“Time to suit up!” Robinson announced.
The suits they donned had two layers — an outer layer fitted with refrigeration tubes connected to a backpack filled with a cooling agent, and an insulating interior layer to protect the skin from the icy tubes. Each man was also equipped with breathing apparatus and a futuristic-looking helmet with a light on the forehead.
“I feel like a space marine,” one of the group, a man named Davis, said. The others chuckled, except for Robinson and Greer.
Robinson explained that these suits would keep their body temperatures in the normal range for over an hour, and were an improvement over older models that were good for no more than forty-five minutes. “You might milk an hour and a half out of it if you’re lucky, but I don’t recommend it. You’ll be exerting yourselves, which will raise your body heat and exhaust the cooling agent faster than if you were at rest. Exercise caution and good sense.”
“Gentlemen, let us take a moment to reflect on our work today.” Brother Bill had recovered from his bout of fatigue, and seemed ready to launch into a sermon. A stern look from Robinson nipped that in the bud, and he settled for a reminder that they were about the work of the church, which meant they were doing God’s work, and that they numbered twelve, which assured His blessing upon them. When he had finished, they headed back into the cave.
That neither Bill nor Robinson had told them what, exactly, their work would entail, was not lost on Matt. Nor was the lump inside Robinson’s suit. Evidently, he’d lied about leaving his weapon behind.
The journey into the caves quickly turned from fascinating, to laborious and, finally, to perilous. Several men slipped on the slick surface and just missed impaling themselves. They navigated several passageways, the way tight due to the forest of giant crystals in their path.
At one point, they climbed a sheer face seventy five feet high and crawled through a tiny passageway into a new set of caverns, an effort that left Bill gasping for breath and whispering prayers to Jesus.
No telephone pole-sized crystals filled this next system of caves. Instead, the floor, walls, and ceilings bristled with tiny crystal daggers, with the occasional head-high pyramidal-shaped selenite blocks. They navigated the treacherous caves slowly, knowing what would happen if one were to fall on the carpet of sharp crystal.
“How long do you think we’ve been in here?” Joel finally asked as they exited a winding chamber of white and blue crystal and entered a narrow crevasse.
Matt consulted his mental clock and conservatively estimated they’d been moving for at least thirty minutes.
“Long enough that we’ll have to turn back soon if we want to make it back alive. Which means, wherever we’re going, we must be almost there.”
He was half-right. In the next chamber, they found a large tent into which several air conditioners pumped a steady stream of cool air. Here, the tired men rested and replenished lost fluids while Robinson outlined the next stage of the excursion.
“This is what we are looking for.” He held up a tiny spike of transparent crystal. “As you saw on the way here, the crystals so far have all been opaque and white in color. Somewhere beyond this point is a single, tiny cavern filled with crystal of different sort. I won’t go into detail about what makes this,” he brandished the crystal, which, Matt noticed, flickered blue in the glow of the bare bulbs hanging over Robinson’s head. “In fact, I don’t understand it myself, but that isn’t our concern.”
He turned to a dry erase board where the cave system had been sketched out. “We’ve had time to explore and completely eliminate this passageway.” He marked a red X over a tunnel that branched out like the limbs of a tree. “These others,” he tapped two more lines, “remain unexplored. That’s why the map is open-ended in these places. We will divide into two groups and scout them out.”
Matt raised his hand. “What if the cave we’re looking for is farther than we can go with our cooling suits?”
“Fair question. A caver using the old-style suits managed to reach the cavern, recover this crystal and another, larger one, and make it back safely. That means it should be well within our reach.”
“He couldn’t tell you where the cave was?” Bill asked.
“Obviously not.” A shadow passed over Robinson’s face, but he quickly donned another of his phony smiles. “His cooling suit, which relied on ice and chilled water, lost its cooling capacity long before he made it out. He was disoriented and suffering from heat exposure by the time he reached the surface. He remembers the way to this cavern, but gets foggy after that.” Robinson paused. “Any more questions?” Robinson’s tone indicated that questions would be tolerated, but nothing more than that.
A rangy, sandy-haired man named Perkins raised his hand. “Why does the church need crystals? Aren’t they part of the new-age heresy?”
“Imagine the rarest, most valuable mineral in the world.” Robinson smoothed his gruff voice. “Now imagine the church owned it all. How much would it be worth, and how much good could we do with the proceeds?”
“And imagine how far down the road toward our aims we would be,” Greer added. The others nodded, their expressions ranging from solemn to beatific. Once again, Matt realized that he and Joel, as newcomers, were out of the loop on something important.
They donned fresh cooling suits and Robinson divided them into groups of six, putting himself in charge of one of them, and placing Greer at the head of the other. He also handed out small backpacks containing rock hammers, in case they found the cavern quickly and had time to get to work. Matt and Joel found themselves in Robinson’s group, along with Perkins, Brother Bill, and a red-haired man named Logan. Before they entered the tunnels, Robinson pulled Matt aside.
His senses on high alert, Matt tensed to fight should Robinson reach for his weapon. Instead, Robinson laid a hand on Matt’s shoulder and whispered in a conspiratorial tone.
“Keep an eye on Bill. He’s not in good shape, and I can tell you know how to handle yourself.”
Matt nodded once but remained silent.
“You served,” Robinson said. “I can tell. Army?”
Matt nodded again.
“Rangers?”
“Kicked out,” Matt lied. No need to reveal too much.
“It happens.” Robinson thanked him in advance for keeping an eye on Bill, and led the way into the passageways.
The final pieces were falling into place in Matt’s mind. The Dominion believed these crystals would power the Atlantean machines. But what did they plan to do with them when they got their hands on them? And, more immediately, what would Robinson do once they found the cavern?
He spied a dagger-sized spike of crystal. Slowing, he let the others get ahead of him, hastily used his rock hammer to break it free, and then tucked it into his bag. It might serve as a weapon later.
He caught up with Bill, who was already flagging.
“Are you going to be okay?” Matt asked.
Bill nodded.
“I’m curious. What are these ‘aims’ Greer mentioned? I realize I’m new to the group, but I’d like to know what I’m working toward.”
“It’s more than I can tell you right now,” Bill huffed. “For the short term, let’s just say I wouldn’t be buying any real-estate in Savannah if I were you.”
Matt’s heart lurched. So the Dominion planned to continue destroying cities. The loss in human life and damage to infrastructure aside, should a Tsunami strike the Savannah River nuclear plant, it could be an unmitigated disaster.
“But that’s small potatoes. Wait until we find the Revelation Machine.”