Project BTB

by E. G. Ross

  We hiked for a long time. The cave system went on an on. It was as though a dozen giant rock-burrowing worms had taken years to eat out hundreds of interlacing, twisting tunnels, bending back on themselves, heading up and suddenly sideways, then down, forward, and sideways again. Periodically, it would open up dramatically into huge, smooth-walled caverns. Dan said something about ancient magma bubbles and geologic upthrust intersections, but I paid little attention. His curiosity was again at fever pitch, but I was hard pressed to keep up with him, either physically or mentally. He could be Mr. Science Observer, but I had to remember to keep blazing our way with the green fluorescent paint. It was about all I could handle. I didn't have time to participate in a strolling seminar. I was getting worried, too. In some places the paint wasn't sticking well. The walls were getting too damp. In places, they'd begun to glow with their own, competing luminescence. Dan said it probably resulted from an odd type of bacteria or fungus.

  When I realized that I'd been subconsciously trying to save paint by spreading out the arrows, I yelled at Dan to stop.

  "What?" he said over his shoulder, hardly paying attention, moving on without me.

  "Hold up a minute, Dan!"

  "Yeah, ol' bud," he said impatiently, "in just a sec. First, I gotta see up there what that-"

  "Dan!" I shouted, "I saidstop !"

  He spun around to glare at me. I had never used that tone of voice with him. I'm not sure anyone had-except maybe his older brother, Sam, who had never been particularly intimidated by Dan's brain power.

  Dan glared at me for a moment, then said, "Jeez,okay ," with a barely blunted hot edge, almost like someone my own mental age for a change. "What's the major problem?"

  "Dan, listen," I said carefully, holding up a can of paint and shaking it. We could hear the rattle of the ball, indicating near-emptiness. "I'm almost out of this stuff. I didn't bring enough. Besides, it isn't working anymore."

  "Huh, what do you mean? Of course it works. Paint is paint."

  "Would youlisten ? It's the walls, Dan. They're getting too wet for the paint to stick well. Half the time I can barely see what I've sprayed."

  "You're point being," he said.

  I swore in exasperation. All of a sudden I felt like I was talking to a stubborn third-grader.

  "Thepoint , Dan, is that it's getting too damned dangerous. We vowed to blaze our trail carefully. Now it's impossible. We could get lost without even trying. I think we ought to go back."

  "Back?Back ?" Dan muttered, as though it were a foreign word. "But I haven't seen-"

  I took a deep breath and interrupted sternly, "No buts, Dan. We'll starve in here if we can't mark our way out and get lost. It's time to turn around-now."

  For a second or two, I honestly didn't know if he would do it. He was looking longingly in the other direction. I'm sure his scientific gray matter was letting him see and enjoy a lot more information that I was able to process. To me, everything in Darkhorse was becoming too damp, unattractive, and hellishly confusing-except for the certainty that we had to get out. And that stupid red light in the back of my head was blinking overtime.

  "Well, " he said reluctantly, "okay, I guess you're right. But we've gotta come back down here again soon, see? There's a shitload of stuff I need to examine and categorize and it would be a shame to not explore the-"

  I cut him off with an frustrated wave of the hand. I didn't bother to answer him verbally. I let my actions say it. I started hiking back.

  After a few seconds of low-level grumbling, he fell in alongside. Within five minutes his curiosity and spirits were back on top. It was hard to keep Dan down for long; the guy was a walking mental hard-on. After awhile, we decided to take a break for some crackers and cheese and a little water. It was then that Dan asked me one of his out-of-the-blue, got-nothing-to-do-with-anything questions, for which he was notorious.

  "Hey, ol' bud," he said, "you ever been over to the other side of this butte?"

  "To the base? Of course not. It's off limits. Everybody knows that."

  Ah, yes. The base. A few years earlier, the US Army had unexpectedly bought up several thousand acres of the rolling terrain that constituted the back slopes and switchbacks of Darkhorse. Paid top dollar. In one case even used eminent domain under some national security act. Then, in no more than six months, the Army surrounded everything with a fourteen-foot electrified, razor-wired fence. Signs every fifty feet carried warnings about the nasty things that might happen to trespassers.

  For awhile, truck convoys and massive cargo helicopters moved in and out, carrying who-knew-what. Clearly, the Army was putting together something important. What it was, no one could say. Strangely, the city fathers didn't particularly care-or pretended that they didn't, considering that the Army didn't tell them anything. The city was more interested in the big business expected from a new base near a small town. Unfortunately for their dollar-soaked dreams, it never materialized. The Army didn't allow anyone on the base to mingle with civilians in nearby Lebanon. Not ever. There was no "base boom."

  If fact, after awhile the Army traffic settled down to only two or three chopper flights a night, sometimes none for several days. The Army took pains to avoid flying over populated areas. All we could see from Lebanon was an occasional bright light right before the choppers landed behind the butte. The machines were a new kind: quiet, damned near soundless. They seemed to come and go toward the south-southeast. Dan said that was the general direction of the big air bases and secret test ranges in California and Nevada. He thought they might somehow be connected with the Darkhorse base, though he never revealed the reasoning behind that conclusion-if he had any. Sometimes Dan did more speculating than true theorizing. Not often, but sometimes his imagination ran away with him.

  "Well, I've been there," Dan said. "That is, I found a way to see into that base."

  I looked at him blankly in the dim light in the cave.

  "What are you talking about?" I asked, my skepticism clear.

  "I found a spot where you can climb a fir tree and get a pretty fair view of the facility."

  "Uh, isn't that's impossible? It's supposed to be hidden. A lot of people have tried."

  "Not from this one spot."

  I cocked my head. He had that serious look in his eye. Apparently thiswasn't speculation or a practical joke build-up.

  "Okay, so what did you see?" I asked.

  He took a moment to choose his words. In the low light, for just a second, the shadows played tricks on his face. They made Dan looked much, much older. I shivered. It was as though for a fleeting moment a window had opened up into his adulthood, and he didn't look happy. Not at all.

  "What did you see in the base?" I repeated, trying to shake the eerie sensation; it was making my back feel like spiders were running around under my shirt.

  "Well, to be honest," he said, "not as much as I'd hoped. Mainly a bunch of plain, government-stamp buildings. I watched off and on for two days and a night. Saw one humongous chopper come in with something slung under its gut, though.

  "But get this," he said, leaning closer. "A bunch of guys inhazard suits unloaded it. That makes me wonder if they've got some sort of chemical or biological weapons factory up there. Might even be connected with radiation weapons research. Something grade-A major, that's for sure."

  "Jeez," I exclaimed. "What the hell's going on?"

  He shrugged and leaned back, his face becoming darker with shadow.

  "Don't really know," he said. "Too much speculation. Insufficient data. But here's something else to make you think. When I went back again on the third day, the tree I'd climbed wasn't there."

  "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Gone," he said, his face growing grim. "Like it had never existed. Like it had never grown there at all."

  "They knew you were there. They spotted you."

  Dan nodded. "Must have spotted me with infrared or other sensors. Motion detectors, maybe."

  "But how'd t
hey make a full-grown fir tree disappear, Dan?"

  "Got me. There was no sign of equipment, footprints, nothing. Figure this: where the tree had been, there was just this big ol' boulder that looked like it had been there since God made the world."

  "Oh,man !"

  He grinned briefly at my reaction.

  "So what now, Dan?"

  "Huh? Waddya mean?"

  "I've got to see this place! You've got to take me there!"

  "No way," he said, shaking his head. "That tree was the only vantage point around. Believe me, I checked it out. Used some laser surveyor equipment from OSU to verify it. The only angle from which to see into that base and catch sight of the buildings and helicopter port was from up in that tree. It's gone now. The Army saw to it and there's no point going back just to look at a big rock. Let's not beg for trouble, bud. We've got enough right here."

  He stood and stretched and said, "Well, let's march."

  End of subject. I felt frustrated and cut off. Why did he tell me that story if he wasn't willing to share any of the experience by at least showing me where he'd been? Usually, Dan was eager to show off something like that. Why did he whet my appetite, then cut things off? I shook my head. Well, Dan had an offbeat side to his personality. An unpredictable streak. I tried to write it off to that.

  We hadn't gone far-progress was necessarily slow in those winding worm passages, with me forced to verify the blaze marks every few yards to make sure we hadn't made a wrong turn into some likely looking side tunnel-when the howling started again.

  We stopped and stared at each other. I could feel the hair rise on my forearms. I knew why, too. The howling was coming at us fromabove . Somehow, despite our trailblazing, we'd gotten turned around and the howler, whatever it was, was between us and the way out.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 5

  "Crap," I said flatly.

  To my shock, Dan didn't react that way at all.

  "Great!" he said with a whoop and a playful slap at me.

  "Great?" I asked, astonished.

  "Oh, yeah, man! This means we'll be able to find theflute ! I thought we'd have to put it off for another time. Now I'll get to see it up close. Very unusual phenomenon!"

  "Oh, we'll see it all right," I mumbled under my breath, "or whateverlives in there."

  He heard the comment and snorted.

  "Aw, come off it. Where's the switch for your rational processor? You're not buying some sort of supernatural shit, are you? Nothing lives down here. There's nothing for it to eat!"

  I snapped back, "Well, we at fish. Fish live down here, Dan. Why not something bigger?"

  "Oh, hell," he said. "It's clearly a matter of available food supply. Anything big enough to be dangerous would need more to eat than a few little fish."

  His attitude was getting short and more than a touch condescending. I didn't like it. My temper went off like firecracker in a mailbox.

  "Sure, anything you say, brain-boy!" I shouted. "But you haven't truly explained why the howling stopped and started. And I think you were scared yourself when you realized you didn't understand it. And thingscan live down here and maybe you're wrong about how big they can get! So fine, it's irrational in your book to feel that way, but I'm not going to pretend I don't. I'm glad you're not scared, if you really aren't, but Iam , and at least I know I am, so...so, well, don't talk to me like I'm some kind of idiot, okay?"

  I turned my face away for a minute, feeling flushed, trying to cool down. I noticed that my fists were clenched against my legs, which were trembling from anger. After a moment, I felt Dan tap my shoulder briefly. I looked at him in the yellow glow of my miner's light and saw that he was smiling a little. I could tell that it wasn't easy.

  "Look. Uh, well, see ol' bud, it just that... Hell, I'msorry ! I just can't always- Aw, damn it. I didn't mean to say that you're an idiot. I don't hang out with 'em!"

  I wasn't completely cooled off, but his last remark made me feel a bit better. I held out my hand. He grinned broadly and took it. We shook.

  "All I gotta say," Dan intoned gravely, shaking his fist menacingly at the direction of the howling up ahead, "is that if thereis something making that sound, it better be ready for a couple of mighty tough buds!"

  The bravado was catching. We punched each other on the arms, puffed up our teenage chests, and strode forward again.

  The feeling didn't last.

  It was getting hard to find the paint marks I'd made on the way in. The walls had been wetter than I'd thought. In some places the paint had run down in barely perceptible fluorescent rivulets. It got so that we had to take turns going ahead, one of us keeping the other guy's light in view in order to find the next undeteriorated mark while not losing the last one. This worked for awhile, but there came a point where I couldn't stay in view of Dan's light and hadn't found another blaze mark. Not even a smudge thatmight have been one. I walked back to Dan and grimly shook my head.

  "No go," I informed him. "Can't locate another blaze. You go up and try. Maybe I'm just not seeing straight in this damned sewer hole."

  I hoped I was right, but Dan tried and couldn't find a blaze, either.

  "If we could get beyond this wet area somehow," he noted, "the marks might be easy to spot again."

  "Right," I said. "And if I could just jump eight feet, I'd hold the world's record. The question is, how do we find the dry area without getting even more lost?"

  "We don't leave footprints in here," Dan noted, scuffing at the rock floor. "Next time, I guess we'd better devise some kind of back-up system for the spray paint."

  "Uh-huh," I said sarcastically, "next time."

  Then Dan dropped a nice big one on me.

  "Uh, ol' bud, I have to tell you something. I've been doing a little mental arithmetic, and I don't think these miners' lights will last much longer."

  "Wonderful," I said, feeling more cynical and defeatist by the moment. "That meanswe won't last long, Dan. We're goners if we don't have light."

  We decided to sit and think about it while we had a snack. We got our butts cold and wet and our feet ached. We lit the kerosene lantern-which itself would be out of fuel in a few days even if we only used it an hour or so twice a day-and turned off our miners' lights to save their batteries. Meanwhile, the howling, closer now, moaned and undulated in the distance above us. We listlessly chewed some dried meat and crunched a little peanut brittle. After a few minutes, the food made us feel slightly better.

  "How come it's so wet in here?" I asked. "I mean, why is the moisture covering all the walls this way?"

  "I've been trying to figure that out, too. Best I can come up with is that maybe Darkhorse isn't quite the dead volcano that everybody thinks it is."

  "You've got to be kidding."

  "The only thing I can think of that would produce all this moisture is steam."

  "Steam?" I waved my hand around. "There's no steam here."

  "We're seeing the condensation effect. We're not close enough to the source yet to see actual steam. I figure it's from volcanic heat deep underground. Kind of like those vents on Mount Hood and Mount Baker that the geologists are always keeping their eyes on."

  "Guess I hadn't heard of that."

  "I've mentioned it," Dan said. "You've just forgotten."

  "Yeah. I seem to forget a lot."

  "Hey!" Dan blurted, snapping his fingers. "Just had an idea!"

  I chuckled and said, "You'realways having 'em."

  "Listen," he plowed on, "if we can find a place where we can actually see some steam and not just infer its presence from wet walls, we might be able to find a way out!"

  "I'm more lost than ever, Dan."

  "Don't you see? Listen," he explained, edging closer, willing me to understand, "where there's steam, there's water. Water has to flow down from somewhere to hit the warm rocks that make the steam. There's no guarantee, but if we followed the water source back up-"

  "But hell," I responded, getting the idea, "it's sure better
than sitting on our asses and going blind!"

  We rushed to put our gear away and got ready to start moving.

  "Uh, just one tiny problem," Dan said, unconsciously shifting slowly from foot to foot.

  "Let me guess," I chimed in. "We can't see any steam now, so how do we know where to head?"

  "Right."

  "Wait a minute," I said. "Wouldn't the walls be wettercloser to the steam?"

  "Might be," Dan said, rubbing his chin, "might be. You could've just pulled our behinds out of a sling!"

  The unexpected compliment knocked my mood up three notches. Dan didn't send praise my way often. He didn't mean anything by it, he just didn't think of it. He was always too busy with the "out there" world.

  We started a hunt for wetter walls. It was easier said than done. Logically-that is, by teenage logic, even though we thought we were being highly adult-we had it all figured out. It was like looking for the blaze marks. One of us would stay put and the other would go from vent to vent, checking for higher levels of condensation on the rock. If he got out of sight, the other guy would yell for him to come back. It wasn't a bad system as far as it went. It just didn't go far enough. Problem was, all the walls felt damp and it was impossible to tell for sure if one was damper than another. Eventually, Dan hit on an idea that worked.

  We'd brought some newsprint notepaper with us and we tore it up into little strips. Timing the seconds on our watches, we touched the end of a strip to a wall and marked with a pencil how far the moisture climbed, wick-like in five seconds. The farther it climbed, the wetter we figured the wall had to be. Dan made us take multiple tests on each wall, explaining that the law of averages worked better for us that way. Presently, we settled on a couple of tunnels that we thought were definitely carrying more moisture. We couldn't tell the difference between them, though. Not a problem. Out of one-leading upward-was coming the howling sound.