by Greig Beck
“Can we blast our way through? We can set our rifles to produce a broader air projectile that could provide a non-explosive hammer effect.” Monica thought about it for a while, and then turned back to Alex.
“My view is we hold back on that as we don’t know how stable the ceiling is. First let’s try to tease the rock out and pass it down via a human chain. It’s slower, but there’s less chance of bringing it all down on our heads.”
Alex nodded. “OK, how do you want us organised?”
“I’ll go up first as I’ve got a better idea which stones to pull free. Tank should be with me in case I need his strength to pull some of the larger ones out.”
Matt quickly interrupted. “I’d like to offer to be up there with you as Tank might just be too heavy on the top of the pile. Also, I’m very strong — did you know I was the only guy at college who could bench-press two hundred pounds?”
Monica blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and smiled. “All right, Hercules, come on up.”
Eighteen
Matt climbed nimbly to the top with Monica; for all their hardships he still looked to be enjoying himself. “I also came third in a hot dog eating contest in my final year, but I’m holding that one back for now.”
Monica whistled. “You’re a very talented man, Mr. Gym Jock, now let’s dig.”
It took them longer than expected. Even though most rock piles formed a basic pyramidal shape, the top of the boulder choke still needed about ten feet of digging and hauling down and along the human chain. First Monica crawled through, and came back quickly to report they could wriggle through to the next open cave — it also looked like they might avoid getting wet.
One by one they crawled through, this time with Tank managing to avoid getting hooked up. On the other side, they found themselves in a large domed cavern with what looked like stars twinkling on the ceiling. Matt looked up and said to Monica, “Bioluminescence again, huh — bugs or moss?”
“Let’s find out.” Monica clapped her hands loudly. In the cavern it sounded like a rifle shot and all the lights in the ceiling winked out at once.
“Aw, the nasty cave woman turned off the stars,” said Matt.
“Wait for it.” Monica pointed up and sure enough the lights came back on. “Glow-worms probably. Or maybe a hundred other things we’ve never even seen before.”
The small team continued on for another thirty minutes in the darkness and most managed to forget their predicament by marvelling at the wonders of the cave. Enormous limestone formations towered above them, looking like the organ pipes in the Vatican cathedral. There were dripping shoulders of stone like giant angel wings and vast columns reaching from floor to ceiling where a stalagmite and stalactite had joined, some easily a hundred feet high and as wide as a house.
Their beach was narrowing, and they were being forced to walk closer to the water. It was Monica who first noticed the changes.
“It’s getting warmer again, and the stream has stopped flowing, and hey, look.” She pointed into the water. “This is very rare. I’ve only ever heard about it in caving chat rooms.”
It was a strange effect, the stream seemed to float. It looked like a stream on top of another stream.
Matt knelt down to look. “It’s like magic.”
“It’s not magic, you boy scout.” Silex managed to make the normally innocent term sound like a curse. “It’s a natural phenomenon called a thermocline. It’s either where warm water overlies colder water, or where there’s a geologically active floor site. Means it could be toxic as well if hydrogen sulfide is dissolved in the water. This could be more bad news.”
“I don’t think so.” Aimee had also knelt down now. “It’s not warm enough to be a thermocline and there’s no build-up of minerals to suggest there’s sulfide in the water.” Aimee removed a small vial from her backpack and took a sample of the lower water level. She sniffed it and then dipped her finger in. She looked at Alex and winked and put the tip of her finger to the end of her tongue. “Yep, that’s salt.” She got to her feet. “It’s a halocline, which is a stable boundary between seawater and fresh water. They usually occur where an underground river flows towards the sea. Seawater backs up into the cave, and the less dense fresh water flows smoothly above it for a distance. It’s safe.” Aimee picked up a small pebble and tossed it in. Two sets of ripples formed — one set on the surface magically seeming to float above a second set a couple of feet under them.
Monica stood with her hands on her hips. “If it’s salt water meeting the stream’s fresh then that’s good news. We must be going the right way.”
Alex looked at the group. Aimee’s helmet torch was yellowing. He hoped Monica was right; the dark was fast catching up with them.
In another hour the scent of salt could be detected in the air and the stream’s double layer combined into one. Monica had been walking for a while with her head tilted up and she called to the group to stop. “Guys, we need to check something. Could everyone turn their torches off for a few seconds?”
One by one their helmet torches went out. Aimee noticed that Alex hadn’t used his light for ages and couldn’t remember when he ever had it on. She saw him give some quick signals to Tank and Takeda who both pulled lenses down over their eyes; infra-red, she guessed. Seconds passed with nothing occurring and Silex started to complain in the blackness. Aimee noticed that his voice had moved as he had taken the opportunity to get a lot closer to her. Creep, she thought, as she sshhhhed him in the dark.
After a few more seconds the bioluminescent stars appeared again on the ceiling, then on the walls, and after a minute, they could actually make each other out in the cavern. They were no longer in the sightless black of the cave, but in a soft blue twilight.
“Cool,” Matt said, looking up, and to perform his own test clapped his hands just once very loudly. It came as such a surprise that even the HAWCs swung around towards him with their rifles raised. Immediately, and as he expected, all the cold lights went out, leaving them once again in the impenetrable darkness. But what no one was expecting was to hear the loud splash from the other side of the stream. Everyone switched their helmet torches back on and some lit up their handhelds for good measure.
Alex spoke to his HAWCs while never taking his eyes off the stream. “Something large entered the water about a hundred feet farther down — eyes on. Everyone else get behind us.” The stream, which had been as flat and calm as ice, suddenly lapped up on the sand.
“Surge wave, something’s coming towards us in the river. Get ready.” The group backed up and positioned themselves behind the HAWCs who had their rifles pointed at the river surface.
It happened quickly. The smooth stream surface exploded as the thing charged out of the water like a shiny, black torpedo. An enormous mouth opened to display a zigzag of deadly teeth at the front of a twenty-foot-long muscular body. It powered itself at Alex on squat legs, aiming to take him round the waist. None of the HAWCs flinched; three rifles fired at once, sending highly compressed bullet-sized projectiles of air into the long body. Holes ruptured along its head and flank and the creature thrashed and thumped heavily on the sand for a while before trying to retreat back into the stream. Tank fired one more round between its eyes and it dropped still on the shore, its flattened tail still in the water and its great shovel-shaped head falling to the sand leaking greenish fluid.
Everyone stood in silence for a few seconds until Matt spoke. “I love this place! This is like fucking Pellucidar. Do you know what this is?” he asked wide-eyed to the still panting group.
“Looks like a cross between a shark and some sort of alligator,” said Tank.
“I used to keep Mexican walking fish when I was a kid; looks like the daddy of one of those,” said Monica.
“I think it’s a dinosaur. Man, oh man, it was a real live dinosaur!” Matt was beside himself.
“Close, very close, but not reptilian or saurian. Long scaleless amphibious morphology, shovel-shaped head, shor
t but muscular legs; I think it’s a labyrinthodont.” Aimee moved to the head and lifted the mouth to display an upper and lower jaw that when brought together made the teeth slide past each other like scissor blades. The surface of the palate was covered by tiny raised denticles, similar to shark skin. By looking at the mouth and teeth, once the creature got something into that maw, there was little hope of it escaping. In fact, Tank was right; it did look exactly like a shark’s mouth.
“Wow, welcome back, big guy.” Matt ran his hands down the slimy body. “Once we started finding life, we should have expected something like this.”
Aimee nodded. “Monica was close about walking fish. These are the grand-daddies of today’s salamanders and newts and last lived right here in the Antarctic. Everywhere else they were out-competed by the crocodiles, but it was way too cold for crocs down here and the labryinthodonts once thrived. Of course, this was over a hundred million years ago. But one thing no one would have expected — it’s black,” said Aimee.
“I know, deadly but beautiful, isn’t it.” Matt responded, still looking lovingly at the dead creature.
“No, I don’t mean that as a fashion statement. I mean it shouldn’t be; it shouldn’t be any colour. We’re miles under the surface in total darkness. All the creatures we’ve seen so far have displayed all the expected troglomorphies associated with their adaptation to a subterranean life. Things like loss of pigment, loss of eyes, longer legs and other enlarged sensory organs. This thing is an ambush specialist; it hunts using sight.”
They all looked at the fist-sized black eye on the side of the large head — it jerked. Matt and the others leaped back and the HAWCs raised their guns. The creature started to move slowly back into the water, tentatively at first then with a rapid jerking. It wasn’t moving under its own strength. It was being dragged back into the depths by something else unseen.
“It’s the blood, seems to be a very attractive commodity down here. I think we better go now.” Alex instructed them to double-time it for a few minutes to clear the feeding frenzy zone. The cold light from the cavern was extinguished as the loud sounds of thrashing and ripping could be heard from where the small group had just been — nothing would be wasted down here.
In a little while their heartbeats slowed and Alex allowed them to return to a walking pace. But regardless of the team’s comfort level he had to order all lights be switched off. Batteries were becoming a prized possession and Silex had already been caught trying to buy Matt’s spares. They could never navigate their way back to the surface in the dark.
Once their eyes grew accustomed to the strange blue glow it was quite comforting to have a 360-degree light source instead of relying on narrow beams. After a while it was Matt who voiced what they could all sense. “It’s getting even lighter.” He was right; the dim blue gloom was turning to an evening-like twilight.
What they now entered could not be called a cavern, or a cave, cathedral or any of the other descriptions applied by cavers and geologists to underground openings or pockets. It could only be described as a world.
“Pellucidar is but a realm of your imagination — nothing more.” Matt had been the first to speak and break the sense of awe at what they were seeing.
“Maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs knew more than he was given credit for,” said Aimee in a slightly hushed voice.
Matt went to rush forward but Alex held up his hand, flat and open-fingered to indicate to Matt that he hold his position. Alex tried to reach out and sense danger but his consciousness was overwhelmed by the massive life forces emanating from the realm before them.
They stood at the mouth of the cave on the curve of a black beach, where the stream emptied into a vast dark ocean. The colossal hollow’s roof and walls were lit with an abundance of the eerie bioluminescent light, making it a permanent twilight. Huge chandeliers of lichens and primitive mosses hung from the ceiling hundreds of feet over their heads and draped the walls like ragged sackcloth. The walls they could see in the near distance were cliffs that had dozens of openings just like the one they had exited from, and the horizon, even though they were in semi-gloom, could not be seen. There was evidence of old rock falls but mainly the slick walls were smooth and draped in mosses, lichens and primitive-looking plants that resembled slime moulds more than any earthly flora. For the most part they were white or translucent, but now and then one would be blood red or cobalt blue, indicating it had tapped into some mineral vein and was converting the rich minerals for its own use.
The underground sea itself was not a dead sheet of glass, but alive with small ripples that appeared on the surface, indicating life was very busy beneath its surface.
Matt turned to Monica. “How can this world exist down here? It’s unbelievable. Looks like it’s been here forever.”
“Well, there are enormous cave systems all around the world that are fantastically old even by geological standards. There’s the Ursa Minor in the Sequoia National Park, St. Michaels in Gibraltar, or the Jenolan Caves in Australia that are supposed to be nearly four-hundred million years old. But this could easily top all of those.”
“It’s warm, and feels like jungle humidity. There must be geothermic activity keeping this underground water body in solution even though it’s buried under the coldest continent on earth. Or perhaps the heat from the earth’s interior is keeping the sea from freezing — a form of geothermal heat radiating up from below and warming rocks on the underground seabed.” Silex was wringing his hands and seemed to be talking to himself. He licked his lips constantly now, and they had become chapped and cracked. He rambled on.
“Hmm, yes, I’d say the ice sheet above would also be acting as a blanket, protecting the lake from cold temperatures on the surface. The heat source probably gives it the basis for its food chain in the near dark. Similar biospheres occur close to deep vents miles under the ocean, you know.”
Alex was looking at Dr. Silex with concern. “Let’s get further up onto that beach and rest — I’m not happy being this close to the water. Tank, get me some readings.” Alex needed to keep them all moving and focused on getting to the surface. As soon as someone started to give up hope, a malaise — or worse — would set in.
Tank reached into his backpack for his small radar unit and fiddled with the buttons before pointing it at the ceiling and then turning it in a wide semi-circle. “OK, we’re just under three miles down; we have moved that much again from our initial insertion point.” Some more fiddling. “The body of water is… well, it must be over a hundred miles in length as it exceeds this device’s readings, and about fifty-five miles wide, depth unknown. There are… there are multiple movement signatures in the air above and below the water — varying sizes. Christ, some of them are huge — maybe whales, at least that big anyway.”
Alex looked at Aimee. She shrugged and narrowed her eyes — he knew what she was thinking; they still hadn’t come across the creature that attacked them and owned the rest of the tentacle they hacked off. God help them if that thing wasn’t top of the food chain. Meeting something that size in a cave was one thing; you had a wall at your back and it was defendable, to a degree. Out in the open they were just more food for the taking.
“Let’s move. Single file. Takeda, lead us out, please.”
Alex looked into the distance through his scope and used its maximum magnification to try to find a safe place to rest. He spotted a ledge about a mile down the black beach that looked like the perfect site — up from the water line, dry and with a slight overhang making it defendable. Alex’s senses tingled — they were not in their world anymore and danger was everywhere.
Nineteen
Viktor Petrov sat up in his king-sized bed and sipped from the gold-rimmed china cup. The black, smoky-flavoured Russian tea singed his lips and he blew across the rim to cool it. He thought deeply about the information contained in the intelligence reports that were now fanned out over his red silk sheets. The Russkaya Station in western Antarctica had indicated a s
eismic ripple from near the site where Borshov and his men had entered the ice. Petrov knew that ripple could only be man-made.
Petrov took another sip of tea and stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a spot thousands of miles from his bedroom as he thought of the possible outcomes of the underground explosion. It could mean one of three things. One, Borshov had succeeded and the Americans were dead; good. Two, they were all dead — the big oaf had blown himself and everyone else up; still good. Or three, Borshov was dead and the Americans had survived. Lower probability, but the worst possible outcome for Petrov if true.
He’d put more feelers out and monitor every single blip of electronic traffic coming off the ice. But as a little insurance he’d transfer some of his accounts offshore — it might be a warm winter after all.
Monica moved up to walk beside Aimee; her eyes were wide as she tried to take in all the sights, sounds and textures of their fantastic environment. “In all my life I’ve never seen a cave like this. No, in a thousand lives, I don’t think anyone has ever seen a cave like this. It smells primitive, alive.”
They rounded a small outcrop of boulders and saw a new black sand beach alive with movement — dozens of long-bodied spider-like creatures were scuttling away from the group. Each of the crustaceans was easily over three feet in length with a flat, heavily armoured insectoid-type body.
“Lobster, anyone?” asked Matt.
“Yuck, centipedes more like it,” responded Monica with some disgust. The clicking of their shells and the quick nervous way the creatures moved did remind the group of a hive of giant insects rather than some type of edible sea creature.
“Dangerous?” Alex asked Aimee as he and the remaining HAWCs kept their guns pointed at the scuttling mass on the beach.
“No, I think they’re some type of marine arthropod. I’m guessing more frightening to look at than harmful, but down here who knows?”
