“Nils is coming down,” Gabriel called. “Help him off at the bottom.”
Moments later, they heard a cry of pain as Nils touched down. “Got him,” Velda shouted.
“Everything okay?” Gabriel said.
“Just my ankle,” Nils shouted. “It’ll be fine.”
“Not broken?”
“No, just twisted.”
As they spoke, Gabriel hauled the rope back up, tied Velda’s pack to the end, and lowered it. He felt a series of tugs at the bottom as Velda undid the knots, then a lightening as she pulled the pack off. He repeated the maneuver, sending down a bundle of loose gear tied up in Millie’s sleeping bag.
“Here’s the rest,” he shouted.
Again, the wait, then Velda’s voice.
“Got it.”
“Okay, Rue,” Gabriel said. “Your turn.”
Rue looked doubtfully down the rope and back up at Gabriel.
“I’ll hold it steady,” Gabriel said.
“Great.” She took hold of the rope with both gloved hands, but didn’t begin letting herself down.
“Time to go,” Gabriel said.
“I’m going!” she replied indignantly. “What, do you think I’m scared?”
“If you are—” Gabriel began, but before the words were out she was shimmying down the rope into the chasm, the bright red of her parka slowly swallowed up by the blackness.
He held on tightly to the top of the rope, trying to minimize its torsion as she descended. “You doing okay?” he called after a minute of unbroken silence.
“What do you think?” Rue called back. “If I wasn’t, you’d’ve heard me screaming.” A moment later, she called, “I’m down.” Then: “Man! It’s cold as hell down here. When we get out of this, you owe me a trip to a goddamn hot spring, Hunt.”
Gabriel smiled and slapped Millie’s big meaty shoulder. “You ready?”
“You know,” Millie said, his steaming breath labored as he grabbed hold of the rope, “the town I grew up in is only seven feet above sea level. Seven feet, Gabriel. I can’t help but ask myself what the hell a decent God-fearing Chalmetian like me is doing freezing his ass off and making like a yoyo at twenty-eight-hundred feet. It ain’t natural, I tell you.”
“Go on, you big baby,” Gabriel said.
“How do I keep letting you talk me into this kind of thing?” Millie asked, lowering himself hand over big hand down the rope, which swayed despite Gabriel’s best efforts to hold it steady. “I oughta have my head examined.”
The Spryte groaned and shifted under Millie’s considerable weight on one end and the even greater weight of the piled-up ice on the other. A sudden lurch shook the vehicle. Gabriel tasted an icy metallic fear in the back of his throat. The rope bearing Millie’s weight swung to one side and a barrage of colorful swearing echoed up the chasm.
“Don’t want to rush you,” Gabriel called down, “but…shake a leg, okay?”
“What’s happening up there, boss?”
The groaning and creaking was getting louder, and though the darkness was now almost complete, by peering closely Gabriel could see the metal frame of the Spryte bulging inward. “Not your problem. Just get down.”
Suddenly, Gabriel felt the rope jerk in his hands. There was no weight on it anymore. A moment later, he heard a heavy impact. “What happened?” he shouted.
“I got down,” Millie called. “Figured I could stand to drop the last dozen feet or so. Wasn’t the slickest landing ever, but I’m in one piece. Now you, boss. Get your ass down here.”
Gabriel didn’t need to be told twice. He took hold of the rope and pushed off, sliding down as quickly as he could into the blackness. His head was aching from the altitude and his breath was leaden in his constricted chest but he pushed all that aside and concentrated only on lowering himself into the chasm.
Above him, he heard the sound of metal twisting, and he felt the motion transmitted through the rope. The Spryte couldn’t fall any farther—could it?
It was a chance he couldn’t afford to take. He slackened his grip on the rope and slid, as quickly as he was able. He could feel the walls of ice narrowing around him until he had to twist his body sideways in order to slip down between them. Another noise came from above, the sound of metal snapping this time—and a moment later, there was no tension in the rope at all. It had been severed, and Gabriel was falling.
Chapter 11
There was a moment of blind plummeting, the useless rope still gripped between his hands. Then he hit—but where’d he’d expected to strike solid ice, he felt something soft under him instead. Millie’s arms wrapped around him from behind and set him down gently on the ground.
Velda swung the light around.
They were in a long narrow corridor of ancient ice that glowed blue in the flashlight’s glare. Above their heads, the crack leading up to the crushed Spryte was the only opening. Everything else was sealed solid, the ice bulging around them in an oval pocket that was disturbingly reminiscent of the spine and ribs of some enormous animal, viewed from the inside. Only in one direction was there any way they could go—and who knew how far?
“What do you think, Nils?” Gabriel asked. “Think there may be another way up? Nils?”
The big Swede was bent over, sorting through a pile of smashed equipment scattered across the ground. It was the contents of the first pack, Gabriel realized, the one that had fallen out of the Spryte when they were still aboveground, the one that had plummeted past Nils while he’d been clinging to the ice ledge. Nils was gathering up what he could, sorting the hopelessly broken from the salvageable.
“Velda,” Nils said, excitedly. “Look at this. These are not mine.” He held up a pair of broken goggles.
Velda took the goggles from him and examined them up close in the flashlight’s beam.
“They’re his!” she said, her voice shaking. “They are, aren’t they?”
“I think you might be right,” Nils replied. “They certainly look like your father’s. I don’t think any of the rescue team lost their goggles while searching, and no one else has been anywhere near this area recently that we know of.”
“So he must have been down here,” Velda said, almost to herself. She swung the flashlight around. “His last transmission, it must have been from here…”
“Then where’s his radio?” Gabriel said. He didn’t add, And where’s his body?
Velda aimed the light toward the passageway at the far end. “Nowhere else he could’ve gone.”
“By an amazing coincidence, there’s also nowhere else we can,” Rue said. “Who’s up for a walk? It’s too damn cold just standing around.”
Millie used the severed rope to rig a strap for his bundle and slung it over his shoulder. Hunched over to pass under the low roof of ice, he made his way to Rue’s side. Velda stood silent for a moment, holding the goggles and looking away down the dark tunnel. She put the goggles into her pack, then shouldered it.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
Gabriel nodded and took his place by her side. Nils brought up the rear, not too badly slowed by his limp or his need to walk bent over almost double due to his height.
The natural corridor narrowed and widened as they went, twisting first to the left and then back to the right. They came to a section where the ceiling got so low that even Rue had to bend over to keep walking, and then it became lower still. They were forced to creep forward first on their hands and knees and then on their bellies, pushing the packs ahead of them. As they inched forward, Gabriel noticed that the ice beneath them was becoming a downward slope, gradual at first, then increasingly steep. Gabriel could feel himself starting to slide. He had to arch his back and wedge himself against the ceiling as he went, to prevent himself from slipping.