Chapter 708

The Cavern

“Everybody strapped in?” Doctor Emerson asked the others.

When everyone answered positively other than the General who was snoring softly, she told Liam to go.

Liam called up to Jeff who was sitting on the cage just above the driver’s head. “The aliens will be expecting us to use the main passageway, but with yours and Dr. Emerson’s permission, I know another way. When we get out of this maze, we’ll soon be back on a wider passageway. If my memory serves, there is only one place that is so low that you’ll have to dismount for a hundred yards or so. I’ll let you know in plenty of time.”

“Sounds good to me,” Jeff said, and a moment later the Doctor gave her permission too.

The first passageway was only a foot or two wider than the runabout, and Liam kept his speed down to little more than a walk. The runabout’s electric motors were almost totally silent, with the mesh wheels crunching on the gravel making more noise than the motors that drove them. No use advertising where we are any more than we have to, Jeff thought. The passageway was drastically different from the route they had used when Jeff, Kayla, General Whitworth and the First Officer had walked in. It had not received the clearing that the main passageway had. Consequently, Liam frequently had to slow to a crawl.

After a particularly rough stretch of passageway, Jeff was glad of the spare steel mesh wheel attached to the back of the vehicle — they might just wind up needing it. Other than the mesh wheels, nothing short of a tracked vehicle would make it through the rough terrain.

Later, as Jeff continued to stare ahead in the hopes that he would see the aliens before they could attack, they rounded yet another of the many turns in the passageway to see nothing but black, glass-smooth water reflecting their lights.

“You must have taken a wrong turn,” Dr. Emerson accused.

“No, Doctor. This is the right way,” Liam said as he stopped the runabout at the water’s edge and got out.

“See where the passageway starts back up over there?” he asked as he narrowed the beam of his headlamp and shown it across a two hundred-foot expanse of almost-perfectly still, black-appearing water.

The Doctor turned to stare at Liam, blinding him with her headlamp. “Surely, you’re not thinking about driving through the water all the way over there. How deep is it, anyway?” she asked.

“Well, a couple of feet, I suppose, and there’s a fairly wide path, or ridge if you will, that connects the passageways. I couldn’t sleep one night and decided to go exploring. When I found the passageway, I was almost certain it led to the outside. Don’t ask me why; I just knew it did. Anyway, I had my walking stick that everyone teases me about, so I just felt my way across. (His walking stick was a perfectly straight pole about four feet long and an inch and a half in diameter, stained and polished a jet black.

“Needless to say, I was very careful because I didn’t want to fall into the water and short out my lights. I might never find my way back in the darkness. Anyway, the ridge, or whatever you want to call it, seems to be five or six feet wide, but it isn’t absolutely flat and slopes toward the sides. My walking stick wasn’t long enough to reach the bottom a couple of feet past the ridge, so I don’t know how deep the lake is after that.”

After reaching back into the vehicle, he brought out his walking stick. “Who wants to be my sounding man?” he asked.

“I would love to, but I need to take care of the General,” Emma replied.

“You need to do it,” Jeff inserted. “You have the experience, and I’m sure Ben is an excellent driver too. Okay with you two?” The Prime asked.

“Sure,” both men agreed.

“Are you certain about this, Liam? You didn’t say anything about the lake when you suggested this passageway,” Dr. Emerson accused.

“I’m sure,” he said with a grin. You would have balked if I had told you, he thought.

“There is a recess on the front similar to the ones on the sides, and I think there is even a safety belt there. Be careful. We don’t need to lose the only one of us who knows the way out of here,” the doctor said with a frown.

“It’s not as if we are going to be moving at any great speed. Not only will we be going slow, but we will have to stop multiple times while I thoroughly sound out the bottom in front of the runabout,” Liam said, chuckling as he stepped into the recess, but he declined the safety belt since he would be moving from side to side of the vehicle to check the depth.

As they slowly entered the clear water, Liam poked around with his walking stick, then motioned for Ben to move ahead a few feet before motioning for him to stop again. “Shit,” he mumbled, then louder, “It’s not exactly a wall, but, like I said, it slopes off quickly and is only a foot or so wider than our vehicle.”

As he waved for Ben to proceed again, he raised his voice so everyone could hear. “This passageway goes to the outside, is a much more direct route and is a third the distance of the main passageway. I suspect the aliens will probably assume that we would use the main route, although this passageway has its rough spots, it might well turn out to be much safer. It comes out a quarter of a mile farther down the bluff. As long as we stay six inches or so from either edge, the runabout should be approximately centered on the built-up area.”

“Everybody take off your seat belts,” Jeff ordered from his position on top. “That way if we do slip off the side, those inside the runabout can get out of the vehicle quicker.”

“Let’s get it done,” Dr. Emerson said to cover her nervousness.

As they moved slowly through the water, Jeff cast his headlamp from one side to the other. To the left, the ceiling was much lower and the lake seemed to narrow in that direction. To the right, it opened out beyond where his light would reach, making Jeff wonder just how big the lake was and how far underground they were. The curving surface of the overhead ceiling and the water made their voices sound odd.

The continuing blackness also made the Prime wonder if there were other places in the cavern that had light the way the amphitheater had.

As he sat thinking, the right front wheel struck the edge of a big bolder under the water and the vehicle jerked to a sudden halt with the runabout turned slightly out of line on the raised area. “Easy,” Kayla called out as she leaned to look straight down into the water. “The back left wheel is almost on the drop off. If it slides over, we’re going to be hung up on the edge if we don’t go into the deeper water.”

“Yeah, the same thing for the right front,” Liam, who had slipped off the front when the vehicle hit the rock and was now standing knee-deep in the cold water.

“Everybody but the General, out,” Jeff said as he slid down from the roof. “Be careful and don’t step off the edge unless you want to go for a swim in cold water.”

“What about it, Ben? Do we have room to squeeze past the rock if we manage to straighten the runabout up?”

“It will be close, but I think we can make it.”

“Okay, come on back here with me,” Jeff said as the men made their way around to the back. “Grab hold. This thing is nothing but framework. I think with all of us working in unison, we can bounce the runabout up and down enough to get it to move to the side if we time it right and push to the side on the bounce.

“Emma, if you don’t mind, sit with the General and keep him from falling over when we bounce the vehicle.”

“Wait a minute; I can help too,” Dr. Emerson said as she hurried around to the back, but with Jeff, the First Officer, Ben and Liam, there really wasn’t room for her. The runabout had been built to be as light as possible while maintaining its durability, which worked in their favor. Once they were coordinated, the men could bounce the runabout on its springs. Then when they all pushed on the upstroke, it moved back in line with the underwater ridge again.

Ben got in, and with the others directing him, edged the runabout back a few inches before managing to squeeze the machine past the obstruction.

“Only a little more and we’ll be out of the water,” Jeff said as they mounted up again, everyone now wet to their knees.

After a few minutes, “We’re not that far from the exit, but I remember a rough area ahead,” Liam said.

Jeff turned to Liam again. “This rough area, were there boulders in the way?”

“Yeah. Anything from the size of your head to the size of the runabout. But I think with all of us, we can roll the biggest ones out of the way.”

“Maybe we won’t have to,” Jeff said mysteriously as he regained his seat. “I think we’re going to have help shortly.”

While the others wondered what he meant, Jeff, with his superb hearing, could hear what he assumed were Ship’s mechanicals clearing the passageway of obstructions well ahead of them. When he glanced at Kayla, she smiled and nodded on down the passageway, her enhanced hearing having picked up the sound as well.

The intermittent sounds continued to become louder until they rounded a bend in the passageway to see the two mechanicals picking up boulders and tossing them out of the way.

Assuming that their radios would work now, Jeff spoke into his, “Ship?”

“Yes, Love?”

“We’re near the outside, and we’ll be out soon.”

“I know.”

“The General has been hurt and has lost a lot of blood.”

“I am near the entrance and will be waiting.”

There was one last giant boulder in the way, and the mechanicals were struggling to move it. Jeff worried that it might be too big for his TK as well. The General is looking weaker, and we really need to get him to Ship ASAP, but I don’t want to put him on one of those things’ platforms. If I can’t move the boulder out of the way, I’ll have to, though.

Then Jeff had a second thought. Even if I can move it, there’s no place to put it. The passageway is way too narrow for the runabout to pass something that big.

One of the mechanicals moved up and struck the boulder with one of its arms, apparently trying to split the boulder or maybe chip off a big piece. Other than a resounding thud and a little dust, nothing happened though.

The mechanical continued hitting in the same place, obviously wanting to split the boulder.

Tell it to stop and move out of the way, Jeff told Ship mentally.

The mechanical immediately backed up. Everyone was watching Jeff as he stepped up to the boulder. If I screw up and don’t move this thing, I’m going to make a laughingstock out of myself.

Suddenly, a thought struck, and with his TK, Jeff envisioned a three-foot-long thickened blade with a handle that would allow him to swing it like an axe when splitting a piece of wood. He had plenty of clearance above, so that was no problem. The boulder was well lit with the headlamps in addition to the lighting on the mechanicals.

Jeff brought the invisible mental projection up as he prepared to swing, but the only one who could see it was Jeff. The thing felt heavy, but he thought he could swing it well enough. After a deep breath, he drew back a little farther and swung it with his TK. The invisible projection struck the rock at the same place the mechanical had, and ... stopped, with the vibrations flashing back through the mental handle of the TK and on into his mental hands. He could tell himself there was no connection with his physical hands, but they stung anyway.

“Shit,” he mumbled as he shook his hands to stop the stinging. To the people watching, the only things visible, other than Jeff, were the boulder and a long place on it that suddenly spurted rock chips and dust accompanied by a “thud” that sounded like metal hitting stone.

Mentally, Jeff spit on his hands and rubbed them together before taking up the TK axe again.

It would have been simpler to move the thing out of the way, except there isn’t any place to move it to.

Jeff swung again to the accompaniment of a crashing “thud” and a cloud of dust and rock chips exploding from the boulder. Again, he swung with every ounce of his being. Again, there was a resounding thud with rock chips and dust spraying out — then again. Finally, panting, with his temper at the boiling point, something clicked in his mind, and he reached to draw more power from somewhere — the power matching his fury. The mental axe hit with a cha-thud several times as loud, this time with rock chips spraying to the sides which caused his audience to move farther back and Emma to move her body in front of the General. Furious, Jeff felt more power flow into his body as he swung one last time with the intent of the axe going clear through the boulder and on into the ground. When the mental axe hit, the sound was different with rock chips and dust spraying out, but this time the axe buried itself in the ground under the boulder which split cleanly into two parts.