Sam blinked the haze from his sight and took control of the submersible with his right hand on the joystick.
“You okay, Tom?” he asked.
Silence.
Sam turned his head over his right shoulder, to get a visual of Tom. The man was grinning like an idiot.
“Tom! Are you all right?”
“All right?” Tom asked, his voice bemused. “That was the best ride I’ve had in a long time. What say we ask them to come pick us up for another go?”
“Forget about it. We’ve got things to do, and the Galaxy’s never going to make a water landing.”
“All right, all right,” Tom accepted. “Let’s go find out what Amelia Earhart found inside the 8th Continent.”
Chapter Two
Sam Reilly maneuvered the sports submarine with gentle, adept movements of the controls as he navigated the opening to the submerged world of the 8th Continent. The Orcasub was kind of a cross between an airplane and a two-seater submersible. Behind him, Tom Bower read out a series of intricate navigational details they had secured from their previous expedition, as a navigator would a professional rally car driver.
The Orcasub set its course along a southwesterly direction through the remnants of an ancient submerged valley.
The submarine’s exact dimensions were: 20 feet of length, 14 feet beam— with a 7-foot wingspan — and a height of 5 feet. There were two glass bubble domes positioned forward and aft of each other, where the pilot and copilot were housed. The overall shape of the submersible was sleek, like a sports-car, or more accurately, a sports underwater airplane, with narrow wings and a V-shaped tail-wing. The two wings even had two large thrusters fixed to each wing, like jet-engines on an aircraft.
Sam pulled back on the joystick, and the little submersible rose out of the higher cliffs of the nearly three-mile-wide valley, leveling out after its rapid ascent, across an ancient waterfall.
Emerging onto the tabletop of the 8th Continent.
The ancient river opened up to a shallow underwater plateau, covered in vivid and impressive coral gardens. It was a unique tropical playground that didn’t belong anywhere near where they were. Coral reefs provided homes for tropical fish, sponges, mollusks, giant manta rays, sea turtles, and giant clams. The diversity of form and color was the sort of thing that inspired humanity to explore beneath the waves in the first place.
A small pod of dolphins raced ahead of their submersible, swimming upside down and by its side, like small torpedoes. Unlike last time they approached the secret submerged world, the dolphins seemed more wary of them, giving them a wider berth, before quickly losing interest and retreating into a series of small coral grottoes. It almost looked like they were scurrying away from danger.
Sam said, “Looks like they don’t want to play today.”
Tom gave a half-shrug. “They’ve seen us before. They probably have plenty of other fun creatures to play with in their undersea paradise.”
“What could be more fun than a yellow submarine?”
“Good question.” The muscles in Tom’s face tightened. “I wonder if they’ve had another visitor since we were here last?”
“That’s possible.”
Sam put the thought out of his mind. There was nothing they could do about it currently.
His eyes swept their new environment with awe. The depth of the tabletop was roughly fifty feet, with a deeper narrow chasm through which the tiny submersible raced.
Sam gripped the joystick, easing the Orcasub up to a depth of 100 feet.
He said, “We’re approaching the destination.”
“I see it,” Tom replied. “It’s at your 3 o’clock position.”
“Got it.”
Sam slowed the Orcasub as he approached the end of the chasm, taking it to a stop at the mouth of a large underground chamber, roughly twenty feet high by thirty feet wide. He switched on the submarine’s overhead lights, which shined like two little bug-eyes from the top of the sub. The cave formed out of the mouth of a small rocky outcrop on the coral tabletop, like an ancient monolith.
“You ready?” Sam asked.
Tom said, “Yeah. Take us in.”
Sam dipped the joystick forward, and the Orcasub’s propellers made a little whine as he edged her through the mouth of the opening.
The tunnel descended steeper until they were at a complete dive. At 160 feet, the rocky passageway appeared to level out, before ascending again.
At 140 feet the passageway opened, and seawater ceased. The submarine surfaced into a gigantic, air-filled grotto that extended so far back, that neither Sam nor Tom could see where it began or where it ended. A giant light filtered through the top of the cavern, like the rays of the sun, glistening onto the spectacular white beach.
Sam eased the Orcasub’s throttles forward, until she became gently grounded on the sandy beach. Confident that the submarine was securely landed, Sam disengaged the hatch and climbed out. He removed his MP5 submachinegun and slung it over his shoulder. Tom climbed out second, carrying a rope and anchor behind him.
Sam fixed the anchor, burying it deep in the sand, while Tom attached the opposite end of the rope to a small retractable cleat on the Orcasub’s starboard pontoon. After confirming the submarine was secured they made their journey along the same well-worn path they had taken previously. They meandered toward the half-dome shaped remnants of the ancient volcano that now overhung part of the beach like the mouth of a behemoth monster turned grotto.
They passed the wooden remains of a 16th century Dutch Fluyt and the intact, well-preserved remains of Amelia Earhart’s Electra. They quickly reached the three pieces of obsidian, each as large as a bus, that jolted together to form a natural archway, and began their descent into the unique world below.
Sam stepped through the arched gateway.
A set of stairs had been carved into the brittle volcanic rock. It looked like a medieval stairwell, spiraling to the left with the precision that he doubted few stonemasons could recreate today. He moved with the determined gait of a professional soldier. His face set with an equal mixture of awe and curiosity, he descended deep into the subterranean tunnel.
Time quickly disappeared as they traipsed downward until light suddenly filtered through glassy rocks far below, allowing enough ambient glow to make out the shape of the tunnel and the location of the stairs, but little else.
The effort that someone had made to construct the strange stairwell amazed Sam. His ears hurt as he continued the descent, and he found himself swallowing to equalize them.
How far below sea level must we be?
He stepped around the next bend and his left hand came free of the cold stone wall. Sam stopped, his heart pounding in his chest. It was the second time he’d been down to the subterranean world, but nothing could prepare him for the sight ahead.
The stairwell ended on a giant rocky ledge that overlooked an underground prehistoric world to rival anything Jules Verne had imagined.
The ceiling in this new vault was so high that it could only be seen at the edges of the wall and not in the middle. A warm ray of sun shone down from above on the entire subterranean habitat, making him feel like he’d just stepped out into the great expanse of an ancient savannah. Giant trees and plants were covered with fruits filling his nostrils with the scent of rich fragrances.
His eyes swept the near-mythical environment with wonder. It was impossible to tell where the place began and where it finished. It might have been a small country in its own right. Thick rainforests, including giant gum trees, more than a hundred feet tall, filled the area. There were massive open plains of grass, and a freshwater river that split the ancient world in two, with multiple smaller tributaries and streams that ran off from it.