Chapter 29
Hatch was the last to set foot on the ladder. The others were already stretched out for twenty feet below him. The lights on their helmets played through the murk as they descended hand over hand. A sense of vertigo passed over him, and he looked up, grabbing at the rung. The ladder was rock solid, he knew; even if he fell, the lifeline would keep him from tumbling far.
As they went deeper, a curious hush fell over the team and among the Orthanc crew, monitoring the mission over the live channel. The incessant sounds of the settling Pit, the soft creakings and tickings, filled the air like the whispered teeming of invisible sea creatures. Hatch passed the first cluster of terminal hubs, electrical outlets, and cable jacks that had been set into the ladder at fifteen-foot intervals.
"Everyone all right?" came Neidelman's low voice over the intercom. Positive responses came back, one by one.
"Dr. Magnusen?" Neidelman asked.
"Instruments normal," came the voice from inside Orthanc. "All boards are green."
"Dr. Rankin?"
"Scopes inactive, Captain. No sign of any seismic disturbances or magnetic anomalies."
"Mr. Streeter?"
"All systems on the array are nominal," the laconic voice replied.
"Very well," Neidelman said. "We'll continue descending to the fifty-foot platform, placing sensors as necessary, then stop for a breather. Be careful not to catch your lifelines on any beams. Dr. Bonterre, Dr. Hatch, Mr. Wopner, keep your eyes open. If you see anything strange, I want to know."
"You kidding?" came Wopner's voice. "The whole place is strange."
As he followed the group, Hatch felt almost as if he was sinking into a deep pool of brackish water. The air was clammy and cold, redolent of decay. Each exhalation condensed into a cloud of vapor that hung in the supersaturated air, refusing to dissipate. He looked about, the light on his helmet swiveling with his head. They were now in the tidal zone of the Pit, where the water had formerly risen and fallen twice a day. He was surprised to see the same bands of life he'd observed countless times among rocks and tidal pools at the sea edge: first barnacles, then seaweed, then mussels and limpets; followed by a band of starfish; next, sea cucumbers, periwinkles, sea urchins, and anemones. As he continued to descend, he passed strata of coral and seaweed. Hundreds of whelks still clung pitifully to the walls and beams, hoping in vain for a return of the tide. Now and then a whelk would at last lose its grip and fall into the echoing vastness.
Though an immense amount of flotsam and jetsam had already been removed from the drained Pit, an obstacle course of ancient junk remained. The ladder array had been deftly threaded through rotting beams, tangles of metal, and discarded pieces of drilling apparatus. The team stopped as Neidelman tapped a sensor into a small opening on one side of the Pit. As they waited for Wopner to calibrate the sensor, Hatch found his spirits beginning to flag in the mephitic atmosphere. He wondered if the rest of the team shared the feeling, or if he was simply laboring under the additional knowledge that, somewhere in this cold, dripping labyrinth, lay his brother's body.
"Man, it stinks down here," said Wopner, bending over his handheld computer.
"Air readings normal," came the voice of Neidelman. "We'll be installing a ventilation system over the next few days."
As they descended once again, the original cribbing in the shaft became more clearly defined as thick layers of seaweed gave way to long hanging strings of kelp. A muffled rumble came from above: thunder. Hatch glanced up and saw the mouth of the Pit etched against the sky, the dark bulk of Orthanc rising in a greenish glow. Farther above, lowering clouds had turned the heavens iron gray. A flicker of lightning flashed a momentary, ghastly illumination into the Pit.
Suddenly, the group below him stopped. Glancing down, Hatch could see Neidelman playing his beam into two ragged openings on either side of the shaft, tunnels that led off into darkness.
"What do you think?" asked Neidelman, tapping in another sensor.
"It is not original," said Bonterre, bending carefully into the second opening to affix a sensor and take a closer look. "Look at the cribbing: it is small and ripsawed, not adzed. Perhaps from the Parkhurst expedition of the 1830s, non?"
She straightened, then gazed up at Hatch, the lance of her headlamp illuminating his legs. "I can see up your dress." She smirked.
"Maybe we should switch places," Hatch replied.
They worked their way down the ladder, placing stress sensors into the beams and cribbing as they went, until they reached the narrow platform at the fifty-foot level. In the reflected light of his helmet, Hatch could see the Captain's face was pale with excitement. His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat despite the chilly air.
There came another flash of lightning and a distant sound of thunder. The rivulets of water seemed to be trickling faster now, and Hatch guessed it must be raining heavily up top. He looked upward, but the opening was now almost completely obscured by the crisscrossing beams they had passed, the drops of water flying down past his lamp. He wondered if the swell had increased, and hoped the cofferdam would hold it; he had a momentary image of the sea bursting through the cofferdam and roaring back into the Pit, drowning them instantly.
"I'm freezing," complained Wopner. "Why didn't you warn me to bring an electric blanket? And it stinks even worse than before."
"Slightly elevated levels of methane and carbon dioxide," Neidelman said, looking at his monitor. "Nothing to get worried about."
"He is right, though," said Bonterre, adjusting a canteen on her belt. "It is chilly."
"Forty-eight degrees," said Neidelman tersely. "Any other observations?"
There was a silence.
"Let's continue, then. We're likely to start finding more shafts and side tunnels beyond this point. We'll alternate placing the sensors. Since Mr. Wopner must calibrate each of them manually, he's going to fall behind. We'll wait for him at the hundred-foot platform."
At this depth, the crisscrossing support beams had accumulated an incredible variety of trash. Old cables, chains, gears, hoses, even rotting leather gloves were tangled in the crossbeams. They began to come across additional openings cut into the cribbed walls, where tunnels branched off or secondary shafts intersected the main pit. Neidelman took the first one, placing sensors back twenty feet; Bonterre took the next. Then it was his own turn.
Carefully, Hatch played out some line from his harness, stepping back from the ladder into the cross-shaft. He felt his foot sink into yielding ooze. The tunnel was narrow and low, stretching off at a sharp upward angle. It had been crudely hacked out of the glacial till, nothing as elegant as the Water Pit shaft, obviously of a later date. Stooping, he went twenty feet up the tunnel, then fished a piezoelectric sensor from his satchel and drove it into the calcified earth. He returned to the central Pit, placing a small fluorescent flag at the mouth of the shaft to alert Wopner.
As he stepped back onto the array, Hatch heard a loud, agonizing complaint from a nearby timber, followed by a flurry of creakings that whispered quickly up and down the shaft. He froze, gripping the ladder tightly, holding his breath.
"Just the Pit settling," came the voice of Neidelman. He had already set his sensor and moved farther down the ladder to the next cross-shaft. As he spoke, there came another screech— sharp and strangely human—echoing from a side tunnel.
"What the hell was that?" Wopner said, behind them now, his voice a little too loud in the confined space.
"More of the same," said Neidelman. "The protest of old wood."
There was another shriek, followed by a low gibbering.
"That's no goddamn wood," said Wopner. "That sounds alive."
Hatch looked up. The programmer had frozen in the act of calibrating one of the sensors: His palmtop computer was held in one outstretched hand, and the index finger of his other was resting on it, looking ridiculously as if he was pointing into his own palm.