by Mark Wandrey
As he was wiping the bottom of the pan with a finger, licking off what remained, he realized the breeze he was feeling was moving through the cavern, not just into it. The food was gone and despite how badly he wanted to open another packet, he didn’t. He put everything away, shouldered the pack and the rifle, and got up to look around.
Jim felt considerably invigorated after the meal, regardless of how small and tasteless it was. He explored the cave while whistling a tune he’d heard from somewhere. He’d been looking for several minutes with the pathetic flashlight when he remembered something in his pack. He took it off and dug down in the bottom and found the lantern he’d completely forgotten about and swapped the battery into it. Instantly the cave was lit with brilliant light.
He blinked and gasped, the light was so bright after many hours in near total darkness that it almost hurt. He found the control and turned it down a notch. Now every crevasse in the cave was visible, including where the wind was going. An exit that angled downward off to one side. It was a lot bigger than the one he’d accidentally fallen through. He considered whether going onward was a good idea, then decided he’d at least explore it a bit and crawled in.
He was smart enough this time to keep his rifle off and slide it along his side. The weapon was quite resilient to damage, and that was a good thing. He was still careful how he pulled it to avoid getting anything in the aperture. He carried the lantern in his teeth like a dog, although he felt stupid doing it that way.
The tunnel angled downward, just like the one in which he’d hit his head. Jim guessed the cave complex had been formed by volcanic activity. It wasn’t smooth like water formed it, and it surely wasn’t artificial. As he crawled, he was a little worried that he’d fall into a lava pit or something. He’d seen a lot of movies and anime similar to this situation, and it always seemed to end up with the good guys in a lava-lake-filled underground chamber full of monsters.
“Quit being an idiot,” he mumbled as he slowly worked his way through the rough, rocky tunnel. His voice echoed once and was swallowed by the darkness. The lantern light only seemed to go a few feet. The blackness was all-consuming.
Jim wasn’t sure how long he crawled, only that his knees and elbows were raw, and his damned gut hung down enough that it was too. At least the survival suit was tough, and that kept his skin from getting torn up. It hurt, though, and he had to keep telling himself it couldn’t go on forever. Could it?
He eventually had to stop and rest. The tunnel was still twice as wide as he needed to keep going, though not nearly high enough to stand, or even crouch. He rolled onto his side and got ahold of his pack, pulling one of the plastic water packs up and biting the tip off to drink. He was just swallowing the last bit when he thought about his bladder, and how much he’d drunk in the last day. He had a vague memory of pissing during his stumbling trip through the woods. The cold bit into his penis so he’d pissed as fast as he could. It was one of the few times he’d been glad the fat around his dick made it harder to get it outside his pants. Now in the tunnel with the zone of light created by the lantern, he was suddenly acutely aware of his bladder.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, and his voice gave a resonate echo ahead of him. Much deeper than it had before. Then the echo came back again, even further. “Whoa,” he said and tried to aim the lantern down the tunnel. Was the darkness a little deeper ahead? He rolled back over and crawled a little, and the light stopped showing the tunnel walls, because there weren’t any. It opened into an abyss. “Wow,” he said and crawled closer. The darkness continued to swallow the light whole.
The floor was lost in a few feet as well, and he carefully moved the lantern around to see the end of the tunnel better. It didn’t end immediately; instead, it angled downward more and then tapered to a cavernous opening. There was no way to get any clue as to how steep the drop was beyond the meager light of the lamp, never mind how far down it went.
“Oh,” he said when he remembered something in his pack. He pulled it up to his head and dug into a side pouch and pulled out a package. He tore it open with his teeth, pulled out the cylindrical item inside, folded it until it cracked, and then shook it. The space was quickly flooded with intense green light. He had five more of the glow sticks in the pack.
The glow stick came with a ten-foot length of twine. He removed that from the package, crumpled the wrapper into his pocket and tied one end of the twine to the hole in the glow stick. Jim lowered it over the edge. It went down a few feet to show the tunnel floor continuing at a steep angle. It was pretty bumpy, offering a lot of possible hand and foot holds. The glow stick caught on a rock and stopped. He jiggled the twine but couldn’t make it go any further, so he reeled it in and this time tossed it.
The stick sailed down to the end of the line, and snatched it right out of his hand.
“Shit,” he said, making an ineffectual grasp at it long after it was gone. He saw the green light fall, bouncing occasionally as it went downwards until it finally came to a stop. It was at least 100 feet away, and it was lying flat in the open. He squinted to try and see walls. There appeared to be a stalagmite near it. There hadn’t been any in the tunnel until now. That suggested the tunnel had ended. He held up the lantern and looked above him. No sign of a roof. “Why is everything so damn hard all the time?” he asked, his voice echoing out in all directions. “Hard...hard...hard...ard.”
“Hello!” he said louder, and it really reverberated this time. “Helloooo...helloooo...hellooo...loooo...oooo.” Making up his mind, he started down the tunnel.
The climb down was easier than he thought it would be. As he’d seen above, there were lots of handholds, so the going was quick. He still took it slowly regardless of what he thought, and the gloves on the survival suit helped considerably. After almost half an hour of descent, the grade began to level out. He reached the glow stick, tied it to his pack, and crawled a little further.
Jim took the lamp from where he’d clipped it on his back to provide some lighting, and he held it up to see if there was a visible tunnel above him. There was nothing. He dug a loose rock out of the floor and tossed it up and toward the direction he’d been going. He heard it hit about where he’d thought it would land, not impact a ceiling. He got another and this time really heaved it upwards toward the distant ceiling. No sound came from hitting a roof, only a clatter as it hit the ground somewhere a couple of dozen yards away.
“Okay,” Jim said and climbed to his feet. Still leery, he stood slowly with a hand above him lest he brain himself. He felt nothing and soon was standing again. His back spasmed a little from all the climbing. It felt good to be vertical once more. He stretched, and the muscle spasms stopped. With the illumination of the glow stick and the lantern, he began to explore.
An hour later he was examining one of the stalagmites when a thought occurred to him. He hadn’t been keeping track of where he was wandering. He looked about for anything that seemed familiar. After a bit, he was forced to admit he was lost. He looked for anything familiar for another hour before he gave up. He was just wandering around making it worse. The situation reminded him of an episode of Star Trek, where Kirk was in a featureless place where everything looked the same and there was no sense of distance. That had only been a soundstage; this was reality.
Eventually Jim found a comfortable-looking bowl in the stone flow and set his gear down. He sat on the rolled-up survival suit and blanket to cushion the hard stone and sighed. First, he got his CASPer shot to shit, then caused a fusion explosion on a client’s planet, and finally ended up lost in a cave. “Some commander I am,” he said quietly, his voice still echoing. The light from the little lamp gave him some solace, but not much.
After he’d rested for a time he got up to look around. He set the lamp on a high spot, took the glow stick, and moved outwards until it was only a little spot of light. He guessed it was at least 200 yards. “Wow,” he said as he began circling. He walked twice that far until his foot went “Splash!”
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Jim stepped back in surprise and almost tripped over a rock. He recovered and took the glow stick, bending over to examine the water. It was a tiny stream, and it was moving to his right, away from the little camp he’d created. “Nothing is ever easy,” he said, standing up and taking his bearings on the distant point of the lantern. He slowly followed the tiny stream. After a few minutes, he could no longer see the lantern.
His anxiety level rose considerably. This space was huge. Beyond huge. It had to be at least a half a mile on a side. He was about to turn back when he saw that the stream ended in a larger body of water. He held the glow stick high and water reflected the green light for many feet. A pond, a lake, or a subterranean ocean? It was so warm down here, he was amazed it didn’t teem with life.
Something splashed in the water, and he almost screamed. He did jump, just a little. A second later another splash. It sounded somehow familiar. “Wait,” he said and took a couple steps out into the water. The boots were knee high, so his feet stayed dry. With the water lapping up around his ankles he knelt, holding the glow stick just above the surface. Splash! He had a glimpse of something sleek and silvery. “A fish!” he laughed. So, there was life down here after all. That was good, because if he couldn’t figure out how to get out, he was screwed without some source of food!
Jim found the stream again and backtracked it. There was the tiny glow of the lantern, which he followed back to camp. It was an incredible relief to find everything where he left it. After examining the area, he decided it was as good a place as any to make camp. He sat back down and set about making himself as comfortable as possible. At least this would make a good base while he searched for another way out. He planned on exploring the rest of the visible perimeter his lantern created first, and then maybe the shore of the lake. For the moment, though, he was hungry again. He accessed his pinplants and decided to amuse himself with one of the simple games he kept stored there while he prepared the food.
* * * * *
Chapter 22
“We have the results,” Hargrave said as Murdock came into the mess hall. The senior staff sat around the table that served as the officers’ mess looking excited.
“And?” Murdock asked, nodding to Jane, who winked back.
“No biological data,” the company doctor reported.
“I went over every piece of the suit,” Adayn Christopher said, “and other than a little skin on the inside of the right arm, there wasn’t anyone in the suit when the explosion hit it.”
“Damn,” Murdock shook his head as he sat down and took the tray of food a cook brought him, “that kid was tougher than I thought.”
“Told you,” Hargrave said. “He’s Thaddeus’s kid.”
“I’ll give you that, but it didn’t help in the end.”
“Why do you say that?” Hargrave asked.
“It’s been five days, boss,” Buddha said behind a pile of emptied food trays.
“Did you find the survival pack?” Hargrave asked Adayn. She shook her head no.
“But we didn’t find most of that leg. It was high and toward the blast.”
“So, what are the options?” Murdock asked.
“Well,” Hargrave said, “there are only a couple. One,” he ticked off fingers, “the commander was standing next to his suit when the blast went off. In which case there wasn’t enough left of him to find. Adayn confirmed he got out of the suit.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “the cockpit was opened, though only a little.”
“Next, he was still in the suit and so thoroughly vaporized you can’t find pieces.”
“Not possible,” Adayn said, “the suit was seriously trashed, but some of the synthetic rubber padding survived in the intact leg and arm. If he was in the suit...”
“Right,” Hargrave said. “Last, he got out and got away before the blast. With or without the survival suit.”
“It was well below freezing during the battle,” Murdock reminded them, “if the crazy kid didn’t have the suit he froze to death in an hour. Two, tops.”
“And we didn’t find any bodies,” Jane reminded them. “Phoenix 1 and 2 ran a sweep.”
“But only for a mile,” Hargrave said. “We were sure he was in his CASPer, and now we’re sure he wasn’t.”
“So, what are you saying?” Murdock grumbled, stuffing half a breakfast burrito in his mouth and chewing.
“I’m saying we need to start looking for him. A detailed sweep with at least a platoon.”
“That’s a lot of our manpower,” Buddha reminded him.
“I understand that, but we’re going to do it. If we find any evidence he was blown up, or we find his body, we’re done. But I have a feeling he’s alive.”
“It’s been five days, Hargrave,” Murdock said. “The survival suit power pack would be good for a day, tops. Even if he survived he’s a corpsicle somewhere.”
“I’m not writing him off that quickly,” Hargrave said. “You have your orders. Start searching.”
Jim’s regular explorations took on a desperate edge the sixth morning. After day five he’d cut back to two meals a day, which in his book was about as much fun as slowly sawing off his own foot. But he’d already eaten fifteen of the twenty-one meals. At two per day instead of three, he’d extended his time to another three days instead of only two. As the day progressed past lunch he began to regret that decision. Even more than he regretted not trying to fish. It had just seemed too much work. Then, there was the place twenty or so feet away that he carefully avoided except when...necessary. Of course, he wished he’d picked a spot further away as the smell was atrocious, but the ground was mostly rock, and there was nowhere to dig.
He’d just gotten back from his third scouting trip along the edge of the lake and was looking at his watch. At least four more hours until he could justify dinner. He opened his pack and looked at it. Beef stroganoff, one of his favorites of the varieties available. Then he realized he was having trouble reading the label.
“What the hell?” he asked and looked sharply at the lantern, which was growing slowly dimmer. “Oh, no, no, NO, NO!” he yelled and snatched it up. He flipped it over and checked the readout on the power pack which once ran his survival suit. It read zero. He cursed himself for not monitoring the rate of power consumption. His pulse racing, he watched as the lantern grew dimmer and dimmer, until it went out entirely. He let out a steady stream of curses that echoed in the cave’s gloom. The darkness was all-encompassing.
Jim sat in complete darkness for several endless minutes berating himself. How could he have been so stupid? He’d let the lamp run nonstop since coming down inside. If he had turned it off each night, it would have at least outlasted his food. Between the stove and the lantern, he’d depleted it in only five days. Another stupid decision. Bonus, now he had no way to cook the remaining meals. Not only were they not intended to be eaten without cooking, they were only barely edible if not heated and rehydrated.
He hadn’t been in complete darkness before. The glow sticks lasted for almost a day, but he’d used the last one yesterday searching the edge of the lake. He’d had one going each day when he’d cooked meals on the energy stove. Even without it, the thermal unit on the stove threw a surprising amount of light. Now the darkness began to eat into his soul.
In his last scouting of the lake, he’d spotted the edge of the cavern. It had something to do with how the light from his glow stick had reflected from the water. It looked different somehow. He’d at least learned how to get around out there with minimal light, even in camp. The lantern had never thrown a huge amount of light, and whenever he got between it and what he was doing, the dark it made was intense. So he’d laid out things where they were easy to find, and made sure to put them back after use in the same location.
With the light gone, he decided he couldn’t wait in the dark for something to happen. He began packing everything back into his backpack. He’d used all the sealed water and had been drinking from the stream af
ter adding purification tablets to it; there were enough of those to last him the rest of his life. Without the water and most of the food, the pack was considerably lighter. He considered and discarded the idea of leaving the stove. If he found an exit he could leave out the solar cells and charge the survival battery in just hours. So, it all went back in.
It took longer than he thought it would. Despite remembering where everything was, some items didn’t seem to be where he thought they would be. In only moments, he had an intense respect for blind people, especially ones who lost their vision as adults. He felt like he was lost in space.
When everything was finally in the pack, and it was on his back, he picked up the laser rifle and shouldered it as well. The most useless part of his equipment thus far, he still refused to leave it. This was still an alien world, and there were raiders on it. The last thing he needed was to run into some of them with nothing but the little pistol in his pocket and a pack full of mostly useless survival tools. He went around half-crouched in camp feeling the rocks until he found the one he knew led toward the lake and set out.
This was the route he’d used the most during the five days of his stay. He knew how it went, the lay of the rough cave floor, even where a few of the bigger rocks and stalactites lay. He found the pair he’d dubbed The Sisters in a few minutes, two tall pointy stalactites. Shortly beyond that there was a little depression. In the bottom was the stream. He turned and followed it to the water. By then he was starting to feel some confidence. At the water’s edge, he turned right and began to follow it.
It didn’t take much longer to reach the point where his familiarity ended. He tripped on a rock and almost went face first into the water. He ended up on his knees, hands barking hard against the rock floor. He felt skin scrape, even through the reinforced gloves and knees on the survival suit. At least he hadn’t hurt himself badly. After that he moved much more slowly.
