"How far did you get? You were down there for twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes? No. It had been an hour at least.
"I . . . urn, I don't know." I tried to visualize the tunnel I'd never actually seen but only felt. How long was it? "1 guess it was, I don't know, probably only three feet."
"Three feet straight down?" Jake said with a whistle. "That's pretty good. The top of the Yeerk pool dome is probably what, fifty feet down maybe?"
"Not straight down," I said. "The mole can't dig straight down. It's just barely downhill. Maybe a foot deep."
"0h, man," Tobias groaned. "This is going to take us forever." We took one-hour shifts. Between shifts those of us who weren't digging or standing guard walked down to the Mickey D's and bought fries and Cokes.
Six hours of digging till we had each done our shift. The day was over.
We couldn't stay any longer. We had to head home.
"Someone should carry a string down in to see how far we got," Marco suggested.
No one volunteered. No one even moved. We were a haggard, unhappy-looking bunch of kids. Sweating and pale from the stress of fear and the constant morphing.
"I'll do it," I said. "It's my turn."
I morphed and Cassie tied the end of a string around my tail.
Down into the tunnels again. We'd each gone as far as we could, then dug a turnaround. Six turnarounds. I counted them as I passed each one by.
I would have been sweating if I were human. It was hot and close. Very close. Like being in a coffin. That image kept coming up. Like being in a coffin. Like being buried alive. Like you wanted to kick and scream to get out, only no one would hear you because you were underground. Buried alive.
Then my nose touched a wall. The end. I had reached the end of the tunnel. You'd think I'd have been relieved. But now the pressure to get out out OUT drove me to the edge of panic.
I could barely control myself. Barely keep from screaming.
I raced back along that tunnel as if something were chasing me. Was that light up ahead? No, I'd only passed three turnarounds. Or was it four?
Finally, I poked my snout up out of the ground, crawled free of the hole, and began to demorph instantly.
Ax was in his own body, having been in human morph too long. He measured out the string I'd carried down the hole. "Would you like the measurement in feet or in meters?"
I was human enough to be able to see Marco roll his eyes. "Whatever."
"The total length of the tunnel is approximately forty-one feet long. I believe the slope ratio is about six to one. One foot down for every six feet of tunnel. That would mean we tunneled down approximately six point eight feet."
I was emerging into my human body now and still trying to shake off the unholy willies. "Six lousy feet!"
"Closer to seven lousy feet," Ax corrected.
"0h, man," Tobias moaned. "lf we're right and we have to dig down fifty feet, that would take us a week. You've got to be kidding! I'm a bird. I have no business being in a tunnel."
I almost agreed. In fact, I almost said, "Forget it! I'm outta here."
But I didn't. In fact, I was the strongest voice for going forward. See, ! wasn't going to let the claustrophobia scare me. I wasn't going to let fear dictate what I did.
Or maybe I was just a fool.
We got better at digging as we became more experienced. But then we found ourselves running into rocky levels no mole was designed to dig through. We had to figure out ways around the rocks. Long, time-consuming ways around boulders.
And we could only dig after school. We'd bring our homework and sit in that stifling shed and quiz each other on history or science. Ax would stand there, listening gravely to the history, and laughing at the primitive nature of our science.
One by one we'd go down that hole. We timed it out so the next person was always in morph and ready to go. Four more days we dug. Till Cassie came back up and said, "I think we're blocked. It's solid rock."
"We are not blocked," I said. "We have not been doing all this just to end up blocked. There has to be a way."
So down I went. Like an idiot. Like I was all excited about digging the stupid tunnel.
Ax had calculated we were twenty-five feet down. Down through loose topsoil and clay and gravel. Down and down I scurried, pushing ahead with my little back feet, always clearing the tunnel of fallen dirt with my spade feet.
I reached the end. The darkness was so absolute that no eye could see.
Let alone a mole's eye.
My nose touched the end of the tunnel. I began to dig. Rock. I moved left. Rock. I started thinking, hoping almost, that Cassie had been right. No more digging. No more tunnel. No more being buried alive.
But then I found it. The seam between rocks. My nose felt it. I dug away some dirt and the seam grew. Yes, there was an opening.
I hesitated. Did I really have to tell the others? They would take my word for it if I said Cassie was right. No one else was going to come down here to check. No one liked this any more than I did.
I dug some more. And then . . .
"What?"
Air! A breeze.
"No way."
But it was a breeze. Faint, and smelling heavy and damp and nasty. But a definite breeze. Air was flowing up between the rocks.
"Hey, guys?" I called up in thought-speak. But they were out of range.
No answer came.
I dug away more dirt and now the breeze was stronger still. There was enough space for me to push my body through. But I sensed emptiness beyond.
I turned around and raced back to the surface.
"l think I hit a cave or something," I said. "Cassie was right, it's rocky. But there's a breeze coming up between the rocks." Jake checked his watch. "Too late for today. We'll hit it tomorrow. It's Saturday. We'll have more time."
So on Saturday we were back. Rested and refreshed. Or as rested and refreshed as you can be after a night of nightmares where you're trapped in a coffin screaming, "Let me out, I'm not dead!"