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Craig made one dive. It was enough to confirm their worst fears. The tu
He backed out of the tu
Tupho, are you all right?"
"Okay!" Craig yelled back up the shaft.
"But you were right. The tu
When he climbed back to the platform, they were waiting for him. Their expressions were grim and taut in the firelight.
"What are we going to do?" Sally A
"The first thing to do is to explore the cavern minutely." Craig was still gasping from the swim and the climb. "Every corner and nook, every opening and branch of every tu
"We found one tu
"What do we do now?"
"We will eat a little and then rest.
We have got to try and sleep. We will need to keep our strength up." Craig realized it was an evasion even as he said it, but surprise ingly, he did sleep.
When he awoke, Sally-A
Although his own throat and chest were still painful from the gas, they seemed to have eased a little and he felt more cheerful. He lay back against the rock wall, careful not to disturb Sally'Arme. Tungata was snoring across the fire, but then he grunted and rolled over and was silent.
The only sound in the cavern now was the drip of water from the seepages in the roof, and then, very faintly, another sound, a whispering, so low that it might have been merely the echoes of silence in his own ears. Craig lay and concentrated his hearing. The sound a
"Of course," he recdknized it, "bats!" He remembered hearing it more clearly when he had first reached the platform. He lay and thought about it for a while and then gently eased Sally-A
Craig took one of the lanterns, and went back into the tu
There were long periods of silence, broken only by the musical pinging of water drips on rock, and then suddenly a soft chorus of squeaks that echoed down the chimney of the shaft, then silence again.
Craig flicked on the lantern, and the time was five o'clock. He was not certain if it was morning or evening, but if the bats were roosting up there, then it must still be daylight in the outside world.
He squatted down and waited an hour, at intervals checking the slow passage of time, and then there was a new outburst of faroff bat sounds, no longer the occasional sleepy squeaks, but an excited chorus, many thousands of the tiny rodents coming awake for the nocturnal hunt.
The chorus dwindled swiftly into silence, and Craig checked his watch again. Six-thirty, five He could imagine somewhere up above the airborne horde pouring out of the mouth of a cave into the darkening evening sky, like smoke from a chimney pot.
He moved carefully to the edge of the platform, steadied himself on the side wall and leaned out over the drop very cautiously, keeping a handhold. He twisted his head to look up the shaft, holding the lantern out to the full stretch of his arm. The feeble yellow light seemed only to emphasize the blackness above him.
The shaft was semicircular in plan, about ten feet across to the far wall. He gave up on trying to penetrate the upper darkness and concentrated on studying the rock of the shaft wall opposite him, prodigally using up the battery of the lamp" It was smooth as glass, honed by the water that had bored it open. No hold or niche, nothing, except- He strained out over the drop for an extra inch. There was a darker mark on the rock just at the very edge of his vision, directly opposite him, and well above the level of his head.
Was it a stratum of colour, or was it a crack? He could not be sure, and the light was fading. It could even be a trick of shadow and light.
"Pupho," Tungata's voice spoke behind him and he pulled back. "What is it?"
"I think this is the only way open to the surface." Craig switched off the lantern to save it.
"Up that chimney?" Tungata's voice was incredulous in the darkness. "Nobody could get up there."
"The bats they are roosting up there somewhere."
"Bats have wings," Tungata reminded him, and then after a while, "How high up there?" don't know, but I think there may be a crack or a ledge on the other side. Shine the other lamp, its battery is stronger." They both leaned out and stared across.