"But it'll take me twenty minutes just to crawl back,” Fritz said. “You'll be down there for almost an hour."
"Good, I've been wanting a little privacy to spank the monkey.” Jansson let out another laugh. “Thank goodness I hurt my left arm and not my right. Now get going, this thing hurts like a bitch."
"Is the suit ripped?"
Jansson gently ran his hands up and down his leg. “No, it's intact,” he called up. “Fuck, this hurts. Would you go get somebody?"
"Okay, just hold tight,” Fritz said, his voice echoing in the still chasm. He slid backwards, pushing his way through the tunnel that was no bigger than an air vent.
In minutes, all sound of Fritz's efforts faded away, leaving Jansson alone. Jansson pushed himself to a sitting position and gritted his teeth against the pain. He'd felt worse. What was this, the third time he'd broken his leg? The fourth? It was no big deal. All he had to do was sit and wait. Help would be there before he knew it.
He sat still and quiet for fifteen minutes, ears instinctively hunting for a sound and finding none. He hated the quiet, and caves were dead quiet. Not a sound at all, other than your own. You didn't notice how noisy the world around you was until you came to a place like this. No wind, no creaks, no squeaks, no honks… nothing. It was a weird feeling, like someone had grabbed nature's remote control and hit ‘mute.’ Damn fool thing to get in a hurry and break a leg. He should have been more—
A sound disrupted his thoughts. He flashed his light upwards, toward the tunnel 150 feet above. Nothing moved. He waited for the sound to come again, but only silence met his ears. He looked around the chasm bottom, his headlamp following his gaze. There were several tunnels, but all very small, probably too small to crawl through. The trip was a waste of—
He heard it again. This time clearly. The sound of dry, rustling leaves across open pavement. His eyes darted to each tunnel entrance as the sound grew louder.
Mack leaned over the edge of the chasm. His light probed the jagged rocks, but illuminated only rock.
He cupped his hands and shouted. “Jansson! Jansson, answer me, mate."
Nothing.
Fritz was right behind him, the passage so narrow Mack couldn't even turn around to talk. “This is it, Fritz? You're sure."
"Absolutely,” Fritz said. “He's down there."
Mack pulled out the Marco/Polo device and checked the signals, but the unit showed only his name and Fritz's.
"He's not answering. I don't see any movement.” Mack noticed that Jansson's rope still hung off the ledge, dangling into the chasm below. He gave it an experimental tug — it moved easily. Mack prepared to hook his climbing rig to the rope, preparing to descend, then stopped himself.
Why isn't he still tied to it? If he's hurt, why would he unhook it, knowing full well we have to pull him up?
Frowning, Mack started pulling up the rope. He reeled in almost 150 feet: he stopped as he reached the end.
The rope had been cut.
Mack looked at the rope's neatly sliced end. His light played off a thin line of something wet. He touched it with his gloved fingers, then held the fingers up for a closer inspection.
It looked like blood.
Claim jumpers? Could there be some crazy claim jumpers down here?
Fritz nudged Mack's foot. “We going down to get him or what?"
Mack stared at his fingers, at the rope's cut end. He leaned over the edge again, his light carefully scanning the chasm floor. Nothing moved. “He's not there, Fritz."
"Not there? Where the hell else could he be?"
"I don't know,” Mack said. “Could you see him after he fell?"
"Yeah, I could see him fine."
"Well he's not there now. Start moving back, and do it quick."
"We've got to go down and look for him!"
"We're not going down there right now, mate,” Mack said. “We're going back to phone for help.” Mack slid backward, working his way out of the thin tunnel. He'd already sent men back to the shaft bottom to phone up and report the missing man.
He hoped O'Doyle knew how to rappel.
Katerina Hayes tried in vain to rub the sleep from her eyes. She hadn't slept a wink last night and neither had most of the lab rats. The staff hunted for an answer regarding the mysterious, miles-long rectangle that surrounded the campsite and the mine. So far there were no answers.
The best guess revolved around an incredibly high-powered laser fired from orbit — and that was a joke. They'd found no burn marks or melting of any kind. On the surface the line was nearly invisible — you could only see it if you knew exactly where to look. If not for the GPR suite, people might have walked over it a hundred times without noticing.
Most of the line's camouflage came from landslides, water erosion, windswept dirt, and sand. Such natural actions had covered most of the line, leaving only split rocks on either side.
Extrapolating on a computer erosion model, they had generated estimates of the rectangle's age. The current estimates fixed the rectangle at between seven thousand and thirteen thousand years old.
Calling it science on the fly was an understatement. The staff made it up as they went along, dubbing the new discipline chronogeomorphology—judging a formation's age by the erosion on and around it. She guessed they might shave another two or three thousand years, but not much more than that. The computers handled most of the work now, leaving her to worry about other must-solve problems.
"Achmed! What's the status on that latest tremor?"
Achmed rose from his station and sluffed over. His normally dark and beautiful eyes were now just plain dark. Sunken cheeks showed the effects of only two hours’ sleep in the past two days.
"I wouldn't exactly call it a tremor, Katerina,” he said with an angry, tired voice.
"What would you call it?” Katerina asked with audible frustration. She was pushing him hard and she knew it. The tremors threatened not only the financial future of this operation but the lives of the men who worked the shaft. A second aberrant spike on the seismograph, this time only a half-mile from the main shaft, had thrown the lab into a tizzy.
"The epicenter of the occurrence happened closer to the surface, but it was still isolated,” Achmed said with a sigh. “Again, no sympathetic vibrations anywhere."
Katerina scowled. It was the same story she'd heard before. “Dammit, Achmed, I need answers.” She leaned toward him, her eyes flashing with intensity. “You're the expert on this, and you've been working on it for two days; there's no way you don't have any ideas. I want a hypothesis. Now."
Achmed glared at her. Their friendship was gone. Vanished. Dissipated by her demanding position of power.
"There are many caves in this area,” Achmed said. “Some of them are probably unstable. My best guess is that the aberrant spikes are cave-ins."
She'd expected that answer. While they sank the shaft without explosives, drilling the adit had required blasting. Normally that would pose little threat to overall geologic stability, but with a massive network of caves anything was possible. The blasting could have damaged the natural structure enough to cause subsequent settling and cave-ins.
She stared at Achmed, who looked at the floor, defeated. She knew why. Cave-ins meant that the structure wasn't sound. That meant lives, and dollars, were at stake.
On top of his spike problem, Achmed still couldn't figure out why the seismograph simply dropped out for five minutes at 11:19 a.m., just as it had every six hours for almost three days straight.