With Boz in the
lead and Slasher McGoogs bringing up the rear the adventurers wriggled and
crawled down the narrow flu.
Slasher checked regularly over his shoulder for any sign that they were
followed and surreptitiously fingered his Mauser Red Nine, his security
blanket; the rest of them would be furious if they knew he was toting a real
and loaded weapon. The
atmosphere was oppressive and damp, the hum grew louder as they descended and
there was a definite breeze coming up from below. Soon the tunnel widened slightly and Bozzy stopped.
“There is a
large extractor fan fixed into the tunnel, blocking our way. Can I have that Swiss Army Knife
of yours, please Ferdy?”
Using the
Philips screwdriver attachment, Boz removed a small service cover and with the
insulated wire cutting attachment snipped a brown insulated wire. The fan stopped. The sudden silence was not
comforting. He next undid
the wire safety cage with the flat bladed screwdriver attachment and then used
the adjustable spanner attachment to unscrew a large nut on the hub. With the fan taken out and a
large hole snipped out of the far safety cover, using the heavy-duty wire cutter
attachment, the gang were able to squeeze through. Phoebles got a bit stuck due to an excessively
generous breakfast, but a firm push from behind by Ferdy soon freed him. Slasher was the last cat through.
“We’d best press
on. Someone might come to
investigate why the fan’s not working,” he whispered.
The tunnel was still
descending steeply, but from that point on it had been chiselled out to a
reasonable diameter and it was paved. Moving quickly downwards they eventually came to an
almost vertical shaft with iron rungs set into the wall. At the bottom they were in a sizeable
cave chamber, part of the Peak Cavern system. There were stalactites hanging down and dripping, and
rounder orange or yellow topped stalagmites reaching up. Occasionally mite met tite to
form a thin column of gothic tracery. From oozing cracks in the wall green fingers of
limestone deposit had dribbled over millennia, forming grotesque gargoyle
guardians to terrorise the feint of heart. A narrow path wove through the natural hypostyle, between
petrified forests of sculpted rock, a fast-running stream carved deep into the
cave floor. They were in the
dark - a creeping, all encompassing darkness that seeped into the soul; a
darkness broken only by the narrow beams of their headlamps which cast menacing
shadows about the interior, shadows of hideous beings that could only exist in
such blackness. Not helping
their disquiet, the silence was total and they were entirely alone. The Peak Cavern had been closed
to visitors since inexplicable, phantom, will o’ the wisp lights and unnatural
humming sounds had terrified the tourists. Not that weirdness was unknown within the cave system. Toilet odours bubbling up from
the bowels and moans and farts amplified and echoing about the antediluvian
orifice had led the pious, medieval serfs of Castleton to christen this The
Devil’s Arse – a name which stuck until a visit by the Queen Empress had required
a less graphic appellation. The
improved address was more than welcomed by the cord winders who lived and
worked within the vast cave mouth.
Approaching the
back of the chamber the gang found that the stream issued from a low
culvert. The pathway had
originally terminated at a small quay alongside which lay coffin-like barges in
which recumbent adventurers were, in times gone by, pulled one at a time under
the rocky vault and into the chamber beyond. Luckily, nineteenth century etiquette could not allow
such demeaning transport for a visiting monarch and a relief tunnel had been
dynamited through to the next stage of the tour. It is a low passage, for Queen Victoria was short.
The second
chamber was even larger than the first, fewer stalactites, but the path mounted
the rock wall to clamber over a tumbling mass of hardened mineral sediment that
cascaded down to the stream in terraces filled with crescent moons of still,
black water. Twenty
yards further and the path veered to cross, high above the stream on an iron footbridge
supported on slim, fluted, floriform columns. In a side gallery they could make out a derelict
narrow gauge railway track to nowhere and a derailed, rusted and battered
wagon. Beyond this their
path descended through a straight, well-constructed tunnel with a brick floor,
rust-red plumbing ran along the foot of the passage wall, old iron pipes,
repainted many times, new aluminium pipes silver-gleaming in the light of the
headlamps. The companions
could hear rushing water ahead and at the bottom of the decline the track ended
with a handrail, they were overlooking a wide, fast running underground river;
the tourist trail ended here.
However, the pipes turned to disappear into holes drilled through the rock
wall and next to them was an old, weathered wooden door, blue-grey paint
flaking, something indecipherable and worn stencilled in no-longer white
letters. There was a latch,
but no lock.
The little group
of nervous adventurers entered what was apparently a service tunnel. The pipes, now running along wall
and ceiling, were joined by many others. Thick and thin, new and old, the pipes congregated,
merged and parted, danced around each other. There were valves and junctions, U-bends and Z-bends,
a labyrinthine tangle dreamed up by a plumber spaced out on something stronger than
catnip. Heavy-duty cables
sheathed in lead festooned the walls, fed steel boxes that buzzed and tiny
coloured lamps that flickered.
A socket, corroded by the damp, beside one such box, was joined by an
outdated, frayed a twisted flex to a faintly glowing glass orb which seemed to
hang in the air by its own will power. A large riveted iron tank, with a brass tap that
dripped, almost filled the chamber.
Our intrepid gang had to remove their rucksacks in order to squeeze
past. The tunnel was not
straight – it snaked inexplicably; plant life thrived on the dank walls and the
odours of rot and decay hung around every unscrubbed nook and neglected cranny.
“Great God! This is an
awful place…” quoted Ginsbergbear.
“We are very near the end,
but have not and will not lose our good cheer,” responded Ferdy.
“I think the end may be in sight,” chipped in Boz.
The large hatch that faced them was
battleship grey. It had a
porthole, which was painted over.
It had steel clamps at the corners, which Boz undid. It had a maroon wheel handle,
which Boz turned. The heavy
door swung back and Boz found himself teetering above an impenetrably gloomy
void. Ahead was a polished,
lightly greased, bronze pole.
Without thinking too hard he wrapped his arms tightly around it and
jumped.
“Shi…!”
And the others
followed.
“Geronimo!”
“Mother!”
“Timothy Leary!”
As the pile of
bodies at the base of the pole grew, they heard the steady clunk clunk clunk of
hobnailed hiking boots on iron rungs. The voice from above belonged to Slasher McGoogs.
“Perhaps another
time you may wish to give some consideration to your actions before leaping…
and maybe have a look around for a less thrilling alternative.” He completed his descent of the cast-iron
spiral staircase and began to help the boys pick themselves up and dust
themselves off. Ferdy had
friction burns on some of his wing-stub feathers, Phoebles had grazed his knee,
Ginsbergbear had snapped his favourite pencil and they had all landed on top of
Boz. There were no other
injuries. Once composed they
began to look around. They
had arrived in one of the main linking shafts of Les Chats Souterrains – wide,
arched and concrete lined.
It carried a tarmacadam roadway and twin narrow gauge railway tracks. The artery and its subsidiary
systems existed parallel to or even confluent with the cave system, just a tiny
dimensional twist away, kept apart by a micron thin membrane of warped
space-time. It was but a miniscule
section of the Atlantian world-wide tunnel system, disused for eons and now
usurped by the Lizard Kings, which honeycombs the earth’s crust, linking
natural cave systems, accessible only under mystic circumstances from every
mine, cavern, metro and catacomb; normally undetectable and gateway, some
maintain, to the inner world of our hollow earth.
“Wow!” exclaimed
Phoebles.
“Just come on!”
insisted McGoogs. But they
had not gone far when they heard the purr of a combustion engine. Scrambling quickly as they could
up a fall of rock and scree the boys gained a wide ledge, well above eye height,
and cautiously peeped down.
What they saw was the arrival of a dazzle-camouflage painted Mini Moke
Twinny, which halted whilst four characters, uniformly dressed in light-grey
one-piece overalls, got out.
They had pallid, narrow faces, tiny pink eyes and overly large ears. They were armed and they were
searching.
“I’ve never seen
them without their goggles before,” said Phoebles, “Ugly looking bunch.”
“I don’t think
we should hang around here,” said Slasher, wrenching a grill off the wall
behind them. “Boz, you come
through last, and pull this grating back in place.”
They were in a
small, square cross-sectioned shaft that carried a steady draft of warm
air. It inclined gently and branched
off at regular intervals. At
length their somewhat randomly chosen route emerged into a gallery that
overlooked a truly vast cavern.
Ginsbergbear threw himself back from the edge and pressed into the cave
wall. Ferdy and Phoebles
gave out simultaneous gasps.
This was Titan, the belly of Behemoth – one hundred foot of vault above
them and an eighty-foot drop to the floor below. They were looking down into the mother of all chambers
- and it swarmed with industry.
Mass tangles of
wiring hung between flickering screens and bays of valves, beam tetrodes glowing
violet or lime-green. Rainbow
lights pulsed along ionized gasses in glass tubes and flasks. Heavy-duty High Tension cables hung
from ceramic insulators and harsh strip lighting dangled precariously from
chains and improvised scaffolding.
High on one wall a huge screen showed:
Project Deadline
[] [] / [] [] / [] [] [] []
Don’t let the Mayans down
“We can’t use
the water pistols with all this electricity about –remove your magazines and
pass them to Ferdy,” ordered Boz.
They could make
out several assembly lines trundling inwards towards the centre of the
floor. One carried copper
tanks like oversize water heaters.
Another line was doing pipe cots, with robot arms sewing canvas covers
and welding joints. Yet
another bore printed circuit boards, technical bits and electronic pieces,
between robots that soldered and snipped, towards half-finished, splayed-bell
shaped craft, like bizarre giant hub caps, their shell plates being welded,
riveted and spray-painted by beavering robots on the outside, whilst metal
mechanics rushed in and out with the fittings as they arrived on the
lines. One completed
craft, developed from a German, Nationalsozialismus prototype design of the 1940s sat
on a flatbed railway truck receiving the finishing touches to
its paint job. A Chat Souterrain in a
silver radiation suit and fish-bowl helmet
was stencilling alien symbols around the hull:
µƒß
ç¬ø∂^øñ +
“Looks a bit like Sanskrit to me,” said
Phoebles, to everyone else’s surprise.
The pals grouped
and squatted in a circle to discuss a plan of action while an apparently
uninterested Ginsbergbear opened a nearby junction box that had caught his
attention, marked as it was with the inscription ‘DON’T!’ on the door in large,
red letters. Once inside he snipped
through some of the wiring, mostly blue wires, and a fat bunch of filaments
that had all been taped together.
He unscrewed a connector block and began swapping connections, yellow
wires for green wires, brown wires for the pretty little striped ones. Finally he took two red wires and
shorted them together with a crack and a spark. Down below some of the banks of valves flickered
and went out. Some of the
valves began to glow brighter and brighter. Then they all began to strobe neurotically. The robots lost control,
mechanical arms waved and jerked, welding arms lanced and riveting arms sewed. The humming and crackling of
barely harnessed alternating current soared orgasmically. White coated overseer Chats
looked uncertain, worried, panicked. Bolts of lightening began to arc over the insulators
and a maniacally frenzied laser arm sliced a ruby pencil of lethal light
through a dangling power cable.
The severed conduit swung down till its exposed core shorted against one
of the bays, sprayed sparks above the growing pandemonium.
“RUN!” cried Ginsbergbear as he rushed past
his comrades, and a small explosion shook the stalactites.
