I nodded to Bayta, and we put on our helmets. Only a half dozen of the twenty passengers seemed interested in joining us, I noticed, the rest content to stay aboard the sub for another pass around the outer sections of the caverns. I also noted that, despite their verbal enthusiasm of the previous day, there were in fact no Cimmaheem on our sub.
We finished our preparations and lined up at the exit. Each of us was given a quick equipment check by the guide, then sent two by two into the airlock. Bayta and I received our check, listened to one final warning about staying on the marked paths, and went outside.
The water was icy cold, I knew, but the pressure suits were well designed and only a hint of that chill made it through to my skin. With Bayta beside me, I touched my jet control, and as the pressurized water streams brushed past my heels we headed into the wide opening of the caverns, following the lights of those who had gone before us. Right at the opening we hit a current that tried to push us aside, but a little maneuvering and re-angling of the jets and we got through it.
I’d toured a few other caverns back when I was young, two of them underwater, and compared to those these weren’t all that impressive. Still, the lighting had been arranged for maximum effect, and I could see a few interesting formations in the various side tunnels. “Did you want to see any of the tunnels in particular?” Bayta’s voice came through the small speaker in my helmet.
“Not really,” I said casually, knowing that our comms also linked back to the submarine. Nothing we said out here would be private. “Let’s try over here.”
I pointed my light toward a passage no one else seemed interested in. We jetted our way across to the tunnel and peered inside. “Pretty twisty,” Bayta pointed out. “The marker lights don’t go back very far, either.”
“Oh, it’s not that twisty,” I admonished her, studying the rocky walls. It wasn’t that twisty, at least not for us. But even from here I could see a couple of spots that would be problematic for Halkas to get through.
Was that why we’d been maneuvered into coming out here? To do some cave exploration for them?
And then, as I moved my light around, something in the rock a few meters ahead caught my eye: a flattish spot that stood out glaringly amid the rest of the textured bumpiness. “Anyway, we’re not here to stay on the beaten path,” I added, kicking my feet and moving into the passage. “Let’s see where it goes.”
My eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on me. The spot I’d noticed was indeed flat, and it definitely hadn’t gotten that way by itself. Something hard and probably metallic had brushed up against the rock, hitting it with enough force to grind off the bumps. Someone, probably fairly recently, had moved something large and heavy through here.
I shone my light farther down the passage. Now that I knew what to look for, I could see a couple more smooth spots ahead, one of them just in front of the last marker light.
I caught Bayta’s eye and pointed to the spot, then at the others down the tunnel. She frowned, then lifted her eyebrows questioningly and tapped her backpack with its air generator and jet system. I shook my head, pressing my fingertip into the plasticized coating to show that it had too much give to have scraped the rock that way “Looks like we’re running out of markers,” I said aloud for the benefit of our other listeners.
I gestured emphatically, and Bayta nodded understanding. “We could at least go to the end,” she suggested. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Sounds good to me.” Giving her a thumbs-up, I started forward.
The other flat spots looked pretty much the same as the one I’d already examined. Interestingly, none of them were at particularly narrow spots in the tunnel. It was as if whoever had been maneuvering the object had been careful enough at the tricky places but had gotten careless when the going was easier.
We reached the last marker, and I shone my light into the tunnel beyond it. Just past the marker was another flat spot, bigger than the others, as if the movers had been seriously rushed at the end and desperate to get behind the light where they wouldn’t be so visible.
So rushed, in fact, that they hadn’t just bumped the side of their burden against the wall. Just ahead of the flat spot was a large protrusion with an abrupt indentation where they’d apparently run the object’s nose straight into the rock. A nose, I could see from the impression, that was about fifteen centimeters across, pointed, and had a hint of an angled, spiral shape behind the point.
Exactly like the shape of an industrial-sized drill bit.
I pointed it out to Bayta. She frowned, clearly puzzled, but nodded when I gestured ahead. Throwing a glance over my shoulder to confirm that no one was coming in after us, I eased past the marker and swam into the tunnel.
The first part was the trickiest. A meter past the drill-bit indentation was the narrowest spot yet, complicated further by a sharp left turn just past the narrows. I had to bend at the waist to get through it then roll over midway to keep my legs from becoming lodged against the side. The lads with the drill had clearly had similar problems, leaving two more marks where they’d bumped their burden getting around the turn. Fortunately, the water was calm; with a current like the one we’d run into outside, it would have been well nigh impossible.
Past the turn the tunnel straightened and widened again. I waited until Bayta had worked her way through, then together we moved on.
A few meters beyond the turn the tunnel became a confused honeycomb as it joined up with other passages and sent branches of its own in several directions. Fortunately, I’d taken the precaution of bringing along the tube of bright red lip gloss from Bayta’s new makeup kit, and at each intersection and potential confusion point I marked the stone to show us the way back out.
But whoever our clumsy driller had been, he’d apparently cleaned up his act. I found two more wall marks within the first couple of meters; and then, just as the labyrinth started to get particularly tangled, the marks disappeared completely. I went a short distance down several of the side passages, but saw nothing to indicate whether he’d been that way or not.
I’d just given up on the eighth side passage when Bayta tapped me on the arm and pointed significantly to her wrist. Reluctantly, I nodded agreement: If we didn’t start back soon the Halkas were likely to send out a search party. Turning around, I led us back to the bottleneck and then out again into the reassuring glow of the marker lights.
We were just in time. Even as the passage widened enough for us to use our jets, I could see that the rest of the divers had gathered around the submarine and were awaiting their turns in the airlock. We jetted out and joined them, and a few minutes later were back aboard.
“Welcome,” the guide greeted us as we unfastened our helmets and shook off the excess water. “I trust you had an enjoyable and enlightening visit?”
“Oh, yes,” I assured him, smiling. “We did indeed.”
We made our way back to the hotel, passing a couple of the smaller maintenance subs we’d seen the previous day through the walls of our suite. Stripping off our suits, we returned them to the preparation room and headed out of the docking area. It was close to lunchtime, and even though it was clear Bayta was anxious to get back to the suite where we could talk, I insisted we stop at one of the restaurants first. We had a quick meal, then returned to the suite.
And as I ushered Bayta inside and closed the door behind us, I finally felt something I’d been expecting ever since leaving New York: the gentle tingling of my watch against my skin.