Blind Descent

"Nope. Just to long and meaningful relationships," Oscar said, and A

Inching along like a worm, A

She scratched ahead with her toes. Tugged forward with fingertips and stomach muscles. Humped along like a caterpillar, ignoring the rake of stone knives down her shoulder blades. Each foot achieved was a goal to be celebrated. When she thought she couldn't take any more she was granted a reprieve. The Wormhole bored out of the wall into a large room, and she spewed gratefully to the floor.

Oscar Iverson's choice of metaphor had been apt. As if she had entered a mouse's dream of paradise, A

In less than twenty minutes the men joined her. "Eight thirty," Iverson said, looking at his watch. "We're way slow. Everybody okay to pick up the pace?" Too tired to speak, A

Wonders flashed past in a sweating stream, caught in light fragments like views from a rain-streaked train window. Falls of liquid stone the color of old brass emptied into a lake so clear that the bottom, thirty feet down, looked no farther away than A

After the lake, they dressed and laced on their boots for Razor Blade Run. Aragonite bushes, white and as freeform as coral, bloomed in the utter stillness. The slightest touch by a passing caver was enough to snap the delicate crystals. Tu

"Watch those big feet. Laymon says Oscar walks like an elephant on a pogo stick…" from Holden.

A

By the time they arrived in Tinker's Hell, where Frieda lay, it was after two in the morning. A

Tinker's, where the survey team was camped, was an immense chamber; Shea Stadium could have been tucked inside with room left over for a taxi stand. A

Every muscle in her body melted with fatigue. Aches and pains would come with rest. For the moment she felt only warm and liquid, her mind as pliant as her limbs. With a poorly concealed grunt of exhaustion, she dumped her pack and dragged herself up beside him.

Sixty feet below, in the immense room, was a scene of rampant destruction. Breakdown littered the floor; blocks of limestone, some the size of houses, lay one on top of the other like the building blocks of a spoiled giant flung across his nursery. Amid this majestic rubble were cones and pillars of gold and burnt umber, stalactites and stalagmites that had been growing for countless ages and now lay broken and scattered.

"Jesus," A

"Who knows? I've never seen anything like it. But the breaks are old, old, old. Whatever happened, happened a long time ago."

Holden joined them, his light weaving in with theirs as they looked at the magnificent ruin.

"Yup," Holden said after a few minutes' study. "It looks like a bomb hit a tinker's cart. Have you spotted the camp yet?"

From his pack Iverson dug a secondary light source, a powerful six cell flashlight, and played the beam over the jagged floor. Near the end of the great room, on a flat place tucked up near the left-hand wall, his light picked out the litter of humanity. Looking pathetically small and fragile in the confusion of elemental stone, six people lay in sleeping bags. The wrinkled forms were soft and shapeless, like larvae on a deserted patch of beach. The necessities of human existence- packs, stoves, water, and food-were piled neatly at one end of the clearing. The group had been there four days, one since Frieda was hurt. The camp appeared clean and well organized.

"Another twenty minutes and vacation's over," Iverson said.

They do

Underground operations had officially commenced.

By the time they neared the camp, A

McCarty and Tillman exchanged greetings, and introductions were muttered. A

Even with the stamp of the cave on him and five days from a showerhead, Peter McCarty was a handsome man. Not matinee-idol pretty-A

He and Holden fell into a close, whispered conversation, needing to share information but not wanting to disturb the sleepers. They'd forgotten to douse their helmet lights, and feeling mildly righteous, A

At length, Holden broke away and came over to where she waited, beyond patience and nearly in a state of catatonia.