Straight to Steemit Novel: Sojourn: Chapter 7 - Discoveries

Preamble

This is the seventh chapter in my straight to Steemit Novel Project.

Past Entries
Chapter 1 - The Road.
Chapter 2 - The Evening Road.
Chapter 3 - The Roadside
Chapter 4 - The Hotel
Chapter 5 - Destination
Chapter 6 - The Cave

A new chapter will be added in six days time. The cover image may change from week to week.

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Chapter Seven – Discoveries

Everyone had gathered around the thermal imaging camera to capture a glimpse of the red blip. It appeared to be stationary. The camera screen didn’t have much detail, but everyone had a theory.

“Could be a volcanic vent,” Roger stated, going to the most logical cause for a heat source underground. “There would be steam rising, and more heat if that was the case.” Violet was quick to correct him. Meredith thought it might have been something different all together. “Could it be some sort of creature? A mole, or whatever lives underground?”
Malcom was starting to get curious “Less guesses, more walking?”

“Let’s move on then, Mr Show Business.” Finally, I got to use the nickname I had invented for him in my mind. The quartz formation seemed to have served its purpose as a beacon within the cave, and before we continued on, I snapped a photograph of the mineral, the camera flash illuminating it one last time before we moved, as a group, onward to the heat source.

Torches were focused on the ground, and I guided the group with Roger at my side. We followed the heat signature to its apparent location, where there was not a volcanic vent, but a vent all the same. Something completely unexpected for a cave floor, at least. There was a metallic grate. Heat did not radiate up from the grate, but the thermal camera showed that honeycombed metal itself was warm, but not the space around it. It seemed to defy logic on the camera screen.

The honeycomb grate seamlessly sat in the stone of the cave floor, and was about the size of an old record. “How is it that the stone around it isn’t warm?” The thermal imaging camera suggested the metallic grate itself was about thirty-five degrees Celsius. The torches were focused on the grate now, and the group continued to hypothesize.

“I can’t see the bottom.” Meredith was perplexed. She grabbed a pebble, shuffled out of the way, and dropped it toward the grate. The pebble clinked against the metal, and didn’t make it through the honeycomb pattern. “Malcom,” I said, pointing to his hand, which still held his range finder. “How far down does it go?”

He knelt down, cringing as the weight transferred from his knee to his ankle. The laser light traveled downward, and seemed to illuminate the shaft as it did. The range finder beeped three times. “Error!” He showed me the screen, pointing with a finger and a puzzled look. Roger snatched the rangefinder from Malcom. “That’s not possible. These things are good for 25km…”

“Even if we did know how far down it went, there’s no way we’d be able to squeeze through a gap like that anyway.” Although, it might be fun to throw things down the hole. Meredith nudged the pebble that rest on the honeycomb grill with her boot, and it filtered through, and fell. There was silence.

There was no sound from the pebble. The grate didn’t react to the weight of her boot atop it. It was strange, but we weren’t getting closer to finding the missing expedition by sitting around looking at a grate in the floor of some cave. Roger urged the group to move on by starting to head further into the darkness. The man did not seem to have time to look at a hole in the ground.

Torchlight pierced the cavern, and we progressed, cautiously ensuring that there wasn’t any errant hazards in the form of stones, boulders or ankle twisting fissures in the Earth beneath our feet. It was unclear how much further the cavern would continue in the way in which it did, at a gentle downward slope. We had a laser light guiding us, and a thermal camera, which again, showed us nothing but darkness.

The laser light grew smaller as we progressed, and eventually, we encountered a solid, apparently impenetrable layer of rock. “Can’t be another dead end.” I said, hopefully that it was. We had been trudging through the cave for only about thirty minutes, and we were expected to stay down here seven days?

There were chilly columns of air rushing upward from before us, suggesting there was some sort of opening nearby. About a metre before the wall began, the cave floor perilously gave way to a drop of about four feet. It looked like the side of a jagged cliff face, and the ditch beneath didn’t look like a great place to slip and fall.

There were shallow pools of water in the space, which gathered at the bases of naturally formed spikes of stones, jagged and uninviting. Violet made a suggestion. “We will need to carefully find somewhere to descend.” She looked at Malcom, hoping there wouldn’t be a repeat of his injury. “Whatever you do, don’t fall.”

“We’ve got rope, right?” Meredith asked the question as she approached the edge, tenderly looking beyond. Malcom had managed to fish some rope out of his backpack, and said “Will this do?” Meredith took the rope and examined it briefly. “No tow cable, but it should suffice.”

“Here looks good,” Roger shouted from a small distance away. The surface of rock had eroded away just below where he stood, and a nub of rock jutted from the Earth. He tested it with his left foot, and it did not budge. Violet moved over to examine the rock, squatting as she spoke. “It should hold, doesn’t look to be fissured or fractured, one at a time, of course.”

Meredith had unspooled the rope and was skilfully manipulating it into a knot. “Helps when your pa was a fisherman his whole life.” She had clearly seen my sense of wonder at the effortlessness she was displaying. “Useful,” Malcom remarked, before continuing “I hope we won’t need to many more of those knots later.” We most likely would, given the nature of the fact that we were in a cave.

It didn’t take long for Meredith to be satisfied with the way in which the rope was secured around the rock. She had fashioned a safety line, enabling someone standing on the edge to help secure the descending individual. She didn’t look like she would be capable of bracing the weight of anyone involved and suggested that she descend first.

She threw the rope to Violet and provided brief instruction on how to stand. Meredith gripped the rope, and disappeared over the ledge. It was an athletic performance, and it was clear that she had done such a thing before. She did say earlier that her husband had been in the defence force, and this was likely the result of some dating that they had done in their earlier days. I didn’t particularly want to ask, but I was glad that she had these skills to contribute to the group.

“Release” Violet let the rope move forward, and before long Meredith repeated the same word again. “Release.” Another length of rope, and Violet moved closer to the edge again, trying to dig her heels into the solid rock. I looked over the edge as Meredith made her descent, and it did not appear to be too dangerous. She had met solid ground, and the top of her head was still visible from above.

“Are the ropes really necessary?” I asked, looking down – it was only four feet, and I did not particularly feel keen on trusting my descent to any of the others in the group, apart from Violet. At least one off us would need to go it alone. “I’ll go last. Violet, you go next.” I wasn’t going to trust anyone else with her security. She nodded, and handed the rope across as she moved to the edge, coiling the rope around her hands.

“I won’t die if you let me fall, but you’ll probably die of exhaustion having to carry me if you do.” Great confidence booster right there. It seemed appropriate to make a joke about killing her off. “It’s the wrong type of knot to kill you anyway.” I knew nothing about knots. Also, you can get a better grip with your neck than your hands.

Malcom didn’t laugh. Roger smirked. Violet flashed a smile. Meredith didn’t hear the remarks. She didn’t fall, and it was pretty easy to stand in the one position, releasing a bit of rope at a time. She made the descent more cautiously than Meredith had, and saw my point about the apparent safety-overkill with the rope. The fact that there were no signs that others had made a descent with rope in a similar way hadn’t occurred to me until now.

“So how do you propose the group before us made the descent without any rope being left behind?” It felt like a valid question, and Roger answered it through action. He moved to the edge, lay on his belly, shuffled backward and lowered himself down. “You don’t need rope for a drop like that.”

“No, but you need it to get back up,” Malcom worried about the future a bit too much for my liking.
I decided to make the tone ever darker. “That’s if we get to go back up.” He laughed nervously, the fear of being trapped underground with four other strangers seemed to linger in his mind.

I followed Roger’s lead in order to descend, leaving Malcom at the top of the gap with the rope. The descent was easy, and the rocks were not as sharp as those at the earlier parts of the cave we had travelled through. You would probably sustain some injuries if you were to slip, but it wouldn’t be life threatening unless you hit your head. That’s what the helmets were for.

I really had wished there were gloves in the equipment that we had been given, as I gripped a piece of jutting rock to maintain my balance when I had finally reached solid ground once more. Malcom remained a alone at the top for a moment before deciding it was easiest to descend in the same manner that Roger had.

We all stood in the ditch. No one said a word. It was time to explore the location a little more closely. There was not much to see other than more rock, more earth, and according to the thermal camera, no more heat signatures, not counting the four other human bodies that were in the location. Meredith had proved useful with her knot-tying skills, Roger knew how to explore, and it came naturally. Violet was going to be useful due to her medical expertise.

I felt useless. All I was doing was walking around holding a camera. I felt that Malcom was experiencing similar emotions of uselessness as he spoke to Roger. “Lead the way, boss.” Roger nodded, as the ditch was surveyed by his torch.

From where we had descended, the exit from the ditch wasn’t obvious. From where we were, within it, it was clear that the cave burrowed deeper into the Earth. A downward passageway, too narrow to fit more than one individual at a time. Roger instructed that I lead. “Thermal.”

Once more, nothing on the camera screen. “Nothing.”
“Proceed.”

I switched to torch light once more, to witness more rock. There was rock everywhere. Above, rock that looked like the fossilised roots of trees, creating an elegant flying buttress style ceiling of darkness. It almost looked manufactured. I moved forward, the passageway turning to the left.

I stopped. There was rubble and boulders to about knee height. It didn’t look like the most stable mass of rocks. “Gonna have to watch your heads.” No heat signatures. I stepped toward the pile of rocks and moved onward. It wasn’t a major obstacle. It felt unsteady after foot, and it was puzzling how the boulders and rocks were so loosely placed in a cave allegedly unexplored.

The sounds of boots vying for balance atop the rockpiles was permeating throughout the space, and I was relieved that the blockage only last a few metres before the floor once again became smoother, solid ground.

The passageway widened slightly, and the jagged rock gave way to an even larger opening that did seem to be carved out of the rock. There was the clear shape of a non-quite symmetrical arch burrowed into the Earth, and this did look manufactured.

“Too smooth be natural,” Violet said. Evidently, she had started to believe the fact that there could be something else alive down here. “Do you think it is going to result in us finding anything?” Malcom asked. “We haven’t yet gone far enough – we haven’t spent long enough trying to find anything or anyone.” Roger seemed to have developed an incredible sense of endurance for a man who seemed so frail and… looney for lack of any better words. His strength of character and motivational, no-nonsense attitude was a surprise to me.

“Let’s keep going!” Meredith had a positive tone in her voice for the first time since she had come to tow away that ruined cabriolet that started our journey. She hurried ahead through the tunnel. She didn’t walk, she didn’t run, she had a youthful, playful prancing to her gait. In the tunnel, under the torchlight from four helmets on top of four stranger’s helmets, her playful silhouette painted a much-needed shadow of hope.

I followed in her path, and watched her through the thermal imaging camera. She stopped suddenly, and the camera told me why before she spoke. To the right of her slender form on the screen, an enormous heat signature loomed.