Tunnels 02, Deeper

slowly from one side to the other as they took in the tiny points, which were spaced at random intervals across the horizon. The lights seemed so far away and vague as to be gently pulsing and shifting through a haze of colors, similar to stars on a warm summer's night.
    "This'll be the Great Plain," Cal announced all of a sudden.
    Will took an involuntary step backward. It had begun to sink in that the expanse ahead was truly vast. It was daunting: The darkness made his mind play tricks on him, so he couldn't tell if the lights were in the extreme distance or, indeed, much closer by.
    Together, the boys edged forward. Even Cal, who had spent his life in the immense caverns of the Colony, had never before encountered anything with dimensions like this. Although the roof remained at a relatively constant height, fifty feet or so from the floor, the rest -- a yawning, endless gap -- wasn't visible even with their lanterns set to full beam. It stretched before them, a slice of continuous blackness unbroken by a single pillar, stalagmite, or stalactite. And, most remarkably, gentle gusts of air wafted around, cooling them down a degree or two.
    "It does look massive!" Chester put into words what Will was thinking.
    "Yeah, goes on forever," Cal rejoined indifferently.
    Chester turned on him. "What do you mean, forever? How big is it, really?"
    "About a hundred miles across," Cal answered flatly. Then he strode off, leaving the other two standing side by side.
    "A hundred miles!" Will repeated.
    Chester suddenly blew his top. "Why doesn't your brother just tell us everything he knows? This place doesn't go on 'forever.' He's such a jerk! He either exaggerates everything or never gives us the whole story." With the sourest of expressions, he leaned his head to one side and then the other as he mimicked Cal. "This is CreviceCity... blah, blah... her is the Great Plain... blahbiddy-blah..." he spat, his words clipped through his anger. "You know, Will, I keep getting the feeling that he's holding things back just so he can get one up on me."
    "On us ," Will said. "But can you believe this place? Mind-blowing." Will was doing his best to change the subject and knock Chester off a course, which, it was clear, would eventually lead to a violent collision with his brother.
    "Yeah, it's sure blown my mind," Chester replied sarcastically and began to probe the darkness with his lantern, as if trying to prove Cal was wrong.
    But it did seem as though the space stretched on forever. Will immediately began to theorize about how it could have been formed. "If you had pressure against tow loosely bonded strata from... from a tectonic movement," he said, overlaying one hand on the other to demonstrate it to Chester, "then it could be possible for one to just ride up over the other." He arched the top hand. "And, bingo, you could get this sort of feature. Like wood grain splitting when it gets damp."
    "Yes, that's all great," Chester said. "But what if it closes up again? What then?"
    "I suppose it could -- after many thousands of years."
    "Knowing my stinking rotten luck, it'll probably be today," Chester muttered dolefully. "And I'll be squashed like an ant."
    "Nah, come on, the chances of that happening right now are pretty small."
    Chester grunted skeptically.

     

13

    In a cleverly disguised entrance in the empty cellar of an old almshouse up in Highfield, not far from
    Main Street
    , Sarah stepped into an elevator. She slung her bag down by her feet and, hugging herself, made herself as small as she could. Backing into one of the corners, she looked miserably around the interior. She loathed being confined in the constricted space, with no means of escape. The sides and roof of the elevator were panels of heavy iron trelliswork, and the interior had been coated with a thick pasting of grease, the remaining traces of which were spiky with dirt and dust.
    She heard a brief, muffled exchange between the Styx and Colonists hanging back in the brick-walled chamber outside the elevator, and then Rebecca entered, unaccompanied. The girl didn't give Sarah as much as a glance as she swiveled sharply around on her heels, one of the Styx ramming the gate shut behind her. Rebecca pushed and held down the brass lever by the side of the gate and, with a lurch and a low grinding noise from above, the elevator began to descend.
    As it went, the heavy trellis cage creaked and rattled against the sides of the shaft, this din punctuated occasionally