The underdwelling

It was incredible. They stood there in awe, feeling like the first men to set eyes on the Carlsbad Caverns. Before them was an immense grotto. Even with the long-barreled flashlights, they could barely see the roof above. It had to have been well over a hundred feet straight up. There were huge stalactites and stalagmites, great shelves of rock that had been sculpted and polished by eons of dripping water into great columns and blobby, candleflow heaps of stone. Minerals sparkled in the walls. Crystal formations rose like pillars of salt. Great boulders the size of two-story houses had been perfectly rounded by ancient waters. There was a briny stink in the air.

“Gentlemen,” McNair said, “we are about to step into the history books.”

Maki just stood there with his mouth hanging open as the flashlights scanned about, their beams thick with suspended dust and droplets of moisture. He swallowed, licking his lips. “Did somebody dig this out?” he said.

“No, no, this is a natural cavern,” McNair was quick to point out before imaginations started running wild. “All of what we’ve seen so far has been channeled out of the limestone by ancient floodwaters. This cavern, too. It’s really incredible.”

“But that shaft I almost fell down…it was so smooth and round.”

“That could have been volcanic rock laid down by a lava flow,” Jurgens pointed out. “Lava can form shapes that look man-made if it rapidly cools.”

McNair nodded. “Exactly. It’ll take years and years of study, gentlemen, to answer all this. For now, just enjoy.”

Thing was, all this might have gotten a paleobiologist excited, but Boyd and the others had mixed emotions. Something this big and this old, well, it inspired a certain superstitious dread that made their mouths go dry. They were almost afraid of it and, at the same time, desperately curious.

“What’re you thinking?” Boyd said to Breed.

The dazed look in his eyes finally faded. He laughed. “I was thinking of those comic books I read when I was a kid. Those guys in there were always finding places like this and they were always full of dinosaurs and shit.”

It was McNair’s turn to laugh. “I don’t think we’ll find any dinosaurs.”

“Good,” Breed said. “Because I left my rifle in the truck.”

They all got a little chuckle out of that.

The floor of the cavern was about twenty feet down from the opening of the stope. But it was a gradual incline littered with rocks and boulders and there was no trouble climbing down. Jurgens and McNair went first. Boyd and Breed followed. But Maki just waited above.

They put their lights on him.

“C’mon, peaches,” Breed said. “I’ll hold your hand.”

But Maki was not moving.

“You don’t have to come with us, Maki,” Jurgens said. “All of this, it’s above and beyond. I can’t even say how safe it is.”

“I’ll stay with you if you want,” Boyd told him.

That got Maki down. He was looking pale and his lower lip kept jumping with a tic. He was scared and nobody made fun of that, not even Breed. Maybe they were all feeling what Boyd had been feeling all night: the sense of impending doom. Like a can of something crawly had been opened up in their guts.

The floor was irregular, sometimes smooth and flat, other times hilly with mounds of rocks and jutting spokes of limestone. There were pools of water and lots of cracks that led down far below. Jurgens and McNair were having themselves a good old time, theorizing about the age of the cavern and the waters that must have cut it out, chipping off rock specimens and prodding at fossils…of which, there were many. Outcroppings of them everywhere: corals and brachiopods and crinoids.

“This is definitely late Permian,” McNair said as he took photographs of the fossiliferous rock. “The index fossils are fairly conclusive. My God, look at these specimens. Trilobites and mollusks and ammonites. Enough to fill a dozen specimen cases.”

“Sure, great scientific stuff,” Jurgens said. “But my bosses won’t be thrilled. I can tell you that much. If we have to divert those drifts, it’ll cost thousands, hundreds of thousands.”

“They’ll live,” Boyd said to him. “Besides, I bet museums will pay plenty for the stuff down here. Christ, people’ll want to tour this. This will be a cash cow for Hobart. They’ll rake it in.”

“Yeah, he’s right,” Breed said.

Jurgens and McNair kept taking samples, discussing matters geological and paleontological, taking pictures. Boyd and the others wanted to explore, to see what was ahead. But it was hard to get them to move on. They wanted to study what they were finding. Finally, Breed and Maki moved off. Boyd went with them.

“Hey, we got bones over here,” Breed called.

That got them moving.

Jurgens and McNair came right over, holding their lanterns out. There were bones. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Some were protruding from the floor and others thrusting out from shelves of rock. All of them were fossilized, of course.