He sniffed — there was no smell of the acrid ammonia that he remembered from the previous massive snake pits he had encountered up here, so he hoped it was a place they weren’t using for nesting.
“Clear,” Drake said, and the word was repeated along the line by the mercenaries.
Ben kept his gun at the ready and eased in toward the bars of light being thrown down into the cave. When further in, he took one last glance about then tilted his head to follow the beams up to the cave ceiling. He couldn’t see the sky, but at about 100 feet above them, the cave ceiling curved away to a shelf, and he bet that was the start of a chute that led to the surface.
He squinted, and then pulled his small scope which he held to his eye — it looked weird, oily, as though underwater. There was definitely some sort of hanging layer of distortion in front of the cave shelf mouth, like two different liquid densities, one upon the other.
Ben knew what it was — during the comet’s apparition, it threw open a doorway, and either grabbed the top of the plateau, sending it back in time, or it allowed the distant past to be brought forward to now. But though the area that the anomaly covered was the entire mountaintop, it only penetrated down 100 feet or so. Anything below that wasn’t affected.
They’d need to pass through this veil that indicated the doorway between one time and the next.
Drake appeared at his side and nudged his arm. “Looks like our ride — and we’ve all got tickets.”
“Yep, so up we go,” Ben replied as he fixed another rope to the caving dart, aimed, and fired toward the jutting lip of the rock shelf over 100 feet above them. The dart sped away, taking the rope with it, and embedded with an audible clunk into the hard stone about six feet from the opening. He tested it once, before attaching it to his power winch.
Ben turned to his friend. “Looks like the fun’s about to start.”
Drake grinned and saluted. “After you.”
Ben nodded, hit the retraction button, and he lifted off. He sailed upward as the group watched from below. He took it a little slow, cautious of every nook and cranny that could be used for an ambush, and then in a couple of minutes, he was at the ceiling.
Ben hung there for a moment, just looking along the rock shelf. There was definitely light streaming in from a good-sized opening. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any of the football-sized packages that were the monstrous snake droppings.
He looked down at all the upturned faces. “Looks okay. I’m going in.” He kicked off the wall and swung the rope to the right, picking up momentum, and then swinging back to the left, and when at full extension, reaching out to grab a horn of rock. There were good hand and foot holds, and he was able to disengage the rope and clamber up onto the lip of rock.
Below him, Drake grabbed Ben’s rope and attached it to his winch and started to come up behind him. The others assembled, waiting their turn.
Ben entered the cave, and then passed through the oily distortion layer. He got the familiar weird sensation in his gut, as if he was falling, and he became slightly dizzy for a few seconds. Sand grain-sized particles hung in the air as if there was no gravity, and there was also the absence of sound — he felt like he was between time and space for a moment, and he pushed on, feeling the dense air acting like a liquid, sucking at his body and slowing him down. But then he passed through it into the new cave.
He felt his senses rush back in at him, as though he was waking from a deep sleep and as the light grew stronger, he slowed, becoming more cautious. Ben now crouch-walked holding his gun before him; the cave wasn’t huge, but more than big enough for human beings. The problem was, he knew that the massive snakes didn’t need much room, just enough to get their heads in and then it was all over for anything in front of them.
The air was moving now, rising up and gently pulling past him. He didn’t like it as it meant his scent preceded him, and he didn’t get the return favor — anything outside the cave would know he was coming long before he could hear or smell it.
In another few minutes, the cave angled slightly upward, and Ben climbed a narrow chimney all the way to the top, and then the light exploded before him, and with it came all the sights, sounds, and smells of the primordial world.
Ben felt both sick to the stomach and entranced. “Pellucidar is but a realm of your imagination,” he whispered, the words of an author long gone. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a writer similar to Arthur Conan Doyle in that they both wrote of fantastic places, people, and animals, and in doing so, displayed magnificent imaginations.
But Burroughs’ strange world, Pellucidar, was at the center of the Earth, and given he personally had proven that Conan Doyle’s Lost World on the plateau was real, would someone one day find that hidden place far beneath the dark ice and snow of the Antarctic? He did wonder.
Ben rested on his forearms. “Nice to see you again. Do you mind if I just visit for a while?” He half smiled. “I don’t want any trouble this time.”
He then heard Drake talking softly to the mercs as Helen slid in beside him. Nicolás crawled up next to her, and the three of them stared out.
“See anything?” she asked.
“Nothing yet. And that’s the way I want it to stay.” Ben put the telescopic scope of his gun to his eye and moved it along the foliage. “Nope, nothing.”
“We should scan some more,” she said.
“Yeah, we should. We should scan a lot. But we need to balance caution with haste. We need to be out there, find your bother, get back, and then all get the hell out of here before the doorway closes. I am not, repeat not, staying in this place again.” He meant it.
“I get it.” She looked out at the jungle. “It’s been 10 years; we might not even recognize him.”
Ben chuckled. “Here’s a tip; if we see another human and it’s not one of us, odds are it’s going to be your brother.”
“Oh yeah.” She grinned back.
Drake and the mercs finally belly-slid up to them.
“Holy shit.” Shawna’s mouth dropped open. “That is one weird-ass jungle.”
Drake grunted. “You have no idea.”
Through the curtains of mist that swirled through the underbrush, there were huge tree trunks, rod straight, and growing 150 feet into the air. At their top, just becoming visible now that the mist had fully fallen, were pompom type bunches of fronds. At their base were heavy-leafed palms with massive tongue-like leaves, a dozen feet long and five across, and ropey vines tangled everything.
There were flowers, enormous fruits or seed pods, some with dangerous-looking spines, and also fungi as toadstools or in ragged shapes like torn bread.
“It’s like the Garden of Eden,” Shawna whispered.
“Yeah.” Chess snorted. “Complete with the devil snake, according to these jokers.”
“I can smell it,” Buster said. “Stinks like shit out there.”
“Because that’s probably what it is,” Helen replied. “Dinosaur shit.”
“Look.” Chess pointed with one fingerless gloved hand.
Something the size of a brush turkey sped past the cave mouth, paused to stand so still that it looked like it had become frozen as it seemed to be listening for a moment, before it unlocked and then sprinted on.
“Did you see that?” Chess continued to point. “That was a… ”
“Yeah, yeah, we know,” Drake said and turned to Ben. “What do you want to do, boss?”
Ben slid forward so his elbows were on the lip of the cave mouth. He stuck his head out and looked left, right, then craned his neck to look above them.
They were about six feet up from the ground, and vines were hanging across their cave mouth, partially obscuring them. Helen was right, they should do a lot more watching and waiting, but they were on the clock. There didn’t seem to be anything close by, so he guessed it was as good as they were going to get.