Tunnels 02, Deeper

women complaining to each other, they communicated using both the rasping and rattling sounds Will had been hearing. They turned and scurried back into the brush, flapping stunted wings from which a few mangy patches of fur -- or feathers -- sprouted. So much for the exotic creatures he'd been dreaming of!
    Elliott led them onto a track, and they continued along until Will heard Chester's voice up ahead.
    "The sea," he said.
    They gathered around Elliott, crouching down in the bushes. A strip of beach stretched before them and they could hear the sound of waves again.
    Cal spoke up. "It looks exactly like our beach. You're not telling me we just came full circle?" he quizzed Elliott indignantly, shaking the sweat from his face.
    "This is not the same beach," she informed him coldly.
    "But where do we go now?" he asked, frowning as he craned his neck to peer along the foreshore.
    She stuck a finger out to sea, out over the rolling waves.
    "Well, we're on an island and the only..." Will began.
    "...way on and off is the causeway," Elliott finished his sentence for him. "And I'll bet you that at this very moment the Blackheads are sniffing around the remains of our campfire."
    An uneasy silence descended over the group until Chester spoke in a small voice.
    "So, are we going to swim for it?"

     

40

    He staggered to his feet, blinking with surprise. He was spellbound by the space around him, his insatiable thirst for knowledge dismissing all other concerns. In that instant, his hiccups ceased, and Dr. Burrows, Intrepid Explorer, was back on duty. His fear of the unidentified beast, and all thoughts of his hysterical rush to escape it, were brushed aside.
    "Bingo!" he cried.
    He'd stumbled upon some sort of edifice, carved into the bedrock of the cavern itself. If he'd been in search of evidence of the ancient race, he'd certainly found it now. He crept forward, his light revealing row upon row of stone seats, many shattered by fallen debris. He was making his way to the front, in the direction the seats were facing, when he happened to look up.
    The ceiling high above him was smooth and generally intact, except for a few sections where it had crumbled in. As he shone his orb around, he caught a tantalizing glimpse of something that reflected the light.
    "Extraordinary!" he exclaimed, holding his orb higher, its rays only just traveling the distance to a dully glinting circle that was at least fifty feet in diameter.
    "Higher... have to get higher," he told himself, clambering onto the seat of the nearest of the stone benches, and then up onto the narrow back of the bench itself.
    As he moved his light slowly around, teetering precariously, the design became clearer to him. The circle was dull gold or bronze in color and could have been applied by some kind of gilding or possibly even painted on. He spoke out loud as he scrutinized it.
    "Let's see, you're a hollow circle with... with... what's that in the middle? Looks like..." He squinted and pushed the orb toward the ceiling as far as his arm would permit, until it was supported by just his fingertips.
    In the very center of the circle, also cast in the metallic medium, was a solid disk. Jagged lines that resembled stylized, angular rays extended from its circumference.
    "Aha! It's obvious what you're meant to represent... you're the sun! " Dr. Burrows pronounced, and then furrowed his brow. "So what have we got here -- a subterranean race engaged in surface worship? A people harking back to a time when they were up above on the crust?"
    Something more caught his eye. Simple renderings of humanoid figures were depicted walking around the inside of the larger circle -- men, evenly spaced, as if treading in a whopping giant great hamster wheel.
    "Hey, what are you chaps doing there? You and the sun are in the wrong places!" he observed, frowning even more deeply as he shifted his light toward the solid disk in the center again. "I don't know who made you, but you're all the wrong way around!"
    Despite the topsy-turvy nature of the picture, it wasn't lost on Dr. Burrows that any representation of the earth as a sphere, dating back to the time of the Phoenicians, meant whoever had put it there was incredibly enlightened by what he'd seen.
    "So much for symbolism!" he said, and sniffed dismissively as he resumed his way forward. He passed the front row of seats, and his light beam touched upon what lay before them. He caught his breath as he saw a raised dais, on which