We heard shouts coming from the main hall outside our enclosure. “Cave in! Cave in! All hands on deck!”
Tia flipped the light switch but nothing happened. I grabbed a flashlight and turned it on. We dressed quickly. As I started to open the door to our enclosure it jammed against something. The opening was only four inches wide, not enough to squeeze through.
“Help!” I yelled. “I can’t open the door.”
“Over here!” Tia yelled. “We can’t get out.”
Flashlight beams came from the main hallway. Several people came over and rolled a large rock that had fallen from the ceiling of the cave away from the door. As we emerged from our enclosure, I scanned the main hallway with my flashlight. The floor of the hall was littered with rocks from marble size up to a yard in diameter.
“Down here!”
I looked down the hall. Flashlight beams illumined Ed who was waving for people to come in his direction. Twenty feet beyond Ed the hall in the cave had collapsed and was completely closed off. Two hundred people were trapped on the other side, including John and Nancy. We didn’t know if any of them were still alive.
Ed guided the rescue operation holding two flashlights and giving directions. Rocks were being pulled off the pile by three strong men and rolled down into the hallway. Each of the rocks had to be lifted and carried or rolled down the hall to make room for more rocks to be removed. Soon the sides of the hallway were closing in from all of the rocks being stacked against the side of the cave. The dust in the air made it hard to breathe. I coughed and then realized the air recirculation and oxygen regenerating equipment weren’t working. It was only a matter of time and we would all run out of oxygen. With the fire raging outside opening the cave door wasn’t an option.
One of the men pulled on a rock at the top of the pile. When it rolled down there was an open space above the pile of rocks. As several more rocks were moved away Ed used a flashlight to see into the opening.
“It’s open in there,” Ed called out. “I’m going in.”
Ed crawled through the small opening and disappeared into the darkness.
“It’s large enough to stand up in,” Ed yelled back, “and maybe forty feet long. Get more of these rocks cleared out, I’m going to check the other end.”
The men worked at enlarging the opening and soon one of them crawled into the darkness with another flashlight and joined Ed at the far end. Several minutes later they emerged from the hole at the top of the pile.
“We need to get more rocks out of the way so we can move freely in and out of the collapsed section,” Ed said. “The other end is blocked too, but it is going to be harder to move the rocks because we have to dig them out and move them up in order to clear a passage.”
I moved closer to Ed. “We’ve got no air circulation and limited oxygen,” I said quietly. “If we can’t get to the generator room, or if the generator is crushed by the rocks, we’re going to be out of luck in two to three hours.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said, “If we can’t get through this rock pile soon, none of us will live to see the morning.”
Progress was slower at the other end of the caved in section. Rocks were jammed in against one another and wouldn’t budge until another rock was moved out of the way. Finding the one loose rock that was blocking another rock became an elaborate three dimensional jigsaw puzzle. It might have been a lot easier if we could see all of the rocks at the same time, but with only flashlights it was a daunting task. We had dug down to the floor level and just over ten feet into the next section of hallway when I got so dizzy I had to sit down.
I was feeling exhausted and could hardly move. As I looked around I noticed everyone else was experiencing the same exhaustion and were sitting down. I realized it was the lack of oxygen and the increasing carbon dioxide levels in the air. We had done all we could do. It just wasn’t enough. I turned off my flashlight and sat in the darkness. I was struggling to get enough air and feeling sleepy when I heard the sound of rocks moving.
Light began piercing the darkness from where we had cleared the rocks out. More light poured in along with fresh air. I could breathe again. I heard voices and sensed movement around me.
“Carl.”
I felt someone holding my face in their hands. I looked up. It was John.
“I didn’t think we were going to get through in time,” John said. “How are the others?”
I pointed back to where we had started digging. Nancy came over and checked my pulse and used her stethoscope to listen to my heart and my lungs.
“He’s going to be fine,” she said.
Somebody helped me up and through the hole in the rocks into the lighted section of the cave. I sat against the wall of the cave gradually regaining my breath and strength. They had sat Ed down across the hall from me.
“Did you see Tia?” I asked. Ed was breathing heavily and pointed toward the opening in the rocks. As I looked over I saw them bringing Tia into the hallway. Her skin looked a bit gray in color, but she was moving and looking around. I reached out to her and the people carrying her set her down next to me.
“Hi,” I said softly.
“Hey,” she said back. We both smiled at each other and held hands.
Over the next week we were able to clear the collapsed hallway, repair the wiring and ventilation system. Fourteen people had died in the cave-in. Some were crushed by the rocks and others died from suffocation after being buried in their enclosures. We piled the bodies into an enclosure at the end of a short spur off the main hallway. Rocks were piled up to close off the burial site and dirt from the floor was used to fill in the cracks and open spaces. John held a service for those we had lost. It was a hard experience to go through, but we could only imagine what people were going through out in the open with the fires and the meteorites striking the ground all around them.
At lunch John announced the need for a repair party to fix the antennas above the cave. We met by the cave door at three in the afternoon. This would be the first time anyone had ventured outside the cave since the meteor storm had started.
As we opened the rock door smoke started to pour into the cave as we had anticipated. What shocked us was the darkness. It was pitch black outside.
“Did we get the time wrong?” one of the repair party asked.
“No, you didn’t,” John said as he walked up carrying a bunch of flashlights.
After John handed out the flashlights I stepped aside with him.
“How did you know?” I whispered.
“The radio messages,” John whispered back. “It’s been dark all over the planet since we entered the meteor cloud. The only light has been from the fires.”
I hadn’t expected this.
We put on dust masks to protect us from the smoke and exited the cave. Within twenty feet of the cave we began experiencing eye irritation from the smoke, and shortness of breath. The oxygen content had dropped below the level needed to support the fire. We could still breathe, but every physical effort was exhausting. The antennas were two hundred yards above the cave entrance. It might as well have been two hundred miles. We weren’t going to make it. A disabling disorientation was setting in. The cave entrance was difficult to find, even if it was only twenty feet away. It took almost ten minutes to get everyone turned around and back into the cave entrance.
“We need better equipment,” I told John. “This isn’t going to work this way.” The look of disappointment on John’s face was palpable.