Tunnels

something else altogether.'

Chester 's optimism evaporated, his face falling as they both approached the gate again, pushing their heads against it so their helmet lamps flicked into the black shaft.

'Well, if we don't know what this is…' Chester said, '…there's still time to go back.'

'Come on, we can't give up. Not now.'

They both stood listening to the approaching elevator for a couple of minutes, until Chester spoke. 'What if there's someone in it?' he said, drawing back from the gate and starting to panic again.

But Will couldn't tear himself away. 'Hang on, I can't quite… It's still too dark… Wait! I can see it, I can see it! It's like a miner's cage lift!' Staring hard at the elevator as it inched ponderously toward them, Will found he was able to see through the grille that formed its roof. He turned to Chester. 'Relax, will you? There's nobody in it.'

'I didn't really think there was,' Chester retorted defensively.

'Yeah, right, you big wuss.'

Satisfying himself that it was empty, Chester shook his head and sighed with relief as the elevator arrived at their level. It shuddered to a clangorous halt, and Will lost no time pulling back the gate and taking a few steps in. Then he turned to Chester, who was hovering on the brink, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

'I don't know, Will, it looks pretty risky,' he said, his gaze shifting around the car's interior. It had cage walls and a scratched steel-plate floor, and the whole thing was covered with what looked like years of oily grime and dust.

'Come on, Chester, this is the big time! ' Not for a second did Will stop to consider there was any way to go but down. If he'd been filled with exhilaration at the discovery of the grotto, then this surpassed even his wildest expectations. 'We're going to be famous!' he laughed.

'Oh, sure, I can see it now… Two dead in elevator disaster! ' Chester rejoined morosely, stretching his hands in front of him to indicate the newspaper headline. 'It just doesn't look safe… probably hasn't been serviced in ages.'

Without a moment's hesitation Will jumped up and down a couple of times, his boots clanging on the metal floor. Chester looked on, terrified, as the cage rattled.

'Safe as houses,' Will grinned impishly and, resting his hand on the brass lever inside the car, looked Chester in the eye. 'So are you coming… or are you going back to fight the rat?'

That was enough for Chester, who immediately moved into the car. Will slid the gate shut behind him, and, when he pushed and held down the lever, the elevator once again shuddered into motion and began to descend. Through the caging, interrupted every so often by the dark mouths of other levels, they saw the rock face slowly sweeping by in muted shades of browns and blacks and grays, ochres and yellows.

A damp breeze blew around them, and at one point Chester shone his flashlight through the grille above them, up into the shaft and onto the cables, which looked like a pair of dirty laser beams fading into deep space.

'How far down do you think it goes?' Chester asked.

'How should I know?' Will replied gruffly.

In fact, it was almost five minutes before the elevator finally came to a stop with an abrupt and bone- shaking bump that made them fall against the sides of the cage.

'Maybe I should have let go of the lever a bit earlier,' Will said sheepishly.

Chester threw his friend a blank look, as if nothing really mattered anymore, and then they both stood there, their lights throwing giant diamond silhouettes from the elevator cage onto the walls beyond.

'Here we go again,' Chester sighed as he slid back the gate, and Will pushed impatiently past him into another metal-plate room, rushing through it to get to the door at the far end.

'This is just like the one above,' Will noted as he busied himself with the three handles on the side of the door. This one had a large zero painted on it.

They took a few tentative steps into the cylindrical room, their boots ringing out against the undulating sheet-metal flooring and their flashlight beams illuminating yet another door in front of them.

'Seems we only have one way to go,' Will said, striding toward it.

'These chambers look like something out of a submarine,' Chester muttered under his breath.

Standing on tiptoe, Will looked through the small glass porthole, but couldn't make out anything on the other side. And when he tried to shine his flashlight through it, the grease and the scratches on the ancient surface only refracted the beam, so that the glass became more opaque than ever.

'Useless,' he said to himself.

Passing his flashlight to Chester, he rotated the three handles and then pushed against the door. 'It's stuck!' he grunted. He tried again without success. 'Give me a hand, will you?'

Chester joined in, and with their shoulders braced against the door they pushed and shoved with all their might. Suddenly it burst open with a loud hiss and a massive rush of air, and they stumbled through into the unknown.

Their boots now ground on cobblestones as they regained their footing and straightened up. Before them was a scene that they both knew, for as long as they lived, they would never forget.

It was a street.

They found themselves in a huge space almost as wide as a highway, which curved off into the distance to their left and right. And looking across to the opposite side, they saw the road was lit by a row of tall street lamps.

But what stood beyond these lights, on the far side of the cavern, was what really took their breath away. Stretching as far as they could see, in both directions, were houses.

As if in a trance, Will and Chester moved toward this apparition. As they did so, the door slammed shut behind them with such force that they both wheeled around.

'A breeze?' Chester asked his friend, with a baffled expression.

Will shrugged in response — he could definitely feel a faint draft on his face. He put his head back and sniffed, catching the stale mustiness in the air. Chester was shining his flashlight at the door and then began to play it over the wall above, illuminating the huge blocks of stone that formed it. He raised the circle of light, higher and higher, and their eyes were compelled to follow the wall up into the shadows above, where it met the opposing wall in a gentle arch, like the vaulted roof of a huge cathedral.

'What is all this, Will? What is this place?' Chester asked, grabbing him by the arm.

'I don't know — I've never heard about anything like this before,' Will replied, staring wide-eyed around the huge street. 'It's truly awesome.'

'What do we do now?'

'I think we… we should have a look around, don't you? This is just incredible,' Will marveled. He struggled to order his thoughts, infused with the first heady rush of discovery and consumed with the irresistible urge to explore and to learn more. 'Must record it,' he muttered as he hoisted out his camera and began to take photographs.

'Will, don't! The flash!'

'Oops, sorry.' He slung the camera around his neck. 'Got a little carried away there.' Without another word to Chester, he suddenly strode across the cobblestones toward the houses. Chester followed behind his fellow explorer, half crouched and grumbling under his breath as he scanned up and down the road for any sign of life.

The buildings appeared to be carved out of the very walls themselves, like semi-excavated architectural fossils. Their roofs were fused with the gently arching walls behind, and where one might have expected chimneys there was an intricate network of brick ducts sprouting from the tops, which ran up the walls and disappeared above, like petrified smoke plumes. As they reached the sidewalk, the only sound apart from their footfalls was a low humming, which seemed to be coming from the very ground itself. They paused briefly to inspect one of the streetlights.

'It's like the—'

'Yes,' Will interrupted, unconsciously touching his pocket where his father's luminescent orb was carefully wrapped in a handkerchief. The glass sphere of the streetlight was a much larger version of this, almost the size of a soccer ball, and held in place by a four-pronged claw atop a cast-iron post. A pair of snow-white moths circled erratically about it like epileptic moons, their dry wings fluttering against the surface of the glass.