‘So,’ continued the Yorkshireman, ‘we’ve got to scoot down that all the way to the bloody bottom?’
‘Lock and his people managed it,’ said Nina. All the same, she felt queasy looking down. She couldn’t see the base of the shaft, her view obstructed by the jagged, multilayered lattice of crystals, but she could tell it was a long way down. ‘Even if they can take our weight, is it safe to touch them if they’re made from eitr?’
‘The crystal form is harmless,’ said Kagan. ‘Okay, not harmless, but it will only kill you if you eat it. It is poisonous, but not a mutagen.’
‘Good job I wasn’t planning on laying out a picnic,’ said Eddie. He held his breath as Kagan put both feet on the crystal ledge and let go of the rope. There was a visible change in the surface, the black scales turning a stressed grey under his weight, but it showed no signs of imminent collapse. ‘All right. So how do we get down?’
The Russian surveyed the route. ‘We follow Lock and his men. Look, they have left footprints.’ He pointed out scuffs and scrapes along the structure. ‘If they got to the bottom, so can we.’
‘Yeah, but how many of them fell off on the way down?’ said Berkeley.
‘Hopefully all of ’em,’ Eddie said. Still holding the rope, he leaned out over the drop for a better look. ‘Normally I’d say we should go across each crystal one by one so they don’t break, but since we’re on the atomic fucking clock, we’ll have to go in convoy.’ He drew back and checked his watch. ‘Shit, it’s taken us nearly three minutes just to get down this far.’
‘Then we must move faster,’ said Kagan firmly. Bringing up his arms for balance, he started down the sloping crystal. Maslov let him get clear, then stepped down after him. The black span creaked faintly underfoot.
Eddie winced, but once the soldier had moved on after Kagan, he followed them. The surface took his weight, but with an unsettling sense of compression, like a layer of thick linoleum rather than the rigid structure it appeared to be. That slight flexibility explained how the crystals had not cracked apart as they coiled around the walls of the shaft, he supposed. But the scales at least provided grip, making his descent less unsteady than he had expected. Ahead, Kagan reached the far side of the pit and clambered down to another bridge below. ‘Okay, Nina, come on.’
She reluctantly let go of the rope and followed her husband. The facet along the crystal’s top was wide enough to take her feet, but was tilted at a slight horizontal angle in addition to sloping downwards, making it tricky to negotiate. Maslov reached the lower end and climbed down after Kagan; Nina looked back at Berkeley. ‘Logan? You coming?’
‘Yes, this makes it so easy,’ he grumbled, holding up the heavy stainless-steel container by its carrying handle.
She gave him an apologetic look. ‘Okay, if I reach back, we can share the weight between us.’
‘Nina, let Ivan behind him do that,’ said Eddie, but she had already paused and stretched out her arm to the other archaeologist. Berkeley held out the canister, and she took hold of it. ‘Berkeley, if she falls because of you, you’re following her down with a fucking bullet in your head!’
‘Eddie, it’s okay,’ Nina assured him, before regarding Berkeley again. ‘Isn’t it, Logan?’
‘For God’s sake,’ he grumbled as he edged down the crystal. ‘There are enough ways I might get killed today without adding your psychotic husband to the list. I want to get out of here as much as you do — and I don’t want to do that only to have a nuclear bomb land on my head!’
‘Okay, all right, point taken!’ She kept moving, the container suspended between them.
Eddie reached the bottom, waiting until he was sure Nina was progressing without trouble before climbing down after the two Russians. Kagan was already on the next leg of the descent, the crystal crossing below even steeper than the first. ‘Hey, there’s a light down there,’ said the Yorkshireman, pointing.
‘Yes, I saw it,’ Kagan replied. The diffuse daylight from the top of the shaft quickly faded into darkness below, but there was an eerie blue-white glow amongst the black shards. ‘Lock and Hoyt must have brought it.’
‘Nice of ’em.’ He stared at the light as he waited for the soldier to move clear. ‘Know what this reminds me of? It’s like we’re inside a giant game of Kerplunk.’
‘With us as the marbles,’ Nina said nervously.
Eddie helped her down, then Berkeley passed Thor’s Hammer to her before descending himself. Pravdin followed him as the Englishman started across the next ledge. ‘We’ve only got twenty-five minutes left,’ he warned.
That spurred everyone to move faster. Kagan hopped across to another descending crystal bridge and led the way downwards. Before long, the source of the strange light was revealed. A translucent balloon about four feet in diameter had been propped between two crystals, glowing from within and casting a surprising amount of light over its surroundings. ‘Now here’s your Kerplunk marble,’ said Eddie, prodding it as he passed. The inflated sphere was made of the same tough latex as weather balloons. ‘Must have a bunch of LEDs inside.’
‘There are more below,’ reported Kagan.
Nina peered over the edge, seeing additional pools of light further down the shaft. ‘Can you see the bottom yet?’
‘No, not yet. The pit in Novaya Zemlya was almost a hundred metres deep. I hope this is not much deeper.’
‘Yeah, so do I!’ The air was becoming uncomfortably hot, forcing her to pull down the zipper of her coat in an attempt to keep cool.
They pressed on, zigzagging downwards. As well as the giant crystals worming up the shaft, smaller ones grew from the walls, stabbing outwards like glass spearpoints. Others hung like stalactites beneath the sloping slabs. Kagan leaned warily to avoid a particularly large example, then issued a warning as he saw something below. ‘Be careful. Some of the crystals have cracks. I do not know if they will support us.’
Eddie saw what he meant. He guessed that a piece had broken from a crystal higher up and hit one of the bridges as it fell. Ragged stress lines ran through the black surface like lightning bolts, visible even in the low light. Unfortunately, it was the only obvious way to continue the descent. ‘Which way did Lock’s lot go? Did they risk crossing it?’
‘It is hard to see. Wait…’ A short pause, then: ‘No, they dropped down the other side.’ Kagan stepped across to the damaged span, the fractured crystal letting out a faint but alarming creak, then lowered himself to another below it. ‘Okay, it is safe.’
Eddie looked back at the two scientists. ‘You okay?’
‘Just about,’ said Berkeley, rubbing sweat from his forehead.
‘I didn’t mean you. Nina?’
‘Surviving,’ she told him. ‘This damn thing gets really heavy after a while, though.’ She raised the steel canister.
‘Pass it down,’ Eddie told her. ‘I’ll carry it — I’ll get Kagan’s other guy to give me a hand. Can’t be much—’
‘Quiet!’ Kagan hissed. ‘I can hear them.’
Everyone fell silent. Eddie advanced as quickly as he dared to join the two Russians, who were crouched on a jagged black outcrop. More of the illuminated globes were visible below — and for the first time, he glimpsed the bottom of the pit.
The source of the eitr. He could only see a small slice of it through the maze of crystals, but that was enough to reveal a glutinous, light-sucking ooze. It slowly shimmered and rippled in the globes’ unnatural glow, as if simmering from a heat source below.
Voices reached him. ‘It’s Hoyt,’ he rumbled. ‘Lock, too.’
‘If they are still here, then they have not yet taken a sample of eitr,’ said Kagan. ‘We can stop them.’ He brought up his AK-12.