Tunnels 03, Freefall

for Chester's parents or Auntie Jean's flat, and as a last resort he thought about just trying to call the emergency services number on 999.
    But, in a flash, the number that Elliott had been babbling over and over again in her feverish state suggested itself and, knowing it off by heart, he immediately dialed it. Again he didn't seem to be getting any sort of connection -- in fact there wasn't even the smallest crackle in the earpiece this time, so he announced, "This is Will Burrows. I'm calling from deep within the Earth and I will be back soon. Thank you -- good-bye!" before he slammed the receiver down. Gnawing on one of the dry crackers, he went to find out what his father was up to.
    "Don't know how you can drink that stuff," Will said as he approached. Taking occasional sips from his mess tin, Dr. Burrows was hunched over a table he'd set up in the main dormitory area. Around the legs of his chair were an assortment of folders, boxes and wads of loose papers -- he'd clearly gathered everything together he thought might be useful and was now sifting through it.
    There was some kind of plan spread open, so large that it covered the entire surface of the table. It was of graying paper, with the odd pastel color. As Dr. Burrows finished with his tea and put his mess tin down on the plan, a section close to the tin caught Will's eye. It stood out because it was so heavily shaded. From its shape, Will knew immediately it must be the harbor and the complex where they were right now. Other than the river which looked like a pale-blue ribbon draped across the surface of the plan, small yellow lines radiated off from the harbor cavern, studded every so often by red triangles. Will assumed these were distance markers, and corresponded to the triangles they'd seen painted on the walls in the fissure, which had led them to the harbor in the first place.
    "Anything interesting?" Will asked, inclining his head towards the plan.
    "Not really," Dr. Burrows answered distantly. "Just that they were surveying the surrounding area for freshwater springs."
    It was then that Will spotted the small stone tablets nestled in a grimy handkerchief, and was immediately interested because he'd only had a brief glimpse of them before. Dr. Burrows had one of them in his hand and was examining it closely.
    "Can I take a look?" Will said.
    "Just don't drop them," Dr. Burrows mumbled as he jotted something illegible on a pad.
    Will reached over to the handkerchief and took a tablet in his hand.
    "Wow! You said the carving was tiny, but I didn't think it was that tiny!" he marveled, squinting at the intricate inscriptions and minute diagrams.
    "No matter how long I spend on this, I just cant get anywhere with the script. I'm completely stumped." Dr. Burrows exhaled, sitting back in his chair with a resigned expression. "I can remember a few of the words, but not enough of them. I need someone trained in code-breaking to help me decipher the whole caboodle."
    "Want me to have a go?" Will offered enthusiastically.
    "No, it's too involved," Dr. Burrows said. "It would be a waste of your time."
    "What do you think this map's of?" Will asked as he took a second stone tablet from the handkerchief and began to compare it with the first.
    Dr. Burrows turned to a clean page in his pad on which he began to scribble wildly. Then he twisted it around so that Will could see it. He'd drawn a circle with tiny stick men walking inside its circumference, and a stylized sun right in the center of the circle with jagged rays issuing from it. "This is a mural I discovered in an ancient temple in the Deeps. It depicts a world within a world," he said, then sighed.
    "Yeah, I saw your drawing of that," Will remembered.
    "What?" Dr. Burrows shrieked, knocking the chair over behind him as he jumped to his feet. "How the hell could you have?"
    "I told you, Dad -- we found some of your pages by the Pore," Will said.
    "Yes, but I thought they were illegible. I thought they'd been ruined by water!" Dr. Burrows cried.
    Will looked completely taken aback. "I didn't say that. Some of the pages had been soaked, but most of the ones I managed to pick up weren't too bad. I could read them, anyway."
    Dr. Burrows tottered slightly, as if he'd just been struck on the back of the head. He attempted to sit down, stopping himself just in time as he realized the chair wasn't where it should be. He seized it up impatiently and righted it, then sat down on it and began to scrawl on a