"Andy!"
The engineer responded with a hand-held scanning unit. He clambered up to the top of the rock and perched there. Together they scanned the dark water.
"Nothing for at least twenty meters. Just rock and wet. Do we go for it?"
"You got anything better to do?"
"Not a thing."
Cadmann, Andy and Carlos hammered pitons into the rock, then attached cables and ropes and climbed cautiously down the side into a lower body of water.
The gloom was absolute, as if no ray of light had penetrated this deeply since the Miskatonic first cut this chamber from the rock.
Tiny blind things moved sluggishly aside as he swam through the murk. Some wriggled like eels, and others scuttled along the bottom of the pool like crabs. They groped through the dark, trying to avoid him, gliding through his torchlight as if totally unaware of it.
No sound but the faint re-breather hiss in his ears, no natural light at all now. Just eleven men and two sterile women swimming silently through the murk. And we've all made our deposits in the sperm bank.
The rock walls began to close in from the sides, and Cadmann bumped against first one and then the other as his finned feet flailed for balance before he found the right path.
"Andy," he croaked into his throat mike. He suddenly remembered the first time he had tried to use a mouthpiece and a throat mike at the same time: he had swallowed about two cups of Barrier Reef brine. "How far did you say these caves extend?"
"I didn't. All we can do is search for an hour, hope that we can find our target. ‘Target.' Sounds like I expect it to be standing still, doesn't it? Anyway, then we make our way back out." Each of the thirteen members of the team carried two additional re-breather cartridges in their bulky backpacks.
That gave them a total of two hours—but Cadmann had no interest in letting things get down to the last few seconds. Fifty minutes in, fifty out. Twenty-minute margin for error.
If they couldn't find the corpse, they had to assume that the creature was still alive, and proceed from there. That meant traps, a doubled guard and a continuously activated minefield around the camp. And constant worry until we know it's dead.
The walls widened out again. Cadmann surfaced cautiously. He held the handlamp up to shine the beam around in the smoke-filled chamber.
There was another mild splash beside him, and Jerry surfaced, spear gun at the ready.
"Peaceful in here."
"But not silent. Hear that?"
Cadmann was about to ask. What?, then heard the distant gurgle.
The other twelve were up now. Their lamp beams pinked the darkness and smoke, running pale disks across bare cave walls.
"Let's go with the current for a while."
Their flippers barely moved as they let the current carry them toward the exit. Half the team watched underwater. The others stayed at the surface, with only their heads and lamps above the oily water. They swam in a V formation, each close enough to see two others. Sometimes the swirling smoke parted to show stalactites lancing down at them like yellowed fangs.
The current grew stronger. Cadmann surfaced. "Louder, I think."
"Rog," Andy answered.
"Stay together and head toward the shore!" Cadmann's arms and legs lashed powerfully at the water. Most of the others were right behind him. They were holding steady. He heard their regular breathing in his earphones.
Then a sudden anguished cry, and he saw someone disappear over the lip of a falls. Moments later Cadmann heard the splash.
"Who was that?"
A short pause, and then, "Kokubun, here. Wow! What a ride! Safe—only about a dozen meters. But it's lonely in here."
"Could you climb out. Mits?"
"No sweat. Come on down."
Cadmann considered for a moment. "All right. By twos."
His men swam toward the lip of the waterfall. A pair of snaggled, broken rocks divided the water flow, like the grinning mouth of a jack-o'-lantern as seen by the glare of the torches. The first two men tumbled down. There was silence for a moment, then laughter. "Piece of cake," one shouted.
Cadmann played his light behind him through the outer chamber. No disturbance, no movement. The yellowish smoke still swirled, but it was noticeably lighter even in the few minutes he had been there.
"Go by twos." Finally only Cadmann and Carlos were left, and together they swam for the lip. The pull of the current was strong, but not impossible to fight near the shoreline. When Cadmann let himself go there was a momentary sensation of weightlessness, then a ramp of water-polished stone to reach up from beneath them, and he slid the rest of the way into the water.
It took all of his discipline to restrain a whoop.
"Well." He shook his head, grinning under his mask. "That was refreshing. What have we here?"
The smoke was even deeper, and it looked sulphurous. The water was a little warmer than in the antechamber. Their lamp beams ate through the smoke to the blackened ceiling. Patches of steaming scum still floated on the water. It looked like something out of the inferno.
"If it was in here," Andy said positively, "it's dead now."
"I'll go with that." A grainy column of light stabbed out. The chamber was smaller than Cadmann had thought, and it was empty. His flash showed three jaggedly framed black exits.
"Now what. Coach?" Jerry asked.
"It was your soup. What do you think?"
"I think there was more than enough."
"Yeah. We don't have any real choices, do we? Divide into three teams and look into each of those exits. How is everyone fixed? Anyone need to change yet?"
There was a quick chorus of negatives, and Cadmann checked his own supply. Still almost a third left on his first cartridge. Good enough.
Jerry headed one team, Carlos another, and Cadmann took the third.
There was something about that middle tunnel...
"If the tunnels split again, that's it. Wait at the junction and signal. Under no circumstances divide the team, do you understand? When you're ten minutes into the second cartridge, turn around and start making your way back. If the radios start giving out, turn around and head back to this chamber. We don't want any heroes. If you spot the corpse, call for the rest of us. All right. Be safe."
Jerry and Andy swam with slow, even strokes. The engineer was rather clumsy on the land, but in the water his extra girth was less of a liability. A trail of tiny silvery bubbles escaping from Andy's re-breather reflected in Jerry's lamp beam.
Behind them, the other members of their team kept pace.
Something brushed Jerry, and he nervously followed it with the light.
It was almost a meter long, and looked more like a snake than a fish.
"I'm surprised to see anything alive down here," Andy said.
"Water breather," Jerry answered. "It's probably blind. Even in the deepest caves on Earth, you can find blind salamanders and insects."
When this is over, I'm coming back with a net and a sample case, he promised himself.
"Think it's dead?"
"Sure. We still have to know."
"Gotcha. I'm checking topside."
Andy headed up toward the surface, and by Jerry's light it was as if the man disappeared above the shoulders. "We're through into another chamber. The air looks clear."
"Don't take off your mask. Not all of the fumes are going to be visible."
"No problem."
Jerry surfaced next to him, shone his light around in the cave. This chamber was a little larger than the last, but still not more than thirty meters long. He directed his light straight up, and Andy whistled.
Directly above, the ceiling opened in a circular orifice about three meters across. "Will you look at this pothole?"