IGMS Issue 18 by IGMS Read Free Book Online Page A

don't recognize the structures. I've never seen anything like it. Might be from the moon's core."
    She beat at the wall with her chisel, trying to pry the gem free.
    "Leave it," I said.
    "Maybe you could retrieve it on the way up," offered Katherine, using her silky voice. "If we have time."
    Shelley continued hammering. "If I do nothing else today, I'm taking this sample."
    There was a jostling of bodies, then Wil was next to Shelley, trying to pass her on the line. "We'll wait for you at the next ledge," he said.
    I blocked him. "No! I go down first, remember? If you pass me, I swear I'll cut the line." Wil stopped. Katherine stopped behind him, her arm around his waist.
    "Shelley, how long will it take you to get this sample?"
    "Ten more minutes."
    "You've got eight. And to make up the time, we'll skip the next three ledges and go straight to the ninth. Clear?"
    Shelley nodded. Wil and Katherine spoke on their private frequency, then opened a line to me. "That's reasonable," said Katherine. "We're happy to wait."
    Ten minutes later, the gem was free. Shelley held it in front of her helmet light, turning it around in her hand.
    Its entire surface was smooth and black, reflecting Shelley's headlamp like a mirror. Its front end, the part that had been buried in the wall, was sharp, pointed, with flat sides, like a cut diamond. Shelley held it out toward me. I shook my head. She labeled it and dropped it into her sample bin.
    We continued down the rope.
    I increased our speed to four meters per second, coasting past the six, seventh, and eight ledges, heading towards the last.
    We saw more of the black gems. They were getting larger, too--I passed one longer than my arm, jutting out from the wall like a spear. All were wedged into the wall at an angle, their smooth back ends pointed downward toward the canyon floor. Whatever they were, they'd come from below.
    Shelley asked twice to stop, but I ignored her and continued downward. When we passed the eighth ledge, she buzzed me again. I tapped my radio, so she knew I could hear her, but I didn't respond. The canyon was getting interesting.
    It widened as we descended, something Shelley's crude radar map hadn't resolved. And there was a curvature to the walls, as though we were entering a bowl, or a crater.
    The mysterious gem shards were everywhere. Most were still black, but I'd spotted a few reds and a translucent one that refracted my headlamp into a rainbow -- an astonishing sight twenty kilometers below ground on a gray, frozen moon.
    We reached the ninth and final ledge, a mere three hundred meters from the bottom. We'd made up all the lost time, so I locked the splicer to the descent line, shuffled to the rear of the ledge underneath the overhanging wall, leaned back, and looked up.
    It's a compulsion that I have. Whenever I find a new cave, I stop, look up, and picture the first cave I ever explored.
    I grew up in Northern Arkansas, in a crowded home near a patch of dark woods. Those woods captivated me. Summers, I'd slip away from my six older siblings and explore, wooden staff in hand, imagining myself to be Jacques Cartier or Ernest Shackleton.
    One June afternoon, I came across a thin stream that disappeared into the side of a hill. I dug through bushes and dirt with my staff, made an opening, and slithered through on my belly. The ground fell out from under me and I slid downward over wet rock, crashing to rest in a muddy puddle at bottom.
    When my eyesight adjusted, I saw that I was inside a tall, round dome beneath the hill. Dozens of stalactites clung to the ceiling, some stretching down more than a meter. A beam of sunlight broke through the jagged hole I'd made, dancing off the stalactites and the floor. Narrow passages spoked away from the dome.
    I spent the next two months exploring that cavern. I crawled through every passageway I found, some barely wider than my shoulders. I drew maps on construction paper and hid them under my mattress. I told no one.
    In