By the time the dive team finished their story, Craig had joined Pierre at the top of the pit. “All our gear is ready,” he announced. “Where’s Miller?”
Lewis and Gonzalez exchanged a dumbfounded stare before Gonzalez replied, “How should we know?”
Samantha looked stunned. “We thought he went to find you after the water drained,” she stammered. “You haven’t seen him?”
Gonzalez shook her head. Lewis did the same, saying, “Not since we left him with the three of you.” It came across sounding more accusatory than he intended so he quickly added, “When did you last see him?”
Craig and Pierre went back and forth, describing what they knew. They had all been working on transporting the remaining gear. At some point Miller mentioned something about solving part of the mystery and ran ahead, leaving the others to jockey back and forth transporting the equipment. When they finally got everything here, they found that the pool was empty and the professor was gone. The discovery of the rope hanging to the bottom of the pit led everyone to assume Miller had found the water drained, and descended to check on Lewis and Gonzalez.
“Did you search for him up there?” Lewis asked when they were done.
“He couldn’t have gotten back past us in the passage,” Samantha offered. “Craig and I searched back towards the entrance a ways, but we didn’t find any sign of him.”
“We’re down to Samantha’s dive light and Pierre’s head lamp for lighting so we couldn’t search too far,” Craig added.
Lewis had noticed that his dive light was getting pretty weak as well. They had traveled back with Gonzalez’s turned off, but hers couldn’t have much left either. “Maybe he went by while we were rigging up the rappel,” Lewis said hopefully. “Either way, we need to get moving before we are out of light.”
They decided to leave most of the gear at the top of the pit, including supplies and a note for Miller in case he somehow came back from the other direction. Pierre brought down the last chunk of their climbing rope: a 60-foot piece. They would have to come back and de-rig some of the rappels if they needed more. Craig and Samantha grabbed the first-aid kit and a small sack with some climbing hardware. Lewis and Gonzalez were famished, so they concentrated on some food and water supplies. With no further time to waste, they headed off in hopes of finding both Miller and a way home before their batteries ran out.
The group traveled with only the dim illumination from Lewis’s dying dive light until it finally gave way, just as they reached the triangular room. Gonzalez switched her dive light on and helped Lewis retrieve their final full tank along with its regulator, leaving the dive harness and other gear behind for now. Samantha marveled at the straightness of the walls before following to the newly-revealed exit Gonzalez and Lewis had described.
The opening was roughly circular, matching the basic lava tube formation they were all used to by now. It was approximately twelve feet in diameter, making it easy to walk along without hunching over. It was also big enough to have transported even the largest of the artifacts. The tunnel sloped gradually downward, still wet from all the water which had drained this way.
Craig led into the passage with Pierre and Samantha right behind him. Gonzalez followed next with the light, while Lewis took up the rear. The passage was fairly straight for the first hundred yards, before taking a gradual left-hand turn. Samantha let out a shriek at what lay ahead. Gonzalez saw it too and quickly shut off her light. There was a dull glow coming from around the corner. They were almost out!
Gonzalez turned her light back on and they all moved onward at a hurried pace, fighting the urge to take off running. When they finished rounding the corner, they all saw what they had been yearning for: daylight. The tunnel opened into the outside world less than 200 yards away, straight ahead. Samantha let out a new shriek, but this time it was not at the light. Twenty feet ahead of them, tangled in a pair of fallen rocks, lay the pale, wet body of Doctor Scott Miller, PhD.
Lewis knelt beside the professor’s limp body, checking for a pulse then listening to his chest, despite the fact that Miller looked to have been dead for quite some time. Lewis looked up to the hopeful eyes of the others and slowly shook his head. Samantha began to sob, and everyone seemed visibly shaken by Miller’s death, all having become close to the endearing, older man.
“He must have fallen in while watching the water drain,” Craig offered, sounding defensive.
Lewis couldn’t tell if Craig was trying to avoid blame for not keeping a better eye on the professor, or because he was more directly involved in Miller’s fate. While checking for a pulse, Lewis had noticed that Miller’s neck was broken in at least two different spots, a possible but unlikely injury for a drowning victim. The professor’s hands were wrinkled from the water, but his fingers didn’t exhibit the sorts of scrapes Lewis had seen on cave divers who had tried to claw their way through solid rock after becoming trapped. The look on Gonzalez’s face confirmed that she too was skeptical about this being just another accident; the fact that she subtly distanced herself from Craig confirmed that they shared the same prime suspect.
“What do we do with him?” Samantha asked, regaining control of her emotions.
Everyone looked to Lewis for an answer. He looked back to Miller before replying. “There’s nothing we can do for now.” He didn’t want to sound cold, but the reality was that they were in no position to transport a fallen teammate. “The best thing we can do is get back to civilization and get the authorities in here.”
The others nodded their agreement. Lewis stood, leading the way towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Even before they got there, Lewis could tell this wasn’t going to be the type of exit that a person simply walked out of. Their ordeal was not over yet.
The tunnel suddenly opened into the middle of a vertical shaft. The mouth of the cave where they now stood was 40 feet above the rocks littering the bottom of the pit below. Looking upward, it was approximately 50 feet to where the rock walls gave way to some overhanging tree branches, and the sky above. The shaft itself was nearly a perfect square, twelve feet wide. The sides appeared to be hand carved, like the triangular room, making them incredibly smooth and probably impossible to climb.
The others stepped to the side, letting Pierre move to the opening to look for a route up. He stayed quiet as he looked around, examining various possible hand-and foot-holds that would have forever remained invisible to Lewis. Much like when he scouted the route to Sigurd’s ledge, Pierre moved his eyes from one location to the next, visually scaling the walls. For the first five minutes, Pierre tried a number of different routes, none of which made it more than ten moves before Pierre shook his head, starting over after finding another dead end. Before long, Lewis could see that Pierre was making progress, the climber’s focus remaining much higher up the shaft, never retreating all the way to the start. Finally, after nearly half an hour, Pierre nodded, but he didn’t sound overly convincing when he said, “I found something that might work.” These were not encouraging words coming from someone who was normally close to bursting with confidence.
Like before, Lewis prepared to belay Pierre in case he fell. Pierre warned that the first move was going to be one of the trickiest — the route really began with a narrow crack running up the right corner of the opposing wall. There was no choice but to run down the tunnel then leap diagonally across the shaft, hoping to dig his fingers in when he got to the corner. Lewis could only shake his head in wonder as Pierre shared the rest of his daring plan.