Sentries and guardians, the tall rocks stand watch over the entrance to the opening. The descent into the volcanic tube is obscured by windswept rock formations. Towering above the plain surrounding them, the rocks appear as bent blades projected upward. Pillars of sandstone have been carved by the wind that rages through the openings. The walls remind Long of overgrown crinkle-cut French fries with the serrated edge.
In the distant background, Olympus Mons’ cauldron is almost visible, toward the top is cloudy, and the dry ice that covers the peak is shrouded in those clouds. Otherwise the sky is light red and the sun’s light illuminates the vast slopes in all directions. Large boulders and smaller rocks litter the landscape. This silent audience casts their shadows out upon the sand, and gives a variety to the otherwise plain sea of sand. Lawrence navigates his way through the series of twists and turns that lead to the opening below, over to where Long is standing, waiting. Long has finished anchoring the descent line several meters away from the opening.
Lawrence: So, I am no scientist, but why did we have to drive all the way out here, just to go down into that hole there?
Long: You’re right, you are no scientist. You probably should have asked that question before we left if you wanted an answer. As it is, it was a rhetorical statement that just came out like whining.
Lawrence: Touché.
Long: Gesundheit!
Long carefully straps on the repelling gear. Lawrence follows suit, as he too gets into the repelling gear. The light, sampling gear and additional air reserves are all secured to the line, which is then slowly dropped down into the chasm below, disappearing into the darkness.
Holding his hand out, palm upwards, Lawrence gestures to Long to begin the descent.
Lawrence: How deep is that cavern.
Long: Pretty deep I guess, really deep.
Lawrence: Well, do we have enough rope?
Long breaks three glow sticks and throws them down into the hole a second time to ensure that the descent is still safe enough to attempt without more repelling gear. Several seconds pass before the faint lights below stop moving.
Lawrence: Thanks for checking again.
Long: It was my pleasure.
Lawrence: You know what I hate?
Long: Nope, but something tells me that you are going to elaborate upon it until you are satisfied.
Lawrence: I hate it when you are at a restaurant, and your waitress brings you water…
Long: Yeah, it’s the worst.
Lawrence: Shut up! Anyway, when you say “thanks”, they always say something like “my pleasure”. Something tells me that they never really enjoy filling up my glass that much. After you hear “my pleasure” about ten times it makes me want to scream.
Long: I know that you are having fun with your whole stand-up routine, but if you wouldn’t mind…
Lawrence shakes his head back and forth, and then he walks backward off of the edge as he begins his descent. Long follows Lawrence shortly after he disappears over the edge into the abyss.
After descending vertically about 80 meters, the shaft begins to level out, level enough to walk down while holding the rope. As they stand, holding tightly to their ropes, they notice the glow sticks that they had dropped, lighting up the pitch blackness of the tube. They both reach for their helmets to switch their helmet lights on. These lights affixed to their helmets provide a small tunnel of light, allowing them to be able to see down the passageway a few meters.
After several minutes of walking through the abysmal darkness, they stumble upon an area of the ground that is covered in dry ice.
Long: Wait! Don’t step on that dry ice. It is everywhere down here.
Lawrence: At what temperature…
Long: At this pressure, about negative 80 degrees centigrade. Yeah, it’s cold down here. Anyway, I know how much you like to break rules. You step on one of those and you will most likely break rule number 1.
Lawrence: Right. Don’t hurt yourself. What makes you think that I like breaking rules anyway? Have I broken any since we got here? No.
After several meters of extra cautious steps, the two arrive at a juncture between tunnels that go off toward the right and to the left, and one that descends down vertically and then horizontally.
Each tunnel that lay ahead is slightly smaller than the tunnel in which they are currently standing, the tunnel they are currently standing in is about six or seven meters in diameter. The next largest tunnel, the tunnel on the right is only about 3 meters across.
Lawrence: Well, let’s not go down another drop, and the one up on the right is too tight, I’m claustrophobic.
Long: Fantastic, you’re claustrophobic…We should go down the left tunnel here; I am betting that it leads to a larger cavern.
Lawrence: Fair enough, you’re the scientist. Before we go on further, I think we ought to secure our line here, so we can find our way back.
Lawrence fastens the guideline with his hammer into the rock face; he then fixes the spool of guideline onto his utility belt. With the guideline in place, the two walk into the tunnel on the left. After several meters of walking down the tube with their hands on the walls, Lawrence pulls his gloved hand back into the light in front of his helmet.
Lawrence: Ugh, this stuff covering the walls seems to be quite slimy. What is this stuff? Some sort of mineral or something?
Long turns around to look at the find that Lawrence has pointed out, and looks at his own glove. Long brings his own up to his helmet, almost touching his helmet. He rubs his fingers together to determine the consistency of the stuff on his hand.
Long: Well, I haven’t seen this stuff before. Let’s be sure to get a sample of this stuff, hand me one of those vials, and let’s scrape some of this into it.
Lawrence: Here you are sir.
After scraping some of the orange-brownish substance into the vial, Long replaces the lid and puts it in his sample bag. The two begin to walk further into the tunnel, treading carefully to avoid ice patches. Long looks back over his shoulder at Lawrence.
Long: Watch out for that bit of ice over there on your right. If you slip on that you will fall into that crevice just up ahead, wouldn’t want that.
Lawrence: How could you see that??? I was shining the light directly ahead. There is no way that you could have seen that.
Long: I don’t know. I just saw it out of the corner of my eye a moment ago. Try to keep up, will you?
Long watches Lawrence make his way down the tunnel from a few steps behind him. The tunnel is relatively well lit immediately around them; it is now much smaller than it was closer to the surface. The tunnel wanders to their right and back to the left again. The walls of the tunnel appear to be closing in on them as they venture further into the belly of rock. After what feels like kilometers of walking, but is really about one, the pair can barely stand up straight in the tunnel. The light that Lawrence holds creates a large shadow of Long in front of them.
Long: Lawrence, keep up please, all I can see in front of me is nothing because you have that light back there. We don’t really have all day, so any help I can get here would be appreciated.
Lawrence: Did you see that?
Long: See what? I didn’t see anything, remember? You have the light.
Lawrence: No, there was definitely something moving up ahead of us. Of course, I cannot see anything right now, but there was definitely something there. Keep your eyes open, I don’t want to be the only crazy person here.
Long: Yeah, okay, there is nothing moving here because there is nothing alive here except for us. It is so cold down here that the carbon dioxide in the air is frozen all over the walls, it is dark and did I mention that it is cold?…
Lawrence: I would not have mentioned anything about movement if I didn’t see anything moving… Never mind, let’s just get these samples so we can make it back in time.
Up ahead, the lamp’s light reveals a massive subterranean cavern opening up from the mouth of the passageway th
at the two are standing in.
As they approach the opening to the cavern ahead, the rushing of the icy wind produces a strange sound as it passes through the small opening to the cavern. Lawrence reaches down to his belt to feel the guideline. He looks down at it to see how much more line he has, the light from his headlamp shines on the line; it appears bright green. Through the entrance, a faint sign of daylight appears from the ceiling of the cavern, revealing the cavern to be dozens of meters high, yet not more than ten meters wide near the entrance.
Lawrence: Wow! Look at this place.
Long: Told you; big cavern.
Long bends over to look at the floor of the cavern directly in front of him, the cavern floor is covered in the same dust that covers the plain above them. The floor is very soft. The two walk carefully as to not sink in too far into the dusty sand.
The walls of the cavern are smooth, like glass in spots, and sharp and jagged in others. The back side of the cavern cannot be seen from where they are standing. Long grabs the lantern from Lawrence, and aims the light as far back into the cavern as he can. The only thing that appears in the distance before him is that the cavern is getting somewhat narrower at the back. After several minutes of traversing the soft sand, a curve in the cavern appears before them.
Walking slowly along the walls of the cavern, Long can now see mineral streaks in the walls of the cavern. He stops and takes a closer look at them, the streaks are indicative of precious metals, magnesium and a variety of other elements which he is interested in. Repeating the same action of filling the sample vials until he is satisfied, Long places them all in his shoulder sample bag. The faint light from above provides a sense of peace and well-being in a cavern, which if it were dark would appear most sinister and unwelcoming.
The cave does not have any stalactites or stalagmites as there is no water erosion working in the rock. Lawrence bends down and scoops up some of the dust from the surface with his hand, and sifts it between his fingers, freeing the dust as it settles slowly back to the floor.
Long: Do you see that back there?
Long looks ahead toward the back side of the cavern; he begins to run forward into the darkness that engulfs the back section of the massive enclosure.
Lawrence: Where are you going in such a hurry? Wait for me, don’t get lost back there.
Long eagerly grabs the hammer from his gear bag. The reason for the quick descent into the cavern now becomes quite apparent to Lawrence as he stands behind him with the lamp. The light from the lamp is scattered onto the wall in all colors of the spectrum. Several differently-colored gem stones adorn the wall in front of Long. With the hammer firmly in his hand, Long smashes down on the gems, breaking them free. He rapidly grabs the “samples” that he has collected and places them into his bag. Lawrence joins in the frenzied activity. Long pauses a moment to hold one particularly large sample, the size of his fist, he places it up to his headlamp. The light shines through the stone.
Long: This isn’t a record for size, but this is definitely the largest diamond that I have ever held myself.
Lawrence: You are holding your early retirement in your hand my friend, and I am holding mine. We ought to keep these out of sight until we get back home. Put yours in your personal belongings, and then sell it once we get back. I plan on spending the rest of my life on a beach somewhere, forgetting about the horrors from the past. I think you know what I mean.
Long: No, actually I don’t. What do you mean?
Lawrence: Well, I plan on getting a beach house and spending the days out on the beach, what is so hard to understand about that?
Long: No, not the beach part. I am referring to the part about your past.
Lawrence: Right. Everyone has things that they would rather forget about. You know that.
Long: I do. What’s yours? It couldn’t hurt to tell me. I won’t say anything.
Lawrence: I don’t know about that, you’d probably tell Mendez. Well, it’s in my file anyway. The last mission that I flew before I came here ended up being a disaster.
Long: You were a pilot?
Lawrence: Yeah, I flew for Badlands.
Long: Okay, still listening.
Lawrence: We were tasked with destroying an abandoned school. It was filled with enemy militants eager to fire their rockets upon friendly forces in the area. They were readying the rockets when we leveled the school.
Long: There weren’t any kids in the school, were there?
Lawrence: No, nothing like that. I did say abandoned. The rockets were filled with chemical agents; all we managed to do was rain this horror upon the heavily populated city around the school.
Long: I remember seeing that on the news, but that was several years ago, wasn’t it?
Lawrence: Uh, yeah.
Long: You haven’t flown since then?
Lawrence: No missions; they said that I was not psychologically sound, so they grounded me.
Long: So, they thought it would be nice to have you come out here with all of us then?
Lawrence: I passed my psych eval. You learn what they are looking for after you fail a few. Anyways, there isn’t anything wrong with me. I just have a really hard time living with myself after all that.
Long: Well, I understand that. The footage that I remember watching was terrible. Peoples’ skin falling off, people coughing up blood and convulsing until they die, that was memorable to say the least.
Lawrence: If we had known the nature of the weaponry that they were going to be using, then we would have been properly weaponized for chemical weapons destruction. Time was short, and there wasn’t much time to react.
Long: I am truly sorry; I can’t imagine feeling responsible for being a part of an incident like that. Either way, innocent people would have been killed, it was a no-win situation.
Lawrence: I honestly do not believe in no-win situations. There is always a way to win.
Thanks for listening anyway. I guess I do feel a bit better after telling you about it. You are the first person I have talked to about it that wasn’t holding a pen and a pad, you know? I appreciate you keeping this between us. I know Mendez is here to keep an eye on me.
Long: That explains your fondness for her. I was really wondering what she did to you. Anyway, I thought she was here to keep an eye on me.
Lawrence: Well, she can do both, she has two eyes you know.
Long: That’s the Lawrence that I know and love. Hey, how much air do we have?
Lawrence: Great… we only have about another hour on our current tanks. We ought to head back out here again, but with bigger bags for our “samples”.
Long: Agreed, where does the time go?
Once again, with the light firmly in hand, the pair travels up the corridor within the cavern. The dimly lit skylight in the cavern provides a subtle perspective of the cavern in front of them.
The two double check their bags to ensure that nothing is going to slip out, and to ensure that the bags won’t get snagged on the way out. After a few jovial steps, they both come to a sudden stop at the same exact instant. The same instant the light filtering down into the cavern through the skylight completely disappears in a single blink of an eye.
Lawrence is holding the bright hand-held lantern and immediately points it upward toward the opening where the light was coming through a moment ago. The ceiling of the cavern seemed to funnel up into the small hole in the ceiling where Lawrence is pointing the light. The spotlight reveals dust as it falls through the small oculus.
Lawrence: You don’t suppose that there was a cloud that is passing over right now, do you?
Long: I don’t think that there are any clouds around where we are, further up the mountain maybe. Then again, I am no Martian meteorologist am I?
Lawrence: Did something just step over the hole?
Long: I doubt that anyone else from our team is out here. There is no way to walk this far.
Lawrence: Yeah, you are right. Let’s just get out of this cavern and o
ut of this hole in the ground, agreed?
Long: Not like we have much of a choice, right?
This time, Lawrence leads the way through the winding tunnel, up and down, left and right as the tunnel winds. The same spot of ice and the accompanying crevice comes into close view. Lawrence turns back around to look at Long while standing just next to the ice patch and crevice. He points down toward the ground where the ice lay.
Deeper Into the Void Page 9