Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,63
down to wait impatiently. He glanced at his watch. To his surprise, they had been in the cavern some hours. The beam of his flashlight was yellowing; Brandon cut the switch to save the batteries, although he carried spares in his pockets. The blackness was as total as the inside of a grave, except for an occasional wan flash as Kenlaw shined his light past the tunnel mouth from the pit beyond. Brandon held his hand before his face, noted that he could dimly make out its outline. The albino had always known he could see better in the dark than others could, and it had seemed a sort of recompense for the fact that bright light tormented his pink eyes. He had read that hemeralopia did not necessarily coincide with increased night vision, and his use of infrared rifle scopes had caused him to wonder whether his eyes might not be unusually receptive to light from the infrared end of the spectrum.
Kenlaw seemed to be taking his time. At first Brandon had heard the sharp tapping of his geologist’s pick from time to time. Now there was only silence. Brandon flipped his light back on, consul ted his watch. It had been half an hour.
“Dr Kenlaw?” he called. He thrust his shoulders into the passage and called again, louder. There came no reply.
Less anxious than impatient, Brandon crawled into the tunnel and began to wriggle forward, pushing his light ahead of him. Brandon was stocky, and it was a tight enough squeeze. The crawl space couldn’t be much more than two feet square at its widest point. Brandon reflected that it was fortunate that he was not one of those bothered by claustrophobia.
Halfway through the tunnel, Brandon suddenly halted to study its walls. No natural passage; those were tool marks upon the stone—not even Kenlaw could doubt now. The regularity of the passage had already made Brandon suspicious. Cramped as it was, it reminded him of a mine shaft, and he thought again about the mention in Creecy’s Grandfather’s Tales of the interconnecting tunnels found at the Sink Hole pits.
The tunnel opened onto another chamber much like the one he had just quitted. It was a short drop to the floor, and Brandon lowered himself headfirst from the shaft. There was no sign of Kenlaw’s light. He stood for a moment uneasily, swinging his flash about the cavern. Perhaps the archeologist had fallen into a hidden pit, smashed his light.
“Dr Kenlaw?” Brandon called again. Only echoes answered.
No. There was another sound. Carried through the rock in the subterranean stillness. A sharp tapping. Kenlaw’s geologist’s pick.
Brandon killed his flash. A moment passed while his eyes adjusted to the blackness, then he discerned a faint haze of light—visible only because of the total darkness. Switching his own light back on, Brandon directed it toward the glimmer. It came from the mouth of yet another passageway cut against the wall opposite.
He swung his light about the pit. Knowing what to look for now, Brandon thought he could see other such passages, piercing the rock face at all levels. It came to him that they began to run a real risk of losing their way if they were able to progress much farther within these caverns. Best to get Kenlaw and keep together after this, he decided.
The new shaft was a close copy of the previous one—albeit somewhat more cramped. Brandon scraped skin against its confines as he crawled toward the sound of Kenlaw’s pick.
The archeologist was so engrossed in what he was doing that he hadn’t noticed Brandon’s presence, until the other wriggled out onto the floor of the pit and hailed him. Spotlighted by Brandon’s flash, Kenlaw glowered truculently. The rock face where he was hammering threw back a crystalline reflection.
“I was worried something had happened,” Brandon said, approaching.
“Sorry. I called to you that I was going on, but you must not have heard.” Kenlaw swept up handfuls of rock samples and stuffed them into the already bulging pockets of his paratrooper’s jacket. “We’d best be getting back before we get lost. Reynolds will be wondering about us.”
“What is this place? Don’t tell me all of this is due to natural formation!” Brandon swept his light around. More diminutive tunnels pierced the sides of this pit also. He considered the broken rock that littered the floor.
“This is a mine of some sort, isn’t it. Congratulations, Dr Kenlaw—you really have found one of the lost mines of the ancients! Christ, you’ll need