The screams stopped suddenly. While still insufferably hot, the temperature leveled out. Mack grabbed for his handheld unit: it read 152 degrees Fahrenheit. In a matter of seconds, the temperature had soared fifty degrees.
"It's okay everyone,” Mack yelled through the mask. “We're safe, just relax."
The ventilators cleared away the dust, but made only a tiny dent in the temperature. The handheld unit said the new air contained plenty of oxygen, some hydrogen and higher levels of nitrogen, but no contaminants. The unit showed a green light for breathing. Mack pulled off his mask and took a tentative, testing breath. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at some faint yet offensive smell. Something like a combination of rotting fruit and dog shit. He motioned for the other men to remove their masks. Their faces showed instant disgust. Fritz Sherwood, at twenty-two the youngest of the mining crew, puked on his shoes, much to the amusement of the older men.
Jansson put his hands on his hips and took a deep, chest-swelling breath. “I love the smell of Hell in the morning,” he said. “It smells like victory."
"You should love it, mate,” Mack said. “It smells just like your breath.” The men laughed; Mack felt the tension level instantly drop a few notches. He lowered the elevator to the shaft floor. The men carefully crawled through the loose rocks, lights from their helmets making clearly defined dust cones that bobbed along the rough walls. Within twenty feet, the tunnel expanded suddenly, opening into a wide, dry cavern. Their lights played along the rough tan-green walls, up to a flat sandstone ceiling, and across each other's sweat-drenched smiles. They all felt the pride of a tough job well done. At the back of this new cavern stood the opening of a natural tunnel. It loomed black and promising, but Mack let no one explore further.
The men hauled loose rock back to the elevator shaft, but after barely fifteen minutes they started to fatigue. No exploring could be done until they found a way to deal with the temperature. Angus supposedly had something lined up, but Mack had yet to see what it was.
They cleared a path into the natural caverns. They found spots on the platform among the rubble, either standing between piles or sitting on them, and Mack took the exhausted men back to the surface. It was time to go to phase two, and start exploring the largest tunnel complex known to man.
"Yes, Achmed,” Katerina Hayes said in a condescending manner. “I see it's an aberrant spike, but that doesn't explain what caused it, now does it?"
Achmed glared at her. With Angus and Randy gone, she was now in charge. It hurt her to ride him like this, but she needed answers. Only now did she understand why Angus was always such a prick — Connell Kirkland demanded results, and producing those results was now her responsibility.
Just as she had taken Angus's place, Achmed had assumed Randy's duties. Those duties included finding the cause of small, unexplained seismograph spikes. Katerina had checked the spikes against Mack's blasting record — they hadn't been caused by any EarthCore activity. She feared the spikes meant cave-ins somewhere in the natural tunnels — something that would slow the project down, and would make Connell very unhappy.
"How am I supposed to find out what it is?” asked an exasperated Achmed. “I can't see through solid rock. And the damn computer keeps cutting out every six hours, how can you expect results with work conditions like this?"
"Listen, we have men down there! You fix the damn computer, and you find out what's going on. No one is going to die on my watch, you got that? I've got other problems to worry about."
Achmed's face screwed tight with anger and he turned back to the computer. She walked back to her tiny desk. She didn't have time to worry about Achmed's feelings. Earlier in the day, Dr. Reeves had brought in GPR data on a mysterious line that penetrated deep into the ground. Connell, of course, demanded and immediate explanation.
Katerina had assigned every free person to mapping that line, and the results were shocking. Four miles downhill and a half-mile uphill from where Dr. Reeves and Dr. Haak had found the phenomenon, the line took a ninety degree turn south.
Both of those new lines reached south for 3.28 miles. Exactly 3.28 miles. At that point, both took a ninety degree turn toward each other, making a new line, a line that completed a rectangle — a 4.652 mile-long and 3.28 mile-wide rectangle, in which the mine shaft sat almost dead-center. Who made it? Why? And how on earth did they do it?
Katerina didn't have any answers. She shuddered — Connell wouldn't like that, wouldn't like that at all.
Mack and the rest of the miners watched in rapt attention as O'Doyle held up a bright yellow form-fitting jumpsuit. The suit, supposedly, would allow them to safely explore the caves.
"This is a KoolSuit,” O'Doyle said, his voice bellowing like a drill sergeant. “That's Kool with a ‘K,’ as in its inventor, Angus Kool. The fabric is a microtubule material that accommodates the flow of coolant throughout the suit. This small backpack unit circulates fluid through the material to regulate your body temperature.
"The KoolSuits are coated with Kevlar, so they should hold up well while you're crawling through the tunnels. However, be aware of the dangerous environment. We expect the temperature to exceed two hundred degrees Fahrenheit, which means that if your suit rips in any way, repair it immediately with the patches stored in your backpack. Then immediately alert your supervisor and head for the surface as fast as possible.
"Without a functioning suit, you will dehydrate and die in a matter of hours. Even with the suit, make sure you are not underground for more than five hours at a time, or you may suffer blistering on your face, which is the only exposed skin area on your body. Do not, I repeat, do not remove the gloves. The rocks in the tunnel are hot enough to burn skin on contact. You are most likely to rip the gloves, if you rip anything, so each suit comes with a spare pair packed in the belt. If your gloves tear, undo the wrist seal, remove the gloves, put on the new ones, and make sure the wrist seal locks tight."
Mack shook his head in mild amazement. This was more like being in a science-fiction movie than a dig. The suits would let them explore the tunnels despite the incredible and life-threatening geothermal heat.
As Mack donned the rubbery KoolSuit, excitement washed over him. He was about to explore an area untouched by man. Granted, it was going to be mostly tight tunnels, nothing more to see than limestone walls eroded by millions of years of circulating water, but that feeling of discovery pumped adrenaline into his blood.
Mack and the afternoon shift, six men who were a little less hungover than their coworkers, suited up and headed for the shaft elevator. The suit gave him the chills on the surface, where the temperature was only 110 degrees. In twenty minutes they'd reach the shaft bottom and head for the tunnels, ready to take those first steps into the unknown.
Connell's stare bore into O'Doyle's skull like a hot poker going straight through the eye socket into the brain. O'Doyle could have crushed Connell in a heartbeat, and both men knew it, but physical prowess had little to do with their relationship. Connell was the boss. Connell was authority. In O'Doyle's strict world, authority was something you followed without question. Ten years in the Marines had riveted that rule into his soul to the point where it was never forgotten, never unlearned. The Marines had also drilled home one more concept: there is no excuse for failure.