Extreme Difference (17 page)

Some twenty metres in, and the tunnel began to shrink in size, causing them to bow their heads, and then the surface texture changed.

‘Look at that,’ Sandy said, pointing to obvious tool marks on the wall, ‘someone has enlarged this section, so there must be something of interest here to go to all that trouble.’

Their enthusiasm was soon dashed, when they were faced by a blank wall a few metres ahead.

‘It can’t be completely blocked off,’ Ben ventured, ‘otherwise there wouldn’t be that faint draft we noticed earlier, so the air’s getting through somewhere.’ They searched for the suspected hole, but found only solid rock.

‘This whole thing is artificial,’ Sandy announced confidently, ‘it looks as if a wall has been built across the tunnel, and the surface of the blocks fused to make them look like natural rock. We should be able to break through.’

They had to return to the storeroom to retrieve a metal bar and something to hit it with, and it was two days later before they managed to break through the barrier completely.

It took them only a short time to find a weak spot in the wall, the metal bar suddenly going through into free air, and as this indicated the continuance of the passage, it supplied the necessary encouragement to drive them on.

Sandy later admitted, if they had not made the early break- through, he would probably have given up after the first day, as the wall was so difficult to break into, appearing to be solid rock, and therefore the natural end of the tunnel.

It took a little time to distribute the rubble evenly along the tunnel, as the blockage had been thicker than they expected and there was little room to spare in this cut section of the tunnel anyway.

At the evening meal, they casually announced that a new passage had been found, and was in the process of being cleared. No one seemed particularly interested in the discovery at the time, and they hoped they would be left on their own to continue the exploration.

Having cleared the blockage, the passage continued on in a straight line for some distance, gradually rising, and then gently curving away to the left and levelling out.

The pair trudged on for some time, and Ben had just announced that it was getting a bit boring when a split appeared up ahead. One branch turned sharply to the left and went downwards, the other continuing straight ahead.

‘Let’s go ahead,’ Sandy suggested, ‘and if we find nothing of interest, we’ll come back and try the other one.’ Ben agreed, and they continued, the tunnel now having widened considerably, giving them room to walk side by side.

As they strode along, looking for any abnormalities in the passage walls, they talked about Nan, and the strange attitude he had adopted once Sandy began showing an interest in the complex, Ben pointing out that it had all happened only when Sandy had appeared on the scene.

So engrossed were they in their conversation, they failed to notice the patch of light ahead of them.

‘Stop,’ Sandy whispered, placing a restraining hand on Ben's arm, ‘there’s something glowing up there.’

‘It’s not like our lights, it’s too white.’ Ben said softly, and Sandy could feel the tension grow in Ben’s arm as his imagination ran riot.

‘It’s not moving, so perhaps it’s not a lamp like ours,’ Sandy added, trying to remain calm, ‘let’s go on a bit further, carefully.’

Another twenty metres and it became obvious that it was the wall of the tunnel which was awash with light, a slight bend obscuring the source.

‘I think we’ve reached the other side of the rim,’ Sandy announced, relief clearly sounding in his voice, ‘it looks like sunlight, it’s far too bright for a lamp.’

Slowly the pair rounded the bend, and had to shield their eyes against the brilliant glare which confronted them.

The tunnel opened out onto a wide ledge, and ahead was the open sky, the harsh glare of the naked sun had warmed the rock, and they could feel the radiated heat washing over them as they squinted their eyes, trying to get used to the sudden increase in light level.

The ledge protruded from the side of the volcanoes outer wall like a huge lip, giving the pair a good view of the surrounding rock walls, and the towering cliffs above them.

‘Why aren’t we being burnt by the sun?’ asked Ben, hesitant to go too far out onto the ledge. ‘By now it would be lethal in the crater.’

‘If you look up, you’ll see the rim of the crater shields us from the direct sunlight, otherwise we’d be cooked.’

As their eyes got used to the unaccustomed glare of pure sunlight, they looked down, and were in for another shock.

‘Good God, what’s that?’ exclaimed Ben, looking down over the ledge to a great sea of white mist.

‘Those are clouds, which makes me wonder just how high up we are.’ answered Sandy, awe struck at the magnificent sight of the cloud covered world below them, the occasional rocky up-thrust looking like black fingers pointing skywards.

‘What do you think is down there,’ asked Ben, ‘beneath all that cloud?’

‘Don’t know for sure, but it could be a world like the one I can remember bits of sometimes. You know the plants Bell grows? I get a hazy memory of plants like that, only much, much bigger, and covering the ground for as far as you can see. There are things called trees, which grow up to a height of twenty metres or more, and some of them have fruit on them, like the berry bushes Bell grows.’ Sandy looked wistful, recalling shadowy fragments of a better life from long ago, but unable to hold the pictures long enough for them to become real.

‘Do you think it might be worth trying to get down there,’ asked Ben, ‘and if so, how? There’s no track leading off this ledge, and it’s a hell of a long way down just to the clouds, so I doubt we’d be able to climb down.’

‘I think the only way down to real ground level is through the tunnels within the volcano. If we can’t make it that way, I doubt we’ll ever get there, we’re just too high up.’ Sandy sounded disappointed that the opening into the world he suspected of being there only gave a frustrating glimpse of what might be, and certainly no easy access. ‘We’d best get back and try the other tunnel, at least it’s going downwards.’

They refilled their oil lamps, took a drink of water, and when their eyes had got used to the gloom of the tunnel, made their way back to the junction they had passed earlier.

‘We’ll go down for a while, just to see what’s there, and if it looks promising, we’ll return again tomorrow for a full exploration.’ Sandy announced.

‘Sounds good to me,’ Ben answered cheerfully, ‘we’ll need a lot of supplies if we are going right down to the bottom, that’s if it goes that far.’

The slope down was quite gentle to begin with, and then it steepened considerably, the tunnel walls glistened in the flickering lamp light, indicating that it was a natural passage formed by lava flow, long ago. Every so often, there were cut marks, evidence that the natural tunnel had narrowed, and had then been enlarged to accommodate whatever it was that had needed to travel this way.

Going downwards was relatively easy, and the pair quickly covered a considerable amount of ground. Realizing that it would be a long haul back up to the junction, Sandy called a halt to their exploration, suggesting they return to base, and perhaps put together a team for the next day.

As it might take a long time to reach the bottom and return, a considerable amount of provisions would need to be taken, Ben reasoned that once half the supplies had been consumed, they would have to turn back if they didn’t want to die from dehydration or exhaustion.

It was a very tired couple of travellers who finally stumbled into the main cavern, just before Mop came bouncing in with her latest offering for the evening meal. What surprised them was the amount of time which had passed since they had set out that morning.

Everyone wanted to know what had happened, until someone said, ‘Let 'em eat first, for God’s sake!’

Nan, sat at the table staring straight ahead with a bemused look on his face, his eyes completely out of focus. A minder had been appointed to attend to his daily needs, as he seemed incapable of doing anything for himself now, which included feeding him at meal times.

Once the meal was over, and Mop’s cooking pot had been emptied, everyone looked at Sandy and Ben expectantly, none daring to ask after the initial rebuke.

Sandy arose to his feet, and total silence fell on the cavern, except for a muted burp, the originator receiving several dirty looks from those near him.

‘We have found a way out to the other side of the crater rim, which proves that another world awaits us, if we can get down to it, that is. The tunnel we explored comes out higher up than we are now, and we looked down on clouds, which means the actual land itself must be much lower. Another tunnel leads downwards, and we followed it for quite some way, but not far enough to reach the bottom. We think it might take us to this new land, but we can’t be certain, so we’ll try again tomorrow. This might take several days, so don’t get worried if we don’t return for a while.’

A chorus of cheers went up, together with much hand clapping and banging of the table top. When it had subsided, a lone voice asked, ‘Do you think there’ll be any women down there?’

‘Ben and I get first choice, if there are!’ Sandy retorted quickly, and Mop gave him a filthy look, grabbed her cooking pot, and stormed out of the cavern.

The rest of the evening was spent trying to answer the inevitable innumerable questions posed by the rest of the group, which illustrated their keenness to find a new home.

When Sandy finally retired to his cave, Mop had got over her fit of peek, and welcomed him with open arms, literally.

Early next day, before the morning meal, provisions were being put together, and an extra two personnel were added to the exploration team. Greg was the first choice, although Sandy really had little option other than to ask him, as he had been following them around the previous evening like a well trained gun dog, and certainly did not intend to be left out of the venture, if he could help it.

The other newcomer to the team was Kel, his general handiness qualifying him above all others, although Ben was a little doubtful of his quiet and sometimes truculent nature.

Karry volubly expressed her opinion as no women were included in the project, and was pacified to some extent by the argument that women were in short supply, and considered to be far too valuable to risk on such a venture.

The level of excitement and anticipation had risen to fever pitch by the time they had all assembled for the early morning meal, and for once voices enthusiastically overwhelmed the normal clatter of spoons on bowls, and the usual ribald comments on Mop’s cooking, although of late it had improved greatly.

The meal over, everyone crammed into the passage outside Ben’s store cave to give the adventurers a good send off,  while Mop did her best to hide the odd tear, fearful that her chosen man may not return.

As the heel of the last person to enter the small opening into the tunnel disappeared, someone gave a cheer, and everyone else joined in, feeling that something should be done, and not knowing what else to do.

Once inside the main tunnel, Sandy gave orders that they would go in single file, everyone to be on the lookout for anything unusual, which left the two new members of the team a little confused, as to them the whole thing was unusual in the extreme. Each member had been supplied with an oil lamp, spare oil, water, and dried meat strips, and each carried a coil of cord and a metal rod to use as a defensive weapon, should the need arise.

Mop had assembled a mixture of plant based food for their first meal, but she only received a perfunctory thanks for it, as they were all too preoccupied with the coming adventure.

They made speedy progress to the point where the passage split in two. Sandy suggested that they all take a look at the cloud layer below from the ledge, as they were unlikely to see anything like it again if they ever managed to reach the new world he felt so sure existed below.

‘We’ll stand in the bright light just inside the opening, until our eyes get used to the glare, it’s very bright out there.’

The two new members of the team experienced vertigo for the first time, and Ben was not the happiest of men as he bravely stood on the very edge of the precipitous drop to the swirling silver mists below.

‘Below that cloud is what I think will be a world in which we could live, if we can get to it, and that’s what this expedition is all about, finding a way down through the crater rim. As you can see, there’s no way we could climb down, it’s too sheer in places, and where it’s not, the rocks look slippery. Our only chance is to find an internal route that’s safe, and we’ve found one which takes us quite a long way down, but we didn’t have time to complete it.’

They had to wait for a while back in the tunnel for their eyes to get used to the feeble light from their lamps before going on to the junction, and then they began the long journey downwards.

The steepness of the incline varied as they went along, and Sandy pointed out where the passage walls had been cut at some time in the past to make them the same width as the main natural passage, which had been brought into existence by molten lava flow, when the volcano was active.

Greg asked for an explanation of what lava was, and how the tunnels had been formed, which caused Sandy to dig deeply into his past for the answers, and in doing so, released large amounts of blocked off memory.

Judging time was difficult, so they let their stomachs indicate when a meal break was called for. This of course differed for each individual, and so Sandy had to make an arbitrary judgement when they would stop for food.

A little later, they came to a section where the tunnel had been opened out to form a small cave, part of which was like a natural bubble in the surrounding rock.

‘Time to eat, and take a little water. Everyone feeling fit?’ Sandy asked, as any sprain or injury could jeopardize the project at a later time. All reported feeling well, but Sandy suspected that any little injuries sustained would easily be masked by the general enthusiasm to get on with the journey.