Gary Grossman
Old Earth
Dedication
For Vin Di Bona
You have inspired me my entire professional life and defined the meaning of true friendship.
But this is not just a gift you’ve given me.
You’re the author of a never-ending story of caring — for your family, for your friends, for your community, for your personal and professional causes, and for your industry.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Epigraph
“Whereof what’s past is prologue…”
Principal Contemporary Characters
Martin Gruber, Voyages magazine publisher
Colin Kavanaugh, Voyages magazine editor
Felicia Dunbar, Voyages magazine assistant
Marvin, man in the park
Simon Volker, researcher
Leon, Brown’s Hotel waiter
Dr. Renee Kritz, Oxford University professor
Dr. Quinn McCauley, Yale University paleontologist
Pete DeMeo, Yale University graduate teaching assistant
Dr. Katrina Alpert, University of Cambridge professor
Anna Chohany, Harvard University graduate student
Rich Tamburro, University of Michigan graduate student
Adam Lobel, Penn State University graduate student
Leslie Cohen, Penn State University graduate student
Al Jaffe, University of California, Berkeley graduate student
Tom Trent, Northwestern University graduate student
Carlos Rodriguez, University of Madrid graduate student
Jim Kaplan, director, Makoshika State Park
Franklin, Winston, and Horst, three experts
Robert Greene, researcher
Dr. Marli Bellamy, museum director
Father Jareth Eccleston, priest
Lucia Solera, tourist
Beppe Poppito, Vatican archivist
Claude Bovard, spelunker
Prologue
If he had turned right, not left, his life would have been different and history would have told another story. But he was left-handed and without thinking, at a fork in an underground cave system, the thirty-seven year old professor veered to his dominant side.
Most of his contemporaries regarded caves with utter dread, seeing them as entrances to hell. Not the mathematician, the professor from the University of Pisa. He had heard that the Le Marche region, located in northeast Italy, might provide the perfect laboratory environment to develop his hypothesis that heat has a discrete nature.
To validate his theories, he needed extremes: the summer heat that baked the Appennini Mountains versus the cooler confines of the caves that were said to lie in the hills.
The townspeople and priests who lived in the area believed that the rumored caverns near the town of Genga were portals to hell. The professor would get no help from them. So he invited two noblemen friends from Pisa to accompany him.
Luigi Pino, Roberto Santori, and the professor traveled together reaching Genga on one of the hottest days of an already sweltering summer. For five days they trudged through the hills; exhausting work in heat that couldn’t be quantified yet. But that’s why the professor, as much a scientist as he was a mathematician, was there.
On the sixth day his friends gave up the quest in favor of eating, and especially drinking, Le Marche’s famed Verdicchio — the luscious floral regional wine renowned for centuries. The professor, now alone, hiked through the beautiful hills and valleys blanketed with white asphodel, cyclamen and orchids.
Three days later, the professor found hints of an opening to the caverns — a slight stream of cool air that escaped from behind a boulder. It certainly didn’t feel like it was coming from hell.
He carefully removed a thin glass tube from his satchel and placed it on the ground. It measured the length from his wrist to his elbow and had a bulbous top no wider than the circumference of a small hen’s egg. At various intervals, he’d drawn hash marks, though they didn’t actually stand for any definitive measurement. Not yet.
Next, he methodically took out a small glass cruet, a cork with a hole bored through the center, and a Verdicchio bottle left over from his first dinner in Le Marche now filled with water. He poured the liquid three fingers high into the cruet and inserted the cork at the top.
Time for the first test. While slowly counting to sixty, he warmed the tube by rolling it between the palms of his hands. He gently pushed the end through the cork and down into the cruet.
Water slowly began to rise up the neck. This was not surprising. He had done this much before. Beyond the boulder is where he would truly test his hypothesis.
He chronicled his experiment in a journal, including a sketch of the apparatus and the high point of the water.
After carefully wrapping and returning everything to his satchel, with his bare hands he began to dig at the spot where the cooler air flowed to the outside. Dry dirt fell away around the larger obstruction. After thirty exhausting minutes, he’d cleared an opening around the boulder and was able to crawl forward.
Now he lit a bronze olive oil lamp designed for him by a friend from Firenze — artist and engineer, Bernardo Buontalenti.
The lamp housed a well that would provide fuel for many hours. Its forward-facing high lip shielded the flame from any breeze.
The professor strapped his satchel to his feet and crawled past the big rock. He pushed the lamp forward, looking above and ahead, hoping that the opening he had created would widen. It did.
He wriggled some fifteen body lengths forward and was relieved when he could rise up on all fours. Soon he was able to crouch.
The air was getting cooler, even damp. He decided to take another reading, repeating the process, warming the tube, turning it over and inserting it through the cork and into the cruet. This time he noted that the liquid only rose to roughly three-quarters its previous height.
The scientist was pleased. His apparatus affirmed his theory. The warmer it was, the higher the water would rise. The reverse was true with the cold. He was able to gauge temperature.
Now to venture farther.
Twenty paces beyond he could walk upright. Another thirty paces, and feeling colder himself, he repeated the experiment. The water rose to only half the height of the first reading. Satisfied, he was ready to return to daylight and warmth, however he was also intrigued by the remarkable rock formations in the cave. He felt compelled to continue. The professor walked for two more minutes. That’s when he reached the fork.
He automatically took the left spur. Well into this new tunnel, he heard the echo of his footsteps. The walls had widened well beyond arm’s length. He lit a second oil lamp. His eyes slowly adjusted to the additional light.
“My God!” he exclaimed. This wasn’t the gate to hell. He felt as if he’d just been allowed to gaze upon heaven itself.
How could such beauty exist? he thought. What words could describe it? Yet for all the marvels before him, he pressed onward through a grotto so vast that Italy’s most magnificent cathedrals might fit within. There were fanciful crystalline hanging rock formations in brilliant shades of green, blue, yellow and orange that resembled icicles kissing their own reflections rising from the cavern floor.