it’s way north west towards the lake on the way to the Spire Sinkhole. With the windows closed to keep the dust out, you could almost hear everything another person said to you over the growl and whine of the engine. Jake paid attention to the route, which wound it’s way across the savannah-like rolling plains. They had to ford several streams on the way as the route climbed slightly up in elevation and wended it’s way across the low lands. Every now and then the road dipped down into a rocky ravine, then climbed back out up onto the plain as they approached the foothills leading up to the lake. The two-track road seemed well used, even though it was out in the middle of nowhere.
The Ripsaw finally topped a rounded hill and Jake could see a lake glimmering in the sunlight on the other side. A flock of antelope which had been drinking on the far side of the inlet bolted and headed up into the bushes and tall grasses away from the vehicle. A few of the animals halted briefly and watched them descend down the off-road trail towards the lake inlet before continuing off into the distance. The two-kilometer long lake extended off into the distance around the base of the large rounded hill and had arms that reached out into ravines between the hills on the opposite side of the lake from where the road branched into an improvised camping area beneath a stand of medium sized trees. Jake could see the wooden dock below the clearing jutting out into the pristine blue water. Fish could be seen hitting the surface of the lake as they snapped up insects on top of the water.
“Wow, nice location” Jake exclaimed as he noticed the logs around the fire pit in the middle of the clearing beneath the trees just above the dock.
“Yah” Sven added, “We’ve had a lot of fun times up here at the lake. There’s a really nice fishing spot over there underneath the overhanging bushes where those antelope just were. I caught a six and a half kilo Krenshaw over there last month, boy was that good eatin.”
“Yah, well you still have a ways to go to beat Dan’s ten kilo sucker fish.” Bjorn interjected.
“You can’t eat those!” Sven exclaimed with disgust. “They’re all nasty and oily. I was talking about something you can eat, not one of those big useless trash fish.”
“What’s that over there?” Ariel commented quietly, pointing at a small pond on the near side of the lake where a stream entered the lake from the side to the right of the camp ground. Ariel had a way of noticing things other people missed.
“Huh, would you look at that. A beaver has dammed up the creek and started building a lodge over there.” It wasn’t really a beaver, but that was what everyone called the critter since it built dams and structures out of tree limbs just like back on old earth. Bjorn pointed out the lodge for Jake’s benefit, since he seemed to be having trouble seeing what Ariel was looking at. “Let’s go take a look and have something to eat, I’m starving.”
The five clambered out of the Ripsaw to stretch their legs and get a breath of fresh air. “We need to hang around here until Dan, Zane, and Hai show up. They called earlier and they’re on their way on dirt bikes, so we have some time to kill. Let’s go check out the beavers.” Sven said as he trotted off towards the new pond.
“Hey, look at those ripples, one’s headed for the lodge!”
Jake threw a rock at the “V” in the water, which prompted the other guys to grab for rocks. The whole thing degenerated into a rock skipping contest as the beavers disappeared beneath water. Tarra and Ariel headed back to the vehicle in search of the coolers where the sandwiches and drinks were stowed.
“So what do you think of Jake?” Ariel whispered to Tarra…
“Well” she said slowly with a big grin, “He has possibilities.” She smirked and took a bite of a barbequed pork sandwich. Lately she’d been experimenting with a mostly vegetarian diet, but she liked shredded pork sandwiches too much to stop eating meat entirely.
After the other three guys showed up, introductions were made, then the group finished eating and headed back out on the tra
il heading west in a cloud of dust. Jake made sure everyone had their location spoofer app working, it wouldn’t do to have someone forget and get found out before they even got started on the safari.
The road wound it’s way between hills and rocky outcroppings upwards into higher elevations. The terrain rose slowly towards a vast, flat topped strip of ground where the monstrous open sink holes were located. When seen from the air like Jake had a few weeks ago, they appeared as a random string of black pearls. The caravan was headed for the nearest black opening in the ground, though they couldn’t quite see it yet since they were wending their way through a thick section of the forest.
“Say, how much father is this?” Jake queried after bouncing off yet another deep rut across the trail.
“Oh, it won’t be long now. We just have to go over the next rise and we’ll be right on the edge of the Spire Sinkhole.” Tarra informed Jake, while straining out the window to see exactly where they were. “It’s hard to tell anything from underneath these trees. Over this hill we pop right out of the forest and there it is! Right in front of you.”
“What the heck is it any way?”
“Well, an underground river, the River Styx runs under this part of the ground. It ate away at the roof of it’s tunnel and it caved in. The forest runs right up to the edge of the hole, and some of the forest is at the bottom. Parts of the roof fell in one piece, transplanting the forest way down inside. A portion of the tunnel formed a tall spire kind of in the middle of the hole, which is why it’s called the Spire Sinkhole. The spire is as tall as some of the high rise buildings back on Lahti.”
“How do we get down into the sinkhole, climb down the spire?”
“No silly, we lower a cable off of the Ripsaw down into the hole and anchor it at the bottom. Once I get the cable in place, you guys can use the Ascenders to glide down the cable” Tarra said with a grin.
“You’re going down first?” Jake gaped with an open mouth incredulously.
“Well, yah.” Tarra stated sternly back at him. “I’m the best climber in the group, who did you think was going down first, one of those other goof balls?” she said pointing out the window at Dan and Zane who were busy trying to whack each other with their jackets while zig zagging all over the road just ahead of the Ripsaw on their dirt bikes.
Sven chuckled and shook his head. “You’d better slow down or we’ll run over those two when they crash.”
“What’s the matter with those two anyway?” Ariel exclaimed. “Couple of maniacs. Did they have to come along?” she said exasperated.
“Ah, they’re OK. They add comic relief.” Bjorn said grinning. “Besides, Jake needed to meet them and that’s what this Safari is for.”
“Fine. Just keep Dan away from me, he gives me the creeps” Ariel stated flatly, shivering.
“Hey, look. There’s the sinkhole” Tarra interjected as the vehicles rounded the top of the hill and came to an abrupt stop twenty meters from the edge.
“Wow, that’s huge!” Jake exclaimed. “It didn’t look that big from the air. We’re repelling down inside of that? Dang, that thing’s a kilometer across and five hundred meters down!”
“No! It’s only a hundred meters down, Jake, one hundred fifty meters or so of cable. One hundred and fifty is the number you set into the Ascender so it stops just off the bottom. The cable length is higher than the drop ‘cause it drops at an angle, it doesn’t go straight down.” Tarra clambered up out of the vehicle and walked over to the edge to look down. Jake was right beside her. He felt a little uneasy looking down over the abrupt edge into the maw of the massive sinkhole. He could see a few birds circling their way up and down the thermals that existed in the air that rose up out of the sinkhole. The air was moist and warm this time of year, making it easy for birds to move in and out. Strange animal calls and screeches could be heard echoing up from below.
“What was that?” Jake asked after a particularly loud screech echoed it’s way up the walls.
“Probably just one of the birds.” Hai said finally, speaking in front of the girls for the first time on the safari. He was a bit shy and didn’t really say much when there were girls around, but he was talking to Jake and not them after all. “There are all kinds down there, they seem to like the way the sinkhole shelters them from the wind. None of the bigger animals have seemed to figure out how to get down there from up here, we’ve never seen anything bigger than the small marsupials you see in the trees, no Lupes or Grizz. We did find a skeleton of an ancient Grizz that fell in. Not enough for them to eat down there anyway, I guess.”
Bjorn was now standing next to Jake at the edge of the precipice. He pulled out his computer tablet and took a look at the thermal heat scan he could get off the satellite feed. “No beasties in our vicinity.” he told Sven. “Everything seems to have moved away from all the noise we made driving in.”
Picture Pack: Spire Sinkhole
“Good, let’s get the cable set up and the gear ready to go down into the hole. Zane, you, Hai and Dan unload the gear out of the trailer while I get it set up for tonight. Bjorn will lower Tarra into the sinkhole and get the descent cable ready for the rest of us.” The crew scattered in various directions to attack their individual tasks. Ariel, who hadn’t gotten any directions, shrugged and followed Bjorn and Tarra back to the Ripsaw to see if she could help Tarra into the climbing harness like last time. Jake wanted to watch Tarra go down into the hole, so he didn’t mind that Sven hadn’t given him any directions either.
Tarra had the harness out of the storage locker in the side of the Ripsaw and slipped both legs through the straps, once she and Ariel got the thing straightened out. “Here, help me get the shoulder straps in place, I’ve almost got the main buckle done up.” Ariel untwisted the straps and laid them carefully over Tarra’s shoulders. Tarra grabbed the ends and slipped each one into the correct buckles and snapped the cross straps into place across her chest. She tensioned each one of the leg straps so they wouldn’t cut off the circulation in her legs while she was descending and yanked on the D-ring in the front to make sure she had everything set up just right.
Bjorn had the snap hook on the end of the winch cable and was slowly letting out enough cable to reach the edge of the hole. Tarra walked over to the end of the cable, snapped the hook onto her D-ring and inserted the detent pin that locked the snap into place so it wouldn’t open. Backing towards the edge Tarra slipped on her climbing gloves and gave the thumbs up sign. Bjorn handed her the winch remote and Tarra backed over the edge, letting out cable slowly as she held onto the cable with the other hand, walking backwards over the edge and into the opening. She had begun the long descent down into the Spire sinkhole.
Chapter 7 “Spire Sinkhole” –––––––––––––––––––
Tarra descended slowly at first, until she was past the upper edge of the lip of the sinkhole, then accelerated her descent. She rotated slowly as the harness turned on the end of the composite cable. The air was moist and clean as she breathed in the mist rising up out of the depths. It smelled of earth and the plant life in the cavern below. There was the slight taste of mineral carbonates in the mist, contributed by the river below which was slowly dissolving the limestone of the cave system. The air was slowly becoming cooler as she descended further into the chasm, then suddenly Tarra moved out of direct sunlight and the temperature dropped rapidly.
“Boy, I’m glad I put my jacket on.” Tarra said under her breath, “It’s always cold down here. The mist doesn’t help either.” Keying her microphone, “Don’t forget your jackets, guys. It’s cold down here.”
Jake picked his jacket up off the ground and slipped it on, he recognized the right answer when shown. After slipping on his leather gloves, he peered over the edge again to see if he could tell if Tarra was anywhere near the bottom. No luck, he couldn’t see her at all below the lip of the cavern. He’d fall in if he got too close to the edge and he was too nervous about the heig
ht as it was. The wall of the sinkhole curved back underneath where he was standing and Tarra was going straight down into the depths. He’d just have to wait until she radio’d back up.
After about ten minutes the winch finally slowed as Tarra reached the bottom. “OK, I’m down. I’m going to hike over to the base of the spire and hook the cable onto the stake.” She headed towards the middle of the sinkhole towards the spire, pushing her way through the brush and weeds. She let out more cable as she walked across the uneven ground upwards towards the spire, pulling the cable behind her. After about 150 meters Tarra reached the location of the anchor spike the guys had pounded into the ground. It stuck up out of the ground about 1/3 of a meter and had a very large ring on the top. Tarra unsnapped the cable from her harness and used the heavy duty D-ring to hook it onto the end of the stake.
Tarra unsnapped the D-ring again, rotated the cable a few times to untwist it and straighten it before snapping it back onto the stake. The composite cable had grooves running down the sides where the Ascenders snapped in, with embedded electrical conductors for low voltage power transmission. The crew could use the cable to power the Ascenders and anything else in their campsite at the bottom of the sinkhole from the extra batteries in the Ripsaw. All it took was an adapter on the bottom end. After taking out some of the slack in the cable Tarra called back up top on the radio, “Alright you guys, it’s all set down here. You can put the tripod in place and come down the cable now.”
The Styx Strikers Page 7