Islands in the Sky Read online

  In a daring moment, she slid back under the stone cap; barely missing being crushed under its immense weight. With a boom, the cap had sealed us within this dark chamber and a feeling of foreboding fell over us. At least topside in the ruins we had natural light; but here we were imprisoned like rats in a cellar. Alexander helped Professor Logan to cease the spin of the floating stone wheel, and they attempted to reverse its course in hopes of reopening the stairwell above; however, their attempts were in vain.

  Mica slipped the large ring over he wrist like a bracelet to keep from losing it among the jumble of bags and equipment we carried. It was only then that Tom had realized that he had left his own equipment pack topside in the ruins when he went to help Mica activate the bells. Cursing himself, he had left the radio and several day's rations within his bag; now lost beyond reach between several cubic tons of solid stone. Without much choice, we were left to explore the strange alcove we had entrapped ourselves in.

  The slab continued to rotate slowly in the opposite direction that Alex and Logan had set it upon, in their attempt to open the stairwell. Spinning silently in place where we left the horizontal stone wheel at the landing; we searched the outer edges of the dark chamber for an exit. The cavity itself was also circular in shape, but we found nothing of interest except smooth walls. It appeared to be a dead end.

  "We're righteously screwed," Tom breathed with a mix of anger and exasperation.

  "This doesn't make any sense," Mica chimed in with mild agreement, "this stone mechanism, or whatever it is; would be controlled by operators down here; yet they would be entombed in this chamber just as we are.

  "Yet, doesn't it seem odd, that for its supposed age, that this area appears to be completely free of dust or ice particles," Alexander added. We all looked around and began to notice for ourselves that he was correct.

  "He's right, and the air down here isn't cold either," I mentioned as I pointed out that we could no longer see the vapor of our own breath.

  It was of interest that there was no layer of moisture or frost within this lower room below the surface of the city; yet there still appeared to be no clear exit from this cell. The metallic ring had raised the capstone; but there was no such device to set it in here to activate the pillars which controlled it. Thinking there might have been something they missed on the floating slab, Logan asked me to crawl up upon its surface to inspect it closer towards the center of its diameter for clues.

  Honestly, I was a bit leery about crawling up upon it; but they slowly brought its spin to a halt so that I wouldn't get nauseous from its rotation. I expected the giant slab to sink under my weight, but it didn't budge a centimeter. Scouring the topside for a hint of any sign, all I found were several hair-thin splices in the stone; as if it had been pieced together by separate sections like sections of a puzzle. However, I did discover a slot which looked suspiciously close to the size of the large metal ring Mica had sequestered.

  Asking to borrow it from her, she removed it from her wrist and attempted to slide it across the expanse of the floating slab to me. However, it spun back on its own and secured its place upon one of the decorative embellishments. Noting this, Logan made his way over to where the ring now stuck fast upon the stone emblem.

  "Astonishing, this metallic device appears to have multiple functions," Logan began to theorize just before the giant slab began to spin once again on its own accord.

  I was just as startled, and scooted my butt off to the edge and hopped off onto the floor as the stone oscillated ever faster. Then without warning, it came to a sudden halt. Across the room from were the edge of the slab with the ring had pointed, a secret door slowly opened with the grinding of stone. Thomas cautiously peered into the opening with his light, and issued his own advice.

  "Well, this leads somewhere; and it better than being trapped within this tomb, so I suggest we take it," he added.

  Tom's optimism was contagious, and it didn't take the rest of the team long to barter for a better solution. Alex and Logan jumped through first, while Mica backtracked for a moment to snatch the ring from the top of the slab. I followed her through the newly opened corridor; while Tom took up the rear. Unseen by us moments after we left the chamber, the giant floating slab began to rotate once again on its own; and the hidden doorway sealed the exit behind us.

  The farther we progressed down the narrow corridor we began to hear the sound of moving water. The sound of droplets turned into cascading brooks of fast moving water which echoed up through the hall. Intermittent cracks could be seen in the stone which had opened up over the passage of time. We knew we were on a one-way trip and the anxiety of it was apparent on our worried faces. Logan alone held a look of childish glee and wonder in his eyes, regardless of the danger we were in.

  Coming to a sudden halt, the narrow corridor was replaced by an open cavern which had been split asunder from some ancient upheaval eons ago. We stood there peering into the depths from the end of the passageway, leaving us stranded several stories above the cavern floor below.

  "Huh ...did anyone bring any rope?" Alexander inquired as he peered through his glasses into the depths below.

  We had in fact brought that particular item, but Tom had lost his pack topside in the ruins before the capstone closed upon us. The only equipment on hand was the length of heavy duty paracord meant to tether our packs together on the glacier for safety. It was a good thing I was carrying it, or we would have been screwed. Tom shuffled himself to the forward edge and double knotted the cord for strength; which unfortunately, also halved its useable length.

  Tom and Alex acted as anchor after I had volunteered to be the first one down to search for a safe route along the edge of the cliff side. I was a terrible mountaineer, though I fibbed on my application for this job; not realizing that I would actually be doing any climbing of this sort. Grabbing onto the icy rock face was close to impossible wearing mittens; so I made the mistake of removing my gloves. The numbness slowly bit into my hands, affecting my dexterity and making my position on the cliff even more precarious than it needed to be.

  Once I reached a plateau, I untied the end and released the slack to help Alex and Mica down, along with Professor. Tom tossed down the woven paracord to us after Logan set down so he could attempt to free climb to our position. The ledge we rested on had become too crowded for Tom to proceed safely, lest he fall; so we repeated the same procedure by getting both Alexander, Mica, and Logan down to ground level. After the rest of the party safely on the cavern floor; I tossed the thin rope back up to Tom as a safety line so I could anchor him as he climbed down.

  Not knowing what the hell I was doing; I failed to secure proper straps with the cord to my waist. Tom couldn't see this from his position above, but it became clear the moment he lost his grip on the icy rock face just below the lip of the passage. He fell silently, grabbing wildly at the slick rock; and I leaned back onto the outcropping in anticipation of catching his weight. He slipped by me in the air as I reached out my hand to grab his; barely missing one another. The full weight of him jerked the thin rope out of my numbed hands, cutting open my cold exposed flesh.

  I watched in horror as I spun my head and saw the loose bindings of the knots slip loose as Tom's dead weight snapped the spare rope I had around my waist; nearly pulling me over the cliff side with him. Tom bounced hard against the rock, hitting his head. Bleeding from the concussion, Tom tried gain a hold onto the rope, but lacking the strength to do so.

  "Tom, Tom! Grab onto something!" I yelled in pain as the last remnants of rope began to slip through my bleeding hands.

  The team below watched in dread as the mishap unfolded. Their gasps of panic went unnoticed as I could only hear my own heartbeat pounding like a drum. The line felt as if Tom had managed to find a foothold, but he slipped once again; tugging the rope from my grasp. The end of the line held beneath my foot was ripped from beneath me, flipping me hard onto my back; knocking the breath from my lungs.

  Thoma
s went tumbling down and landed with a thump. Logan and Alexander climbed over several frozen boulders to find his limp broken body lying on a jagged slate of stone; the bloodied paracord coiled about his twisted frame. I could tell by the reaction of their voices over my heaving breath that Tom was gone. I laid there cursing myself as I staring at the cold cavern ceiling above. I had killed him through my own incompetence.

  Time itself seemed to slow as if it too had began to freeze in this frigid underworld. I struggled not to look, but eventually had to crawl to the side to see the carnage I had wrought. My red and teary eyes found Alex and the professor kneeling over what was left of Tom's contorted body. They saw what had happened and that Tom's fall wasn't truly my fault; but there would be no way that I could accept that.

  Alexander collected the coil and tossed the cord back up to the outcropping where I was left stranded. I made my way off the ledge by using the bound rope to loop around several small crags on my way down. Slipping to the bottom, I had lost the last of the paracord on a crack high above. Mica came to me to see if I was okay; but I just brushed her off in my shock as I slowly stepped beside the other men as we peered down upon the corpse at our feet.

  "There was nothing you could do Lad," Logan consoled, "don't take it too hard ...these things happen."

  Any other time, his words would have been comforting; but I just couldn't let go of the aching guilt floating in the back of my mind. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach.

  "We have to search him," I whispered, "for any supplies that might help us."

  Alex nodded in agreement, realizing the logic of my statement. We found a chart map for the ship, an automatic pistol and a food pack. His canteen was ruptured, but that was to be expected. In his boot I found a knife with some foreign insignia on its hilt I didn't recognize. Unfortunately, most of his gear had been lost on the upper level.

  Logan was heartbroken with grief, since he had known Tom the longest; but the professor hid it well. His many years on the field had told him there were no guarantees in life. Right now, we had to save ourselves. There was no way of carrying his remains, so we left Tom's body there after sharing a silent moment of prayer.

  Making our way down a steep embankment towards a source of light, we turned the edge of the cavern wall to behold a vast grotto filled with flowing waterfalls blended with formations of ice among a braid of broken bedrock. Mica was intrigued by the geography created from the natural formations we observed inside the closed structure. The ceiling itself consisted of a thick ice sheet which spread soft lighting upon the tranquil scene. Cascading brooks weaved through the cavern where we spotted remnants of ancient architecture.

  Mica was keen on extracting fresh samples which had been left buried deep beneath the ice for untold millennia; while Alex captured photographs whenever he could. The Professor sought material and data from his notebook which he kept in his breast pocket, while scribing additional notes. We made our way through the landscape of the cavern, which appeared to be far warmer than we would have expected.

  "How is the temperature here being maintained above freezing?" Alexander inquired.

  "Well, it could be geothermal venting, which might be heating the water from below and sustaining this delicate environment," Mica offered as a theory.

  "If that's so, then what is keeping that mountain of ice hanging above us in place?" I added with skepticism, "I would rather we not risk a collapse of that degree."

  "I may suspect it is the same anomaly that cleared the glacier ice from around that giant tree at the entrance to this underworld," Logan spouted while penciling comments into his pocketbook, "and speculate that there may well be eight other kingdoms spread across this frozen continent."

  "Kingdoms?" I blurted in dismay.

  "Yes, and I presume there may be several more, and far more interesting domains similar to the desolate city we stumbled upon back there," Logan granted as he referred to the domed plaza we had discovered.

  "What brought you to that conclusion, Logan?" Alexander queried his long time friend. More often than not, Logan kept his projects to himself, and preferred to keep the details secretive to avoid ridicule from his peers. He had learned from the past that an invitation to join any one of the professor's numerous outings was most always full of surprises. Personally, finding myself locked under a polar ice sheet with no chance of rescue or way of escape was not what I would consider a pleasant surprise. I just wanted to get home and forget all this ever happened. After the incident with losing my team member, I didn't even care about the paycheck anymore.

  "We set down on the eastern shores of the Weddell Sea, and I suspect that there are several civilization centers located along the Transantarctic mountains which rise in elevation over west Antarctica, acting as a natural barrier separating the two territories," Logan advised his comrade, "I took the liberty to combine the various volumes I had shown you all back at the ship and recorded their findings into one chart, which frankly, were fairly useless if they had been left compartmentalized in separate editions."

  "Are you saying you're expected to find more lost civilizations left hidden under the ice across the entire continent, Professor?" Mica added into the fray.

  "I can only hope, Mica," Logan answered, "but there are limitations with exploring what was once a fertile plain in the times of antiquity, but now veiled with several kilometers of ice resting upon it like a death mask."

  "May I?" I inquired to the Professor as he scrutinized the scribbled notes his pocketbook. With mild apprehension, he agreed to let me view it.

  As their security backup, I now took Tom's place for helping guide the team to safety. However, what I saw in Logan's notebook was nothing less than confusing. There were charts and way-lines folded upon sketched diagrams and references to races I've never heard of. I wasn't the most learned fellow; but the mess I saw scribbled within was nothing less than an incomprehensible mess. Then again, the translation of it might have gone right over my head. That was when Mica snatched the booklet from me as I was trying to make sense of it.

  "These are geography lines of the Antarctic plates prior to the last ice age," Mica gasped as she studied the notations, "how did you come into possession of these without current satellite imagery?"

  "Old maps and tomes from the shelf's of ancient libraries and the salt-crusted desks of seafarers from the ages," Logan admitted, "I fully believe that the last ice age didn't last for millions of years; but instead, the world has experienced several such mini-storms that span a dozen millennium, accompanied by a shifting axis in the earth core," he mentioned, "completely refacing the continents of both plant and animal species."

  Mica seemed to be stumped on his proposal, considering her own background on global tectonics. The Antarctica plate was the only one on the globe which spanned the entire map without interruption. That meant it was either one solid mass, or it was likely more feasible that the entire plate was receiving converging pressure from all sides, keeping it intact. It was the only summary that could explain the jagged mountain range which had bloomed between the two territories creating the immense rift cutting through the entire frozen continent.

  "Oh, my..." Logan's attention swayed from the conversation as he took notice of something which was nothing less than a miracle. Sitting next to a glossy rock by the running waters sat a small flowering plant sprouting from the course soil. He brought its presence to Mica's attention, but she was inclined to secure a few of the seedlings lying next to it; rather than kill the tiny plant by uprooting it. She asked Alex to take some photographs so she could log the design of its leaves.

  "How could that possibly grow down here?" I petitioned to Mica, who had gathered the few samples she could find.

  "The ambient temperature here is high enough for a hearty species to survive. The seeds were frozen and somehow endured in a state of dormancy all these ages. This is likely a specimen not seen in millions of years," Mica responded.

  "Or perhaps, it could be merel
y thousands of years or less," Logan attempted to correct her, according to his theories.

  While those two were arguing, I wandered off to follow the channel of running melt off to see where it led. Following rivers was a part of any survivalist handbook. Behind a collapsed part of the cavern wall I found a fair sized opening into the rock wall where the small river emptied into the darkness beyond. There were a multitude of tiny plants and moss growing around its mouth and I thought it was worth investigating; so I returned to tell the others where I was going before running off into some uncharted chasm.

  We had to pull Mica away from her obsession with collecting rock and plant samples, and followed the outgoing stream back to the break where it exited the cavern.

  "Ah, this likely leads to an underground river; I wouldn't chance it," Alexander warned. Alex also admitted that he was not very fond of confined spaces.

  "I've looked around and there are no other exits to this cavern," I tried to persuade the three of them; "this channel has to lead somewhere, where it eventually leads to the sea."

  "What are your thoughts, Mica?" Logan begged to ask after taking a moment to rub his chin in thought.

  "Based on the strata in this area it would be safe to assume the bedrock will be stable enough to explore the course of this river, Mica added.

  "Fine then," Logan looked around, noting we had no other logical choice in the matter. We had no climbing equipment for us to reach the high inlets of the waterfalls pouring into the chamber from the ledges above; so there was only one way to go from this point.

  We made our way into the passage which quickly opened up to the point we could stand upright. Several streams converged on the watercourse farther along the chasm. We had been following the snaking watercourse for several hours until we stumbled upon something quite unexpected. Half buried in chunks of ice we found what appeared to be the remnants of a dock along with old wooden scraps of boats. Logan was drawn to a monolith standing nearby which was covered with similar quasi-Sumerian etchings we had found before.