Tevun-Krus #114 - Hollow Earth (A Different Earth, Part 2)

The Testament in Stone - A Story by Anthony Chalmers

The Testament in Stone

by Anthony Chalmers

​Dawes sat before the field telephone switchboard, waiting for the next report to come in. As he waited, he watched the last group of hired laborers make the three-hour journey back to their homes. The early-afternoon heat was only somewhat abated by the shadow cast onto the communications tent by an oblique outcrop of rock. At the base of the outcrop was a hole in the ground - a hole into which seven men had entered today, joining two others that had entered yesterday. For the next five days Dawes would be alone waiting for them to re-emerge. His vigil would be solitary thanks to the expedition's shoestring budget, which did not allow for one iota more than the bare minimum in terms of personnel,or equipment for that matter.

​He stood up to stretch his legs and looked over the encampment. For a week the camp had been home to the ten members of the expedition and to twice as many laborers, hired from the nearest village. Now the camp was silent and still, lying quietly in the midst of a wide scrubland plateauin northeastern Paraguay. It was neither desert, nor forest. Just mile after mile populated only by irregular patches of low brush, small dry gullies,and the occasional rock outcropping. There were no significant landmarkswithin sight of the camp.

​But the location of the camp was indeed significant, for a mile below his feet lay a massive subterranean network of caves and tunnels, unlike any known formation currently to be found in geology textbooks. Initially,it had been tentatively identified as a karst topography by last year's expedition, although it was far deeper than most such geological formations and had other characteristics which made it difficult to classify. Fortunately, it was much drier too. Entering karst formations was almost always through active sinkholes and amounted to rappelling down a waterfall. Naturally this limited the amounts, and types, of equipment that explorers could use. Not at all a suitable environment for the batterieswhich made the expedition possible. Fortunately, the sinkhole that led to the depths of this location had been dried up for ages.

​To pass the time, Dawes thumbed through one of the few reference texts that formed part of the expedition's stock of material. It had been brought along, mainly to resolve the many disputes that the leaders, professors Irvine and Grace, engaged in. The textbook contained a fold-out map which indicated locations of geologic formations, including karsts, that contained networks of subterranean caves and tunnels. While these sorts of rock formations are extremely common elsewhere on the planet, they are strangely rare in South America, with the only sizeable formation being this one that straddled the border between Paraguay andBrazil.

​Last year's expedition had located the site and descended the sinkhole, but they had not been prepared for its extreme depth, nor for the abundance of caves and tunnels which they encountered. Consequently,only a few dozen yards from the base of the sinkhole's chute were explored and mapped. Nonetheless, evidence was obtained of asubterranean ecological system far more complex than was previously thought to be possible in such cold darkness. A sampling of specimens of albino ants, insects and crustaceans, blind salamanders, and eel-like fish, such as typically found in such habitats, were collected last year. However, the variety and size distribution of the specimens suggested that many discoveries awaited this year's expedition. Furthermore, preliminary observations were made of hydraulic and geologic formations that might be unknown to science.

​This year's expedition was outfitted to spend five days exploring the course of the stream flowing through the cavern at the base of the sinkhole in both the upstream and downstream directions. The expedition's members, along with the hired locals, had labored for almost a week to build a series of platforms within the sinkhole, connected by cable elevators. Once completed, the apparatus was tested thoroughly by Dawes, Peters, and Jamison, the expedition's engineers. The latter two completed the descent yesterday and had set up a base camp at the foot of the shaft, where they would pass the night.