'Matches.'
'Check.'
'Candles.'
'Check.'
'Swiss Army knife.'
'Check.'
'Spare flashlight.'
'Check.'
'Balls of string.'
'Check.'
'Chalk and rope.'
'Yep.'
'Compass.'
'Umm… yep.'
'Extra batteries for the helmet lights.'
'Check.'
'Camera and notebook.'
'Check, check.'
'Pencils.'
'Check.'
'Water and sandwiches.'
'Ch— planning a long stay, are we?' Chester asked as he looked at the absurdly large packet wrapped in aluminum foil. They were carrying out a last-minute equipment check down in the Burrowses' cellar, using a list Will had made at school earlier that day during his home ec class. After ticking them off, they stowed each item in their backpacks. When they were finished, Will closed the flap on his and shrugged it onto his back.
'OK, let's do it,' he said with a look of sheer determination on his face as he reached for his trusty shovel.
Will drew back the shelves and, once both he and Chester were inside, pulled them shut again and secured them by means of a makeshift latch he'd rigged up. Then Will squeezed past Chester to lead the way, moving swiftly ahead on all fours.
'Hey, wait for me,' Chester called after him, quite taken aback by his friend's enthusiasm.
At the work face, they dislodged the remaining blocks of stone, which fell away into the darkness and landed with dull splashes. Chester was about to speak when Will preempted him.
'I know, I know, you think we're about to be swept away in a flood of raw sewage or something.' Will peered through the enlarged opening. 'I can see where the rocks fell — they're sticking up out of the water. It can only be about ankle deep.'
With that, he turned around and started to climb backward through the hole. He paused on the brink to grin at Chester, then ducked out of sight, leaving his friend dumbfounded for an instant, until Chester heard Will's feet land in the water with a loud splash.
There was a drop of about six feet. 'Hey, pretty cool,' Will said as Chester scrambled through after him. Will's voice echoed eerily around the cavern, which was approximately ten feet in height and at least thirty feet long, as far as they could make out, crescent shaped, with much of the floor submerged. They had entered near one end, and so were only able to see as far as the curve of the wall allowed.
Stepping out of the water, they shone their flashlights around for a few seconds, but when the beams came to rest on the side of the cavern nearest to them they were both immediately transfixed. Will held his flashlight steady on the intricate rows of stalactites and stalagmites, all of varying sizes, from the width of pencils to much larger ones as think as the trunks of young trees. The stalactites speared down as their counterparts reached up, some meeting to form columns, and the ground was covered with overlapping swells of the encrusted calcite.
'It's a grotto,' Will said quietly, reaching out to feel the surface of an almost translucent milky white column. 'Isn't it just beautiful? Looks like icing on a cake or something.'
'I think it looks more like frozen snot,' Chester said in a whisper, also touching a small column, as if he didn't believe what he was seeing. He drew back his hand and rubbed his fingers together with an expression of distaste.
Will laughed, ramming the heel of his hand against a stalactite with a soft thud. 'Hard to believe it's actually rock, isn't it?'
'And the whole place is made of it,' Chester said, turning to look farther along the wall. He shivered from the chill air and scrunched up his nose. The whole chamber smelled dank and stale — not very pleasant at all. But to Will it was the sweet smell of success. He'd always dreamed of finding something important, but this grotto surpassed his wildest expectations. So strong was his exhilaration. Will almost felt intoxicated.
'Yes!' he said, triumphantly punching the air. At that instant, standing there in the grotto, he was the great adventurer he'd always dreamed of being, like Howard Carter in Tutankhamen's burial chamber. He whipped his head this way and that, trying to take in everything at once.
'You know, it probably took thousands of years for all this to grow…' Will was babbling as he took a step backward, stopping short as his foot snagged on something. He bent down to see what it was; a small object protruded from the flowstone. Dark and flaking; its color had seeping into the pale whiteness around it. He tried to work it free, but his fingers slipped off. It was stuck solid.
'Shine your light on this, Chester. It feels like a rusty bolt or something. But it can't be.'
'Uh… you might want to look at this…,' Chester replied, his voice a little shaky.
At the center of the grotto, in the deepest part of the clouded pool that lay there, stood the remains of a massive machine of some description. The boys' flashlights revealed ranks of large red-brown cogwheels that were still held together within what remained of a shattered cast-iron frame so tall that in places the stalactites growing from the rock ceiling above touched it. It was as if a locomotive had been mercilessly disemboweled and then left there to die.
'What the heck is it?' Chester asked as Will stood silently beside him, examining the scene.
'Beats me,' Will answered. 'And there are bits of metal all over the place. Look!'
He was shining his flashlight around the margins of the water, following them as far as he could into the deepest reaches of the cavern. Will's first thought had been that the banks were streaked with minerals or something similar, but on closer inspection he discovered they were littered with more bolts like the one he'd just found, all with chunky hexagonal heads. In addition to these, there were spindles and countless pieces of jagged cast-iron shrapnel. The red oxide from these intermingled with darker, inky streaks, which, from their appearance, Will took to be oil spills.
As they stood there in amazed silence and surveyed this worthless treasure trove, they became aware of a faint scratching sound.
'Did you hear that?' Chester whispered as they trained their lights in the direction of the sound.
Will moved a little farther into the cavern, treading carefully on the uneven floor, now invisible beneath the water.
'What was it?' gasped Chester.
A sudden movement and a small splash made them jump. Then a sleek white object leaped from the rippling water and streaked along one of the metal members, stopping still on the top of a huge gearwheel. It was a large rat with a glistening, perfectly white coat and big, bright pink ears. It wiped its snout with its paws and flicked its head, spraying droplets into the air. Then it reared up on its hind legs, its whiskers twitching and vibrating in their flashlight beams as it sniffed the air.
'Look! It doesn't have any eyes,' Will hissed excitedly.
Chester shuddered in response. Sure enough, where there should have been eyes there was not even the tiniest break in the sleek, snowy fur.
'Yuck, that's disgusting!' Chester exclaimed as he took a step back.
'Adaptive evolution,' Will replied.
'I don't care what it is!'
