Douglas Preston - Riptide

"Man, it stinks down here," said Wopner, bending over his handheld computer.

"Air readings normal," came the voice of Neidelman. "We'll be installing a ventilation system over the next few days."

As they descended once again, the original cribbing in the shaft became more clearly defined as thick layers of seaweed gave way to long hanging strings of kelp. A muffled rumble came from above: thunder. Hatch glanced up and saw the mouth of the Pit etched against the sky, the dark bulk of Orthanc rising in a greenish glow. Farther above, lowering clouds had turned the heavens iron gray. A flicker of lightning flashed a momentary, ghastly illumination into the Pit.

Suddenly, the group below him stopped. Glancing down, Hatch could see Neidelman playing his beam into two ragged openings on either side of the shaft, tunnels that led off into darkness.

"What do you think?" asked Neidelman, tapping in another sensor.

"It is not original," said Bonterre, bending carefully into the second opening to affix a sensor and take a closer look. "Look at the cribbing: it is small and ripsawed, not adzed. Perhaps from the Parkhurst expedition of the 1830s, non?"

She straightened, then gazed up at Hatch, the lance of her headlamp illuminating his legs. "I can see up your dress." She smirked.

"Maybe we should switch places," Hatch replied.

They worked their way down the ladder, placing stress sensors into the beams and cribbing as they went, until they reached the narrow platform at the fifty-foot level. In the reflected light of his helmet, Hatch could see the Captain's face was pale with excitement. His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat despite the chilly air.

There came another flash of lightning and a distant sound of thunder. The rivulets of water seemed to be trickling faster now, and Hatch guessed it must be raining heavily up top. He looked upward, but the opening was now almost completely obscured by the crisscrossing beams they had passed, the drops of water flying down past his lamp. He wondered if the swell had increased, and hoped the cofferdam would hold it; he had a momentary image of the sea bursting through the cofferdam and roaring back into the Pit, drowning them instantly.

"I'm freezing," complained Wopner. "Why didn't you warn me to bring an electric blanket? And it stinks even worse than before."

"Slightly elevated levels of methane and carbon dioxide," Neidelman said, looking at his monitor. "Nothing to get worried about."

"He is right, though," said Bonterre, adjusting a canteen on her belt. "It is chilly."

"Forty-eight degrees," said Neidelman tersely. "Any other observations?"

There was a silence.

"Let's continue, then. We're likely to start finding more shafts and side tunnels beyond this point. We'll alternate placing the sensors. Since Mr. Wopner must calibrate each of them manually, he's going to fall behind. We'll wait for him at the hundred-foot platform."

At this depth, the crisscrossing support beams had accumulated an incredible variety of trash. Old cables, chains, gears, hoses, even rotting leather gloves were tangled in the crossbeams. They began to come across additional openings cut into the cribbed walls, where tunnels branched off or secondary shafts intersected the main pit. Neidelman took the first one, placing sensors back twenty feet; Bonterre took the next. Then it was his own turn.

Carefully, Hatch played out some line from his harness, stepping back from the ladder into the cross-shaft. He felt his foot sink into yielding ooze. The tunnel was narrow and low, stretching off at a sharp upward angle. It had been crudely hacked out of the glacial till, nothing as elegant as the Water Pit shaft, obviously of a later date. Stooping, he went twenty feet up the tunnel, then fished a piezoelectric sensor from his satchel and drove it into the calcified earth. He returned to the central Pit, placing a small fluorescent flag at the mouth of the shaft to alert Wopner.

As he stepped back onto the array, Hatch heard a loud, agonizing complaint from a nearby timber, followed by a flurry of creakings that whispered quickly up and down the shaft. He froze, gripping the ladder tightly, holding his breath.

"Just the Pit settling," came the voice of Neidelman. He had already set his sensor and moved farther down the ladder to the next cross-shaft. As he spoke, there came another screech— sharp and strangely human—echoing from a side tunnel.

"What the hell was that?" Wopner said, behind them now, his voice a little too loud in the confined space.

"More of the same," said Neidelman. "The protest of old wood."

There was another shriek, followed by a low gibbering.

"That's no goddamn wood," said Wopner. "That sounds alive."

Hatch looked up. The programmer had frozen in the act of calibrating one of the sensors: His palmtop computer was held in one outstretched hand, and the index finger of his other was resting on it, looking ridiculously as if he was pointing into his own palm.

"Get that light out of my eyes, willya?" Wopner said. "The faster I can get these suckers calibrated, the faster I can get out of this shithole."

"You just want to get back to the ship before Christophe steals your glory," said Bonterre good-humoredly. She had emerged from her side shaft and was now descending the ladder.

As they approached the hundred-foot platform, another sight came into view. Until now, the horizontal tunnels opening into the side of the shaft had been crude and ragged, poorly shored, some partially caved in. But here, they could see a tunnel opening that had obviously been carefully formed.

Bonterre shone her light at the square opening. "This is definitely part of the original Pit," she said.

"What's its purpose?" asked Neidelman, pulling a sensor out of his satchel.

Bonterre leaned into the tunnel. "I cannot say for sure. But you can see how Macallan used the natural fissures in the rock for his construction."

"Mr. Wopner?" Neidelman said, glancing up the shaft.

There was a brief silence. Then Hatch heard Wopner respond: "Yes?" It was a quiet, unusually subdued voice. Glancing up, he saw the young man leaning on the ladder perhaps twenty feet above him, beside a flag Hatch had placed, calibrating the sensor. Wet hair was plastered down the sides of his face, and the programmer was shivering.

"Kerry?" Hatch asked. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

Neidelman glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes strangely eager. "It'll take him some time to calibrate all the sensors we've placed so far," he said. "Why don't we take a closer look at this side tunnel?"

The Captain stepped across the gap into the shaft, then helped the others across. They found themselves in a long, narrow tunnel, perhaps five feet high and three feet across, shored with massive timbers similar to those in the Water Pit itself. Neidelman took a small knife from his pocket and stuck it into one of the timbers. "Soft for a half inch, and then solid," he said, replacing the knife. "Looks safe."

They moved forward cautiously, stooping in the low tunnel. Neidelman stopped frequently to test the solidity of the beams. The tunnel ran straight ahead for fifty yards. Suddenly, the Captain stopped and gave a low whistle.

Glancing ahead, Hatch could see a curious stone chamber, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter. It appeared to have eight sides, each side ending in arches that rose to a groined ceiling. In the center of the floor was an iron grating, puffy with rust, covering an unguessably deep hole. They stood in the entrance to this chamber, each breath adding more mist to the gathering miasma. The quality of the air had grown sharply worse, and Hatch found himself becoming slightly lightheaded. Faint noises came from below the central grate: the whisperings of water, perhaps, or the settling of earth.