by Greg Cox
Titus took them up a high talus mound and into the next cavern, where flowstone coated the cave fill, narrowing the volume of the void. This cavern was filled with fallen ceiling blocks and the stalactites had been broken off short by earth tremors. Additional seepage gave them an unusually fat, short appearance.
They retreated to the shaft. Though the ladder left off, the shaft continued down. Titus uncoiled the rope he had brought and hooked them into it. The other two followed him without a word of complaint.
It wasn’t far to the bottom, where another inclined tunnel led them east again, following the path of the caverns overhead. Water coated the walls, and after tramping carefully through the tunnel, Titus noticed a fissure overhead only because he was looking for it. Just as he suspected, once they had muscled their way up to the top of the shaft, they were in another large cavern, in line with the other two they had passed through.
“It was cut off from the last cavern by the talus mound,” Titus said nonchalantly, pleased that he had guessed correctly.
They had to go through a jog in the shaft to get into the cavern, and they were slightly elevated above the floor. Jumping down, Titus felt the loose rock shift and slip under his feet. Jayme actually went down on her hands and knees, unable to keep her balance, while Bobbie Ray hung on to the stone lip they had just jumped over, staring up open-mouthed at the dramatic long, hanging ceiling that dripped continuously, the fat drops sparkling like rainbow stars under their hand lights.
“Look up here!” Jayme called, halfway up the gentle slope of the talus incline. “I think the ceiling fell in back here.”
“It looks like the roof sank until it ran into the ground,” Bobbie Ray agreed, swatting at the elusive, fat drops that bombed them from above.
They climbed the shifting slope to the point where the ground and ceiling met. Rounded debris constantly moved under their hands and knees. Titus examined some of the bits and was surprised to see elongated pieces as well as the more traditional “pearls.”
“Why aren’t there any stalactites in this cavern?” Jayme asked, standing in the last possible space at the upper end. A dense curtain of drops speckled the air in front of them.
“If there’s too much water, there’s no time for the sediment to form between each drop,” Titus explained. “That’s what makes the cave pearls—the sediment forms as they’re polished and agitated by the water.”
“I think they’re beautiful,” Jayme said, gathering a few in her hand.
Titus squatted down next to her in a relatively drip-free zone. He aimed his tricorder at one of the elongated pearls. “This is bone! Human bone!”
Bobbie Ray immediately dropped his pearls, absently rubbing his hands on his coveralls as he looked at the tricorder readings. “You’re right. They’re ancient!”
Jayme was also hanging over his arm, trying to see. “Give me a second,” he ordered, keying in the commands. “Somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand years old!”
“That’s when humans first moved onto this continent,” Jayme breathed, gently cupping her pearls in her palms. “They must have used these caves as shelter or storage. This is amazing!”
Titus hardly had a chance to savor their find before Bobbie Ray muttered, “Uh-oh! I think we’ve got trouble.”
The Rex was staring back at the hole they had climbed up. Water was welling up and pouring over the low lip that held back the piles of cave pearls. It made a rushing sound as it disappeared into the ground.
“What’s happening?!” Bobbie Ray cried in true panic. “How are we going to get out?”
Jayme dipped her fingers in the water and stuck them in her mouth. “Salty. That’s what I was afraid of. The tide must be rising.”
They both turned to look at Titus, mutely demanding that he do something. He knew he probably looked as panicked as Bobbie Ray. “The tide?”
“Yes, the tide’s coming in,” Jayme repeated, frantically scrambling through the cave pearls to the wall, examining it with her hand light. “I don’t see a high-water mark anywhere. Could it . . . Is it possible . . .”
“You mean this whole cave gets filled with water?” Bobbie Ray asked in a high voice.
Titus could only shake his head. “I don’t know! We don’t have oceans on Antaranan!”
“What!” Jayme shrieked. “You brought us in here and you didn’t know what you were doing?”
“I’m going in,” Titus said, suddenly feeling much calmer, knowing that he had to take control. He’d gotten them into this mess.
“You’ll drown!” Jayme cried out. “That tunnel we came down—it’s lower than this cave. It must be filled with water too!”
Titus swallowed, remembering how long the tunnel was. “We may not have oceans on Antaranan, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have water. I’m a good swimmer.”
“I’m not!” Bobbie Ray wailed, trying to shake the water from the fur on his hands. He was shivering and wet through.
“Get up to the top,” Titus ordered. “I’ll be back with help.”
The other two cadets reluctantly retreated as he flung gear from his pouch—water flask, extra rope—leaving only the necessities with enough room left to wedge his jet-boots in.
Standing hip deep in the hole, wincing from the biting cold water, he glanced back up at the cadets. “Hang tight!”
They didn’t look reassured.
Taking a deep breath, he ducked under the water. Immediately he knew it wouldn’t work. The surge of water welling up carried him back to the surface.
As he broke into the air again, he was saying, “All right! It’s all right! I’ve got an idea.”
He quickly removed the jet-boots from his pouch and strapped them on. Water was nearing his waist now. He didn’t care if it killed him, he wasn’t going to give up this time.
Diving down headfirst, he turned on the boots. The jets churned the water and almost drove him into the rock wall, but he eased off the power and used his hands to guide him around the jag in the tunnel. Underwater, even with the hand light he could hardly see, so he groped his way down, feeling the scrape of rocks against his coveralls as the boots propelled him through the water.
Everything was getting dark and hazy, and his chest seemed ready to burst. Titus wasn’t sure he was going to make it to the vertical shaft.
* * *
Jayme felt sorry for Bobbie Ray, huddled next to her at the top of the talus slope. “Maybe it won’t reach this far,” she offered.
Bobbie Ray was wiping at his fur with the fleshy palm of one hand, smoothing and smoothing it, pressing all the water out. Then he would twitch and shake, making the damp hair stand out again. Then he would pick another patch and begin the whole process over again. It seemed more like a nervous reaction than an effort to dry himself.
“Do you think he drowned yet?” Bobbie Ray asked, unable to meet her eyes.
“Umm,” she murmured. “By now, he either drowned or got out alive.”
“Are you going to try it?” Bobbie Ray asked.
Jayme wasn’t aware that her calculating glances at the hole had been that obvious. “I’ll try it before I drown in here.”
Bobbie Ray went back to stroking his fur, concentrating on every swipe.
“I’ll help you,” she assured him.
“That won’t do any good. I could barely pass the Starfleet swimming requirements. And you don’t know how hard that was for me.”
Jayme silently patted his knee. She wasn’t sure she could make it, but every bit of her mind and body was focused on that hole, ready to dive through the water and turn on her jet-boots just like Titus. Even if it did kill her. Because that was better than sitting here until the water rose up around her chin.
“I just wish I knew if he made it,” she murmured.
“Wait a few more minutes. Maybe he’ll come back.”
They both stared at the hole.
* * *
The shaft was full of water too. Titus desperately revved the boot
s, aiming straight up, his hand clenched on the control so tightly that even if he drowned he knew he would surface.
When he thought he was passing out, he broke into air. The shower of water that rose with him, and his surge in speed left him gasping and laughing and, when he finally could, crying out in relief. Arrowing up, he raised both arms, trying to pick up more speed, thinking about Jayme and Bobbie Ray back in that death trap.
He was going so fast that the opening approached before he realized it. Braking, he hit the ceiling and bounced down, managing to twist in midair in order to land on the floor of the access entrance.
Still panting and gasping, almost hysterical with his near miss, he rolled over in the dirt, trying to wipe the muddy dust that settled on his face and eyes. When he could finally see, Starsa, Moll Enor and Nev Reoh were several meters away, standing in the access room staring at him.
“What happened to you!” Moll Enor demanded.
“What are you doing here?” Titus said at the same time.
Starsa raised one hand slightly, blinking in amazement at his dramatic appearance. “I listened outside your door the other night, and I heard you planning to come down to the caves without me—”
“You what!” Titus interrupted, wishing he could box her ears. “I should report you—”
“I saw the hole filling with water,” Starsa retorted, “and my tricorder said you were down there.”
“We beamed over because we were afraid you were in trouble,” Moll Enor added.
“We are!” Titus forgot about Starsa’s gross invasion of privacy—just one of many—seeing only the heavy packs Nev Reoh was sitting on. “Jayme and Bobbie Ray are trapped in a cavern down below. The tide’s coming in and it’s filling the tunnels!”
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 0-671-00117-5
ISBN-13: 9-780-6710-0117-9 (eBook)
First Pocket Books printing January 1998
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