There came an odd tickling vibration beneath his soles. “Please, no more,” he whispered. Grains of sand and pebbles began to rain down, making a plinking sound on his steel helmet.

“God, no.”

He was frozen, waiting, listening, reaching out with all his senses and hoping that what he feared wasn’t about to occur. There came a faint sound that reminded him of the great ice sheets cracking as the first thaws of spring calved off huge bergs from the Arctic glaciers. Suddenly, in the dim yellow glow of his flashlight he saw a black line running towards him across the cave floor. Almost immediately, it started to open like a giant zipper.

Jim Granger felt like he was on a sinking ship, where the deck was beginning to tilt. He ran, but slid, and then fell. He suddenly found himself floating. His flashlight wasn’t in his hand anymore, but the string loop kept it close, and the weak yellow beam illuminated a rush of meteorites falling with him. He smelled the saltwater, and above the crushing sound of cracking rock, he thought he could hear ancient surf far away in the dark void.

It was impossible to determine how long he fell through the darkness, but after an eternity he started to hear the crash of large stones hitting water, and then he too hit the surface. The impact stunned him, but thankfully the broken rock falling just ahead of him, had churned the water taking the lethality from the surface tension.

He lay on his back, floating and groaning softly. He tasted salt, or maybe blood, and opened his eyes to look around. He saw nothing, and knew he floated on a black sea, in a dark world.

“Help!”

help – help – heeelp – heeeel – heeeee…

The echoes continued for many minutes, and told him that the cavern was enormous. He eased upright and began to tread water. He felt a tug of string at his wrist.

“Please god.” He fiddled with the flashlight, and it rewarded him with an orange glow. It was weak, and its beam only illuminated about a dozen feet, but never had he been so happy to see a light in his life.

He spun one way, and then the next, but there was nothing but walls of blackness. At the far edge of his light he could just make out a spot of bright yellow, his helmet, slowly turning on the dark water after its drop from above. It looked like a tiny lemon turtle on its back. For some reason, it comforted him. “Get help,” he sputtered to it, and then turned away.

I need to find one of the walls. If I can do that, perhaps I can find a way up. Jim Granger had been in caves and cave-ins before, and the one thing he knew, if there was a way in, there was usually a way out.

“Hello!”