Tunnels 02, Deeper

Cal, Chester and lastly Will. "Don't want anyone to wander off," she told them, then paused before looking from Will to Chester.
    "You two OK now?"
    She heard it all... She must have heard everything Chester said , Will thought uneasily.
    Because this isn't going to be easy, and we all need to stick together," she continued.
    Will grunted something approximating a yes, while Chester didn't offer any sort of response, studiously avoiding Will's eyes.
    "And you," Elliott said, singling out Cal. "I need to know... are you up to this?"
    "I'll manage," he replied, nodding sanguinely.
    "I sincerely hope so," she said, and turned to give them all a last look before she ducked into the seam. "See you on the other side."

     

Part Five
The Pore

45

    "Remarkable!" Dr. Burrows cried, his voice echoing over and over, then fading until all that could be heard was the splatter of water. It fell in occasional showers as he stood before two large stone columns at what appeared to be the conclusion of the path.
    He turned this way and that as he tried to take in everything at once.
    For starters, the keystone at the apex of the arch had a three-pronged symbol cut into it. He'd seen it several times before on sections so masonry throughout his travels in the Deeps, and it also cropped up on the stone tablets he'd recorded in his notebook. The symbol didn't correspond to any of the glyphics on the Dr. Burrows Stone, so the question of what it meant vexed him considerably.
    But this paled into insignificance as he took a few paces under the structure and the path broadened out into an area laid with large flagstones.
    With mounting disbelief, he laughed, then stopped, then laughed again as his eyes fell upon the jet-black void before him. It was the most colossal hole in the ground. And he was standing on some sort of pier that overhung it.
    A wind gusted from above as he took small steps over the worn flagstones to the very brink of the precipice.
    The sheer scale of the opening caused his heart to pound with excitement. He certainly couldn't see any evidence of the other side -- it was completely shrouded in darkness. He wished he had a more powerful light source so he could make an informed estimate of its size, but from his reckoning a pretty substantial mountain could have been dropped into it, with room to spare.
    Slowly raising his head, he could also see that there was a correspondingly large opening in the roof -- whatever this feature was, it seemed to continue above and was the source of the wind and the sporadic torrents of water. His lips moved, but made no sound, as he began to speculate on where this incredible natural feature might end -- maybe it had once been open at the earth's surface and at some point become capped off by a shift in the tectonic plates or perhaps by volcanic activity...
    But he didn't dwell on any of that now as he was once again compelled to look down into its depths. It was as if the blackness of the vacuum was mesmerizing him, drawing him closer. From the corner of his eye he spotted some steps leading off the edge of the platform.
    "Is this it?" he asked himself with bated breath. "Is this my ticket even deeper?"
    He started down the cracked stone stairs.
    "Blast!" he said, his shoulders hunching as he found that the stairway hardly went any distance. He kneeled, peering in the gloom to see if a section had collapsed.
    "No joy," he sighed despondently.
    There was nothing he could see to suggest that the stairs did indeed extend farther down -- there was just the small vestigial flight, consisting of seven steps, on which he was perched. Maybe, farther around the rim of the opening, there might be a similar set of steps that was intact. Another way down.
    He returned to the top, still trying to make sense of everything. So this was the hole on the Coprolite map, and it had to be the same hole depicted on the central panel of the triptych in the ugly bug temple.
    He could see why the ancient people had considered it so significant. They -- the civilization that had built and used the temple -- clearly believed it was something holy, something worthy of worship. He massaged the nape of his neck, as he began to think.
    Were those ant-sized people in the main picture of the triptych throwing themselves into the hole as part of some ritual act? Were they simply sacrificing themselves? Or was there more to all this?
    Those questions built in his head, swirling around his cranium as if they were