We walked quickly, our weapons drawn and held at the ready. Our battle with the creature had left us shocked and exhausted. Jim went first, followed by Sam, then Denise, and lastly me. We listened closely for any sound from behind us and frequently turned and looked back, hoping not to see the creature, or more like it following us.

As we walked though, the quiet of the tunnel and the dim green light from the bioluminescent plants soothed our nerves and slowed our pulses. We maintained a good pace and after only 15 or twenty minutes Jim thought that we were about halfway so he called a stop to rest briefly and eat and drink something. We didn’t face each other but sat back to back, looking down the tunnel. I had just had a gulp of water and was unwrapping a granola bar from my pack when Sam said,” something is coming up the tunnel from in front of us.”

I grabbed my rifle and looked up the passageway. In the pale light, we could see a number of dark silhouettes slowly advancing towards us. Jim told Sam to watch the rear while the rest of us readied our weapons. I got down on one knee and brought the other up, braced the rifle’s stock against it and looked down the sights towards our targets. I counted at least eight. They moved forward and then stopped, waited, and then moved forward again. There was however, something about the way that they moved that did not frighten me and I began to relax despite our group’s collective uneasiness. I didn’t know what they were but they certainly didn’t move like the creature in the cave.

“Lower your weapons,“ Jim suddenly whispered. Denise began to protest, but then realized her mistake. It was another group of the humanoids. Their pale almost white faces looked agitated as they moved forward and past us to the left or right in the tunnel. They were all very heavy, like the group we had seen in the cave, and I could hear the naked surfaces of their inner legs rub against each other as they passed. There were four older male children, three females and in the rear, one, older, very rotund male. He had a long flowing beard and hair and walked lurched forward with a severe limp and the aid of a cane.

Suddenly he stopped and pointed at us from the shadows. It was then that I saw, in the light of Jim’s headlamp, that the cane in his left hand was in fact, a long wooden-handled ice-axe and that his left leg was horribly twisted and scared. The younger males and the females then stopped on the other side of us. Denise brought the rifle up to her shoulder and his eyes went wide and there was no mistaking the startled look on his face.

“No,” he wheezed through the long kinky whiskers of his grey beard. His skin was a deep brown, and everywhere on him it was stretched tightly over his ample weight, except on his brow where it was deeply wrinkled. “No hurt. You, talk,” he said with effort. He then turned and grunted something to the two oldest males. They looked at him and he pointed two fingers from his free hand at his eyes and then down the corridor in either direction. The two then ran off in either direction down the tunnel and the rest of the group sat down on the stone floor.

“Sons watch. We talk. Who…,”he asked in a whisper,” you.”

“My name is Jim Huxley,” said Jim stepping forward with his hand outstretched. “This is Sam, Denise and Eric,” he said pointing at each of us in turn. Jim pointed at the ax and then asked,” are you one of the climbers.”

“Climb?” he said looking puzzled and like he was trying to remember somewhere long ago and far away. “Yes, climb, ago, then fall, then no up, only climb down.” He looked up to the ceiling and then started to smile. “Heh, no more climb up, only climb down.” He shook for a moment with silent laughter looking down at the ground. Then he stopped and looked up smiling,” my name is Troy Will… iamson. From…Wy…Wyoming.

“What happened Troy,” Jim asked.

“Camp. Camp on the ice,” he said pointing at the ceiling and then continued. “Camp near crack. Very deep. Joe go down. We say no. Joe go down. We follow. Find smooth rock. Find door. We go down. Falling water. We go down. Joe falled. Stabbed by rock. We cry. Then they are there, around us.”

“They?” asked Sam.

“Black monsters. Demons.”

“What happened?”

“Killed. Ate.” He paused, clearly shaken by a memory better left unremembered.

“Did any of the other climbers survive Mr. Williamson,” Denise asked.

His face straightened. “No.” He looked at us and it was then that I saw the years of pain and trauma he had endured in that nightmare world. “Black eaters, ate them, tore them apart.” Tears filled his eyes. “Claw my leg. Why they leave me? Why?” He wiped away his tears and then stared in sad wonder at his wet hand.

Jim started to ask a question, but Troy held his hand up in protest. He blinked his eyes several times looking at the ground and then looked up at us. “How you come here,” he said pointing at the ground.

“Our plane crashed, in the valley above. There was a dome in the valley,” Jim said showing the shape of the dome with his hands.

“Through the ice?,” asked Troy.

“The ice is gone, melted,” said Denise.

“No.” His face looked troubled. “Gone?”

“Gone.”

“Where you going,” he then asked.

“Back,” said Sam. “We are going back to the dome.”

“Good. We will go with you,” he motioned for the others to stand and he turned and started to lead us up the tunnel.

We had only walked about a hundred feet when suddenly the calm of our new resolve was shattered by a terrible, gutteral shriek coming from the direction we were walking. The sound pierced some primordial place in the deepest, darkest part of my mind. I clutched at my ears. My legs shook. We were cut off.

Denise and I were both hunters so we had been carrying the rifles. Jim and Sam each had a .44. We quickly freed the guns from our packs and then crawled over to the edge behind a few rocks that provided some cover.

“Here,” Sam whispered to Jim as he handed him the binoculars nervously. “It’s near the pool, behind the large pillar, about 10 feet off the ground. Hard to see,” he said nervously pointing across the cavern.

Jim raised the binoculars to his eyes and began to scan the far side of the cavern, the rest of us just squinted. The area we were looking at was riddled with columns and outcrops of rock that lacked any of the light emitting plants so the area was consequently darker and hard to see into.

We watched intently for several minutes. I started to think that Sam’s fears were starting to get the better of him and he was beginning to see things.

Finally Jim whispered in a frustrated tone,” Sam, I don’t….” He stopped, then his voice became urgent and quiet as he continued,” wait a minute. I thought I…, it’s moving, what the hell is…” Jim hurriedly handed me the binoculars and then turned to Denise. “How good of a shot are you?”

I heard Denise respond quietly as I raised the binoculars. “If I can see it, I can shoot it. So far, though, I haven’t seen anything that needs to be shot.”

Through the binoculars I saw the large column of smooth stone and next to it, suspended well above the cavern’s floor, a strangely jagged shadow. I followed its dark outline down until it wrapped around the back of the pillar. Then just below that, I saw two long, black projections stretching across the pillars face, reaching forward. Then I saw that each of the outstretched shapes ended in two sharply down-curved points, and I realized that they were limbs.

Suddenly the shadow lunged forward.

I dropped the binoculars, grabbed my gun and turned to the others. “It’s coming, Denise, take my word for it, we need to be ready,” was all I said.  Denise took one look at my face, pulled the rifle confidently up to her shoulder and then turned to look down the barrel into the cavern. “Where is it Eric,” she asked.

“There,” said Sam pointing his pistol at it. It had come out from behind the pillar now completely and was walking slowly through the litter and man-sized rocks of the caverns floor directly towards us.

“Oh my God,” said Denise.

“God did not make that,” said Jim.

It was about eight feet tall, completely black and walked upright on two short bird-like legs. Its torso was wide at the shoulders and tapered to a point at its tail. Two long, pendulous, claw-tipped forelimbs hung from its shoulders to the ground. The creature’s most striking feature however was a large savage looking beak that projected from the front of its reptilian head and neck.

“Doesn’t it know we can see it,” asked Denise as she looked intently down the sights of her rifle.

It stopped and paused behind a large outcrop, but was still plainly visible to us and only about two hundred feet away. Its head snaked out from behind the rock and looked not at us, but straight ahead.

Denise turned from the view to face us. Her face was worried. “Oh my God, those poor people below,” she said in a loud whisper. “It’s hunting them. We have to stop it.”

We turned back to look and then it was too late. I had never seen a living creature move that far that fast. With a single bound it landed in the midst of the humans below and fell on the chest of one of the larger females. Her scream was painful. The creature raised its head, opened its horrible beak and roared at the backs of the other humans as they tried to get away across the cave. Then its head lunged down and bit into the neck of the still shrieking woman below it. The screaming stopped.

Surprise was on our side. It had not seen us. Denise was the first to shoot, and then we were all firing. The sound of the guns was deafening. Our first shots didn’t seem to have much effect, but then it looked up to see its attackers, the woman’s throat still dangling from its toothed beak, and Denise hit it squarely in the neck and it staggered. It screamed at us. I had never fired a gun in self defense before, but I knew then if we did not kill it, it would surely kill us. It looked like it was preparing to jump at us. I aimed and fired and hit it in the chest between the shoulders and it fell backwards. The creature raised itself slowly, turned its back to us and then a strange thing happened, its wide back which appeared smooth split apart and extended outwards slightly covering the rest of its body. Then with a short lunge and a limping gate it ran back across the cavern and disappeared into the shadows on the far side.

Jim told us to stop firing. We stopped and stared at the darkness across the cave, expecting the horror to reappear, but it didn’t.

Denise looked over the edge and then turned quickly back to look at us. Her face was pale and sad. “She’s dead.”

Jim cleared his throat. He was shaking.

“Let’s go. Get everything, put it in your packs.” He turned to Sam,” We’re getting out of here.”

“Are you sure,” I said as I turned off my headlamp. I looked myself. There was no light.

“I don’t see it either,” said Denise. “Were the batteries okay Jim.”

“I just put them in,” he said scratching his short grey hair.”Maybe it fell over.”

“I knew it. I knew it. We should never have come down here. I should have said something,” Sam said. He was afraid, you could hear it. “How are we going to find our way out now?”

Jim knelt down and ran his hand over the smooth floor. “There is a small amount of sand on the floor. Maybe we can see our tracks,” he said tilting his head and headlamp to the side.

Denise stepped forward and began,” maybe we co…”

“Shhh…,” interrupted Jim. He had his hand to his ear so we stopped to listen.

At first I heard nothing, but then I heard a faint sound. Shallow, labored breathing, that came from somewhere ahead in the cavern. Then there was a high-pitched shriek and we could see the cone of light from the flashlight again. Instead of shining up at the ceiling though it was now moving.

“There is something alive down here with us,” I thought. “Something that could hold on to a flashlight. Something that could figure out how to turn it on.”

“C’mon, let’s go,” Jim whispered while motioning us to follow him.

“Where,” said Sam.

“Towards the light so we can find our way out,” Denise answered quietly for Jim as she started to follow him.

“How do you know that whatever picked up the light didn’t carry it away from the tunnel before it switched it on,” Sam asked. He didn’t move.

“I’m sure it did, but it couldn’t have gone far, it’s only had it for a few minutes. If we go in that general direction we’ll be closer to the tunnel then we are now.”

“You can’t argue with that logic,” I said.

Sam nodded. The light was still visible in the distance, flickering erratically across the smooth rock walls and ceiling.

“Eric give me your headlamp,” Jim asked quietly as he handed me his. “It’s the dimmest one. I will lead, everyone else turn off your lights and follow me. Hopefully the approach of another small light won’t scare whatever it is off.”

Jim started walking carefully across the cavern and we all followed. After about fifteen minutes we were quite close but whatever it was it kept close to the rocks and the other formations in the cave and we couldn’t get a good look at it. We stopped once and Jim motioned for us to be still and listen. We heard the distant sound of water falling and then the labored breathing of our quarry; a swift sucking of air in, followed by an exhalation that almost sounded like excited mumbling or babbling. Then the light reflected off the surface of a jagged, glistening rock wall ahead and it turned and there was an opening. This opening though was roughly square, unlike the broad arched opening we had come through. I wanted to tap Jim on the shoulder and tell him, but he slowed as we approached and I sensed that we were thinking the same thing. As I stared forward wondering if Jim would lead us further into the cave or turn back I noticed that the square tunnel ahead was empty of obstructions. We would see it. Again, I thought Jim and I shared the same thoughts. He stopped and moved to the side against a large rock that we could all just see over the top of, about one hundred feet from the tunnel opening. Jim turned off the headlamp and we watched.

Ahead, the weak cone of light flickered across the walls and ceiling of the cavern from behind a grouping of stalagmites near the tunnels entrance. We could hear the carrier breathing in fitful gasps and expulsions that almost sounded like laughter and then it stepped forward and the reflections from the surrounding wet stone illuminated its silhouette perfectly. Denise reached forward and grabbed my arm painfully and I could tell that she was using her other hand to muffle a frightened gasp.

It was a boy. A little boy silhouetted in the strobe-like illumination of the tiny light that flashed around the cave.

He was about three feet tall, naked and very pale. He was also very heavy. His skin was taught over the rolls of flesh that made up his arms, legs and torso.

Maybe it was our collective inhalation or some other sound we could not hear, but suddenly he turned towards us. We all held our breath and didn’t move. You may think this odd. It was a boy, a little boy. Had you been there, however, you would know the intense feeling of foreboding and dread that had overcome us. Something was not right. Why was this boy here, alone below the earth’s surface in an unknown system of caves under a remote arctic wilderness. 

He turned and ran into the tunnel.

We stood in silence and shock for several minutes. Should we follow the boy and try to learn where and from whom he came from or should we turn back to trying to find the only known exit from what was a seemingly endless expanse of caverns.

Jim turned on his headlamp and spoke first. “I think we should follow the boy.”

“Why,” I said.

“He must be with a group that is exploring from some other opening at the surface. He couldn’t be down here alone, surviving. He must have parents nearby.”

“I agree,” said Sam. “But something doesn’t fit.”

Denise answered, “I’ll tell you what doesn’t fit. We haven’t traveled more than a mile horizontally since we’ve been down here. Where did they come from? There wasn’t anybody else in that valley above. Now, maybe these tunnels link to another tunnel from another valley, but it would be on the other side of the surrounding mountains. Any one that traveled down here had to have come through miles of tunnels to get here. Why would they do that? More importantly, why would you bring a kid?”

“Let’s mark this opening with something that can’t be carried off and then let’s go a little further. I have this feeling that the kid is the answer to getting out of here,” Jim responded.

“No! I’ll wait here,” said Sam. He looked worried. “I can’t go any further. I’m starting to think we will never get out of here.”

Denise put her hand on his shoulder and spoke softly and calmly, “We shouldn’t split up Sam, let’s just go a little further, we won’t get lost in this tunnel. Look, it’s practically an underground road.” She was right. It was straight and wide. The walls, floor and ceiling were smooth.

Jim added, ”we’ll see where the little boy went and then we will follow the tunnel back here and then search the walls of the large cavern in either direction to find the tunnel we came down. It shouldn’t take us more than an hour or two. Then we will head back to the surface just in time to signal the search planes and get the hell out of here.” He paused and then looked Sam in the eyes and added,” besides, aren’t you a little curious about what is going on here.”

“Of course, I’m a scientist.” Sam looked at his feet. “This is, I mean, this whole place, is an incredible find. I just have this feeling. This feeling, this terrible feeling, that we are never going to get out, that we are all going to be trapped down here forever like those climbers.”

I finally spoke. “Sam, these LED headlamps have hundreds of hours of light in them. We have enough food for a week and there is water flowing out of the walls down here. We are going to get out.” God, if we had only listened to him.

He kicked a rock on the floor and then looked up. “Okay.” And with that our fates was sealed.

The tunnel went straight ahead. There was no sign that the boy had passed this way, but he had no choice. There were no other openings. Jim again took the lead with a single headlamp and the rest of us followed. After about fifteen minutes we came to a patch of sand that covered the floor and we could clearly see the tracks of the boy. Jim knelt down over the tracks.

“Look, the distance of the steps, he’s slowed down, he’s walking and here where his foot is turned to the side. He stopped and turned to look or listen behind himself.”

Suddenly Sam said, ”Jim turn off your headlamp. When you bent over I think I saw something.”

“What is it?” Denise asked. “Do you see him?”

“No, Jim the light.”

Jim turned off the headlamp and we stood and looked into the darkness around us.

“Sam?”

“Hold on, let your eyes adjust. There, do you see it, ahead, in the tunnel,” Sam said.

Denise responded first,” a light, there is a dim greenish light in the tunnel ahead.”

“I see it too,” said Jim.

One hundred feet in front of us, a faint green glow emanated from the tunnel’s ceiling. Jim switched on his headlamp and we continued forward. As we moved deeper into the tunnel the glow became stronger and we could see that it was coming from some flat, lichen-like plants that grew in circular, randomly spaced patches on the rocks above us.

Sam asked, “Eric, have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No,” I answered. “Bioluminescence in plants is rare, but it does occur. I just didn’t think it occurred in Alaska. This could be a new species.”

“This trip will probably go down in history as the most successful scientific expedition to begin with a plane crash,” said Jim.

“I hope so,” said Sam.

We kept going. Soon, the light was bright enough to illuminate the passageway, Jim turned off his headlamp and we continued forward.

I knew Sam was watching the time. I kept seeing the blue glow of his watch face after he had lit it up to check, but he didn’t say anything. I guess he was as curious as the rest of us.

The humidity in the tunnel started to increase and the damp air carried the smell of mildew and wet earth. Suddenly I heard Sam muffle a shriek of surprise. We turned towards him. Jim turned on his headlamp. He was whipping something off the back of his neck.

“What is it,” we all whispered at once.

“Something cold and gooey just dropped on me,” Sam answered looking up at the ceiling.

Jim turned his light up to the tunnel’s roof. The glowing lichens there were growing all across the ceiling, but most were concentrated in the center where they overlapped each other.

“Look, it’s wet,” said Sam, and he extended his trekking pole upwards. He touched the tip to the ceiling and then pulled it through the glowing plants and slowly pulled it back. A long strand of viscous liquid hung from the pole’s tip. “There is some kind of groove or crack in the center of the ceiling. Water must be running down the crack and the plants are more concentrated here because of it.”

“Look,” Denise said pointing down the tunnel. “The crack must extend for some way.” Ahead of us on the tunnel’s ceiling a long line of light extended into the darkness. We continued on.

After we had been walking for about an hour, we decided to stop and rest. I leaned over to the stone wall to rest my back against it and immediately felt a slight vibration. Suddenly the whole tunnel began to shake.

“It’s another earthquake,” said Denise trying to maintain her balance. We lurched together in the center of the tunnel and held on to each other. The sound of grinding rocks was deafening. Through the noise I thought I heard what sounded like piles of rocks falling from both ends of the corridor we were in. It lasted about a minute and then suddenly stopped. The air was full of dust and a number of smaller stones had been knocked free of the walls, but our tunnel had not collapsed.

“I hope the tunnel hasn’t collapsed in front of us,” said Jim.

“I hope the tunnel hasn’t collapsed behind us,” said Sam.”Wait, I think I hear an aftershock.” He motioned for us to be quiet.

“No,” said Jim,”I thought I heard something too before the quake started. The sound was coming from up ahead.”

We continued to walk forward and soon we were all hearing the sound, a low constant rumbling. The sound of falling water. I remember looking forward to filling my water bottles. The tunnel turned sharply to the right and we walked into the entrance of a vast cavern. What I saw before me filled me with wonder, but at the same time I felt that we had stumbled upon something better left unseen.

We stepped out on to and were standing on, a small rocky shelf overlooking the largest cavern I had ever been in. I had been to a Seahawks game once in the Seattle dome and this cave was at least as big as the inside of that stadium. A soft cool breeze blew past us that again smelled of mildew and wet rock. All along the ceiling, water dripped and the glowing plants grew in clumps that hung down to the floor. The glow was so bright that it had lost its green color and had become a soft white light. At the far end of the cave a torrent of water fell through a hole in the rock and filled a vast pool. Huge wet stalagmites projected from the ceiling to the floor forming pillars of smooth, black rock. At the base of the columns and across the floor of the cavern was a thick layer of small, whitish, sponge-like balls that were packed close together on a layer of what looked to be broken sticks and other debris. All of these things were remarkable. We had stumbled upon something new and unexpected and to a certain extent that is what we had hoped to find. Nothing, however, in my colleague’s or my, academic and scientific training could have prepared us for the freakish discovery we were about to make.

We entered the cave on a ledge that was raised maybe fifty or so feet above the floor of the awesome cavern. A smooth ramp of stone left the right side of the shelf and led to the floor of the cave below. We all moved towards the ramp and then stopped suddenly.

The beam of the tiny flashlight flickered upwards from the out of sight area in front of us below the ledge.

Jim turned towards us holding up one finger and then pointing to himself and then to the edge of the ledge. He got down on all fours and crept to the edge and then slowly looked over. I was standing to the side and could see his face. His eyes were wide with intrigue, but the look on his face told me that he was troubled as well by what he saw. I wished that I could have heard something but the roar of the caves waterfall droned out quiet sounds in the cave. Suddenly he turned back to us and motioned for us to stay low and then come forward. We copied him by getting down on all fours and crawled forward. I got close to the edge and then slowly leaned forward. A line of broken rocks shielded the view and I had to move a short distance to the side to get a decent look.

Below us, in a clearing of sorts were about fifty naked, very heavy human beings. Their skin was very pale, their hair was long and black and their faces were circular with strong, high cheekbones. Most were sitting or squatting gorging themselves on the whitish balls that clung to the ground and surrounding rocks. The adults were mostly female. There was only one adult male that we could see. He stood slightly apart from the main group. At the center of the group several mothers nursed their infants while they busily picked and ate. Nearby, a group of children played and ate. Standing amongst them picking and eating the white balls with one hand and shining Jim’s flashlight around with the other was the little boy. Now that we could see his face, it was apparent that he was more interested in the weight and feel of the flashlight then the light it made. He never shined it in his face or looked at the beam.

Sam had been watching to closely and not paying attention to his hand holds. While he stared over the edge he reached his left hand forward and then fell forward slightly as he shifted his weight. He caught himself before going completely over the edge, but in the process knocked loose some rocks and soil.

With horrified fascination we watched the dislodged earth rain down onto the backs of the small group below us, but we were even more shocked to watch their reaction. Almost in complete unison, they all stopped eating and then ponderously turned their heads to look up at us and stare.

They did not run. They seemed unafraid. The little boy stood in the middle of them shaking the little light around. Their facial expressions were flat and unemotional as they continued to chew. Slowly, one by one, they turned back to their eating.

We all crawled back from the ledge and sat silently with our backs against the rock wall at the mouth of the cave’s entrance. We sat that way for some time until Jim reached out to a small cluster of the white balls that grew on a rock nearby. Without much effort he grasped one about the size of a baseball and plucked it from its perch.

“Must be some kind of mushroom,” he said, holding it in his palm squeezing it gently. He took out a knife and cut it in half and smelled the cut surface. “It smells sweet, and earthy. I am tempted to try a bite, but they might be adapted to eating them or maybe, eating these is what made them that way.”

“What is going on here,” Denise asked. “They look like they might be descendants of the Inuit or Aleuts. Why would they be so far up in the mountains though? Did they build the dome and carve out the caverns to escape the cold?”

“And after millennia underground their society began to degenerate until they reached this point,” Sam finished.

Then I said,” I want to know why they weren’t afraid of us. The boy ran from us in the tunnel. Without knowing who or what we were, he ran, but now, they just looked at us. Why?”

“They made no attempt to communicate,” said Sam. “They weren’t even talking with each other before I spooked them.” He returned to the edge of the ledge and continued to observe.

Jim was picking more of the strange mushrooms.

“Maybe the dome and tunnels were made by an older civilization,” Denise said. “Their ancestors found it and decided to stay, or maybe they became trapped down here somehow and couldn’t leave.”

“I have another question for you both,” interrupted Jim motioning us to look at something near him. We crawled over to where he was sitting.

Just then Sam turned back to us and asked Jim to give him his binoculars. Jim wrapped the strap around them and tossed them lightly to Sam who was still looking over the edge, although it seemed as if he was concentrating on something across the cavern instead of on the group below.

Denise and I turned back to Jim and asked, “what is your question.”

“My first thought when I saw these mushrooms was, well that’s odd. Most fungus live on decaying organic matter not rocks, so I wondered how these things were doing it and I began to remove them from this rock to see and I discovered this.” He reached down into the area he had been examining and picked up what looked at first like a large stone and held it out for us to see. It was a partially decayed human skull. He pulled out several more bones from underneath the strange mushrooms and then gestured towards the cavern floor and the multitudes of white balls that grew there. At first I had thought the cavern floor was littered with rounded rocks and small broken sticks, but now it was clear that these were really human bones, the remains of hundreds, maybe thousands. When Jim saw that we shared his realization he asked,“ what killed all these people.”

Suddenly Sam came back to us. He grabbed my shoulder. His face was taught with panic and fear, and he was holding one of the pistols,” hey, hey, get the guns out, something is coming this way from across the cavern, something big!”

Exhibit 2 – Sketch

Part IV

“How would they have gotten down here,” asked Jim.

“What do you mean,” I said.

“Denise, did you say those climbers came here back in ’98,” Sam asked.

“Yes. I remember it because it was the year I finished my undergrad degree.”

“Well, back in ’98 wasn’t this valley covered with a thousand feet of ice,” Jim said.

“There must have been a crevasse or tunnel that came down here. Maybe the heat radiating from this place kept it open,” Sam responded.

Jim nodded slowly and then said,” I suppose it is possible.”

“I wonder what happened to them,” Denise said.

“Something bad probably,” I said.

“Why would you say that,” Sam asked.

“Well, the sling on their cam was cut and Denise said that they were never heard from again. That can’t add up to good news,” I responded. “What I would like to know is why they placed a cam here at all.”

“What do you mean,” asked Denise.

“Well, you don’t use a cam unless you are afraid of falling,” I said.

“It is a long way down,” said Sam.

“Yes, but these guys were serious climbers. Climbers usually aren’t afraid of a little vertigo. It’s like finding a climbing rope going down the center of a stairwell. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Outside the rain had changed to heavy snow. In the dome it was warm and dry.

“Well, should we have a rest and a little something to eat before we take a look below,” Jim asked. “We can leave the big packs here just inside the door and take our day packs and see where these ramps lead to.”

By this point Sam knew there was no point in arguing and I think his scientific interest had overwhelmed any remaining fears he had. “Yeah, I’m starved and I would love a chance to take this pack off and sit down for a minute.”

So we dropped our packs by the door and sat along the ledge drinking and eating whatever we could find in our packs. None of us spoke. We sat quietly chewing and gazing up at the pattern of circles on the ceiling. At one point Jim laid back and began to sketch the pattern in a field log he was keeping. Denise reached out and ran her fingers over the cold stone carvings and Sam pulled out his camera and took more pictures of the structure’s interior. I stretched myself out and looked over the edge at the orange glow far below. Again I felt the warm air rushing up and over my face, but this time I detected a peculiar sent. Perhaps my experiences since then have influenced my recollection, but I remember, mixed with the smell of sulfer and earth, the faint smell of something long dead.

I pulled myself back from the edge and rolled onto my sleeping pad near the dome’s wall. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

About an hour later Dr. Huxley woke me and Sam, who had also fallen asleep. Denise and he were anxious to see what lay below and had been unable to sleep, so they had busied themselves with preparing some of our small packs for the walk down.

The ledges and ramps were smooth, but not slippery. Our pace was slow but steady. The further we went the more confident we became, but Dr. Huxley cautioned us against growing to comfortable. He reminded us of the two earthquakes we had felt since crashing and that another similar quake would most likely have disastrous consequences for us if we were to be on one of the ramps that descended across the abyss below us on each level.

We counted the levels as we passed them. At about level ten the water from the waterfall into the chamber became vapor and evaporated into the warm air. At the twelfth level the heat from below became almost unbearable and we thought about turning around, but then Denise spotted something different on the wall of the level below us. When we went down further we discovered the frames of two doors set into the cylindrical wall. They seemed to be the same dimensions of the openings on the dome, but these had been filled with rough hewn stones and sealed with a dark brown mortar of some kind. We found two more pairs on the fifteenth and seventeenth levels sealed in the same manner. The heat was now intolerable and we decided to abandon our exploration and return to the top.

As we climbed we talked about the relief the cold air above would bring our sweaty necks and backs. When we got to the top level, however, we found a blizzard outside. A cold wind was blowing in through the doors and we were so chilled that we decided to rest on the level below near the waterfall. Everyone sat quietly. We were all disappointed by our unsuccessful search for a continuation of the chamber and the prospect of us all being there awhile longer with the onset of the storm outside. I went to my pack for a book I had brought with, but couldn’t find it so I put on my headlamp and turned on the beam.

I could see something in the waterfall, or maybe behind it.

Sam had one of those telescoping trekking poles with him. “Sam hand me your trekking pole,” I said staring into the waterfall.

“Why.”

“What’s wrong Eric,” said Denise.

“Nothing,” I said. “I think I see something in the water.”

Everyone came over and Sam handed me the pole which he rotated out to its full length. I took it and passed it through the sheet of plummeting water and touched the far wall and then dragged its tip horizontally. There was a strange pattern in the water here, but I saw something dark and angular. I pushed and continued to drag the pole and as soon as it passed over the dark area the surface resistance suddenly gave and I almost stumbled forward into the falling water. I pulled the pole back.

“There is a opening behind the waterfall.” There was a three foot curved gap in the ledge between the wall and its edge that let the water fall through. I would have to lean out over the gap if I was to see behind the waterfall. I pulled out my rain parka and quickly put it on. “Sam, Jim hold my hands.”

“Why, what are you going to do,” asked Sam.

“I’m going to try and look behind the waterfall.” Jim and Sam grabbed my wrists as I started to lean forward and I felt someone grab the back of my pants. Denise had grabbed my belt on either side of my back belt loop.

“Lean forward slowly, there is going to be a little pressure with that water,” Denise said.

I closed my eyes, bowed my head and leaned forward slowly. The water hit me hard on the back of the head. It was very cold, luckily I had remembered to cinch my hood down tight around my face. The sheet of water was fairly thin. When it started to hit me in the shoulders I raised my head and opened my eyes. There was a rectangular opening in the wall ahead of me. The strange pattern in the falling water was caused by steam that billowed out of it into the space behind the waterfall. The opening was about five feet high and three feet wide and I could see that its interior was roughly hewn and angled downward steeply. I called for the others to pull me back.

“There is some kind of tunnel back there,” I said as I shook off my jacket.

“Could we all get over there,” asked Denise.

“Sure, I’ll go over and then help the rest of you across. There are places to hold on, it’s not like this, the walls are rough. The opening is smaller too, we’ll have to stoop over a little.”

We took our small packs loaded with food, water, headlamps, all the batteries we had and the guns. In case someone did come looking for us in the storm we left a note with our packs on the main level. Sam and Jim helped me cross again and then I helped them and Denise cross. The tunnel was smaller and angled downward steeply. We braced ourselves against tumbling down it by holding our arms out and pushing our hands against the walls. Our progress was slow. A constant flow of steam rolled up the tunnel’s ceiling making it humid and uncomfortable. We all agreed that unless we found something interesting quite soon that we would turn around.

After about a hundred feet we came to an area where a lot of rock and earth had fallen into the tunnel and the tunnel’s downward angle leveled off. Steam filled the tunnel and several large rocks lay in the path. I had to crawl on all fours to get through and in doing this I noticed that steam was coming up from in between the rocks on the floor.

“Eric I think there is another tunnel going straight down here. Maybe this rock fell down during one of the earthquakes we’ve been having and partially filled the shaft, but steam is still coming up through it. Perhaps we are in some kind of ventilation system,” said Sam. 

“I’ll bet this is why the climbing team was roped up,” I offered. “They came down here, found a vertical shaft and couldn’t go any further without going down.”

We continued forward. The amount of steam lessened after the rockfall area and the tunnel resumed its downward angle, although at a lesser slope. After a while it began to turn sharply to the left and drop more steeply. Jim thought it was spiraling.

“Remember, every step we take down now, is a step up we will have to take later,” Denise offered in a particularly steep area. The rest of us answered with a collective grown. We kept going.

The tunnel went down and down.

After about twenty minutes of descending, the tunnel suddenly leveled off and then widened. Further on we realized we were coming into a large cavern. The ceiling arched far above us and our headlamps could no longer reach the walls to the left or right of us. Ahead of us were several large groupings of stalagmites and stalactites and in the distance we could make out the sound of falling water.  With a mixture of claustrophobic relief and childlike curiosity we started to rush forward into the cavern we had found when Jim spoke up.

“Everybody, wait a minute.”

We all stopped.

“We need to mark our entry point some way so that we don’t get lost in here.”

“Of course,” said Sam.

“Thanks Jim, I’m glad someone is thinking about these things,” said Denise. “Can you imagine walking out into this cavern and then realizing you don’t remember how to get back to the entrance. How should we mark it.”

“Does anybody have an extra light,” Jim asked.

“I do,” said Sam. “I’ve got a little LED flashlight.

“Great, let’s turn it on and then place it near the entrance so that we can see the beam from within the cavern.”

“Nice idea,” I said.

We took the flashlight and placed it at the base of some rocks pointing up near the entrance. The beam shown on a smooth patch of light colored rock on the ceiling.”

“That will make a heck of a nice exit sign,” I said.

Jim looked at his watch. “Why don’t we take an hour to look around. We’ve been down here about two hours, and it will probably take us twice that to get back up.” We all agreed.

Exploring the chamber with headlamps was eerie. Each one put out only a feeble cone of light in the oppressive darkness. Our voices and footsteps made strange echoes and all around us was the sound of countless drips of water. Huge pillars of fluid-looking stone reached to an unseen ceiling far above. Odd crystal formations covered the caverns structures and floor. We stayed close to each other, sweeping our headlamps back and forth over the subterranean landscape as we explored. Occasionally I would look back to make sure the light near the doorway was still there and I would relax knowing the way out was safely marked. What an idiot I was.

We had been in the cave only about a half an hour when Sam spotted something brightly colored.

“Look over there, oh my God, is it a snake,” he said. We began to walk towards it. There was a large formation of stalagmites ahead and the thing was sticking out from behind the smooth towers of pointed rock.

It was red and coiled near the base of a large rock. We got closer and still it didn’t move. The head was looking right at us, but still we were too far to get a good look.

“Someone throw a rock at it,” Sam said.

“It’s a rope,” Jim said suddenly. We all turned to look at him. He was holding the binoculars to his eyes. “It’s a thick red rope, the end has been cut.”

We all walked over to where the rope lay. It looked old and weathered. There was quite a bit of it coiled and looped on the ground.

“Hey look, there is more, it goes off in this direction.” Sam began to follow the loose end of the rope to see where it ended. I picked up the end we had seen as the head. It was frayed but had definitely been cut.

Suddenly we heard Sam,” guys, check this out, the plot thickens.” We picked our way to where Sam was carefully. The rocks were sharp and we had to place our footsteps carefully. Sam was on top of a small rise that was covered by large sharp stalagmites pointing up towards the ceiling. He was standing nearest the largest one, which was about three feet around, staring down near its base. I saw a flash of white in my headlamp and looked down.

Denise gasped. Jim took a stumbling step backwards.

Laying on the floor of the cave, with the large cone of stone erupting from where its abdomen should’ve been, was the husk-like skeleton of a man. A stained nylon rainsuit covered in mold clung to his bones and a rotten pair of climbing boots were still tied to what remained of his feet. Around his waist was a ragged old climbing harness. Attached to the harness was a single carabiner, and tied to the carabiner was the other end of the red rope.

We were horrified.

“What an awful way to die,” Denise said.

“I think he probably died quickly,” Jim responded pointing at the skeleton’s spine, which was almost completely severed by the stalagmite.

“Still, to fall and then be impaled…,” she closed her eyes and bowed her head. I looked up and shined my headlamp on the ceiling. Directly above us was a square opening.

“This guy must have been climbing down when the rope was cut above. I wonder what happened to the rest of the team,” Denise said.

I pointed down. On the other side of some nearby rocks were nine old climbing harnesses. The belt of each one was still fastened, and each one had been cut.

“Why would they cut the belts,” Denise asked.

“Maybe they were in a hurry, and they didn’t think that they were going to need them again,” I said.

“We didn’t need climbing gear,” said Jim.

“Yes, but we didn’t come down through a thousand feet of ice,” I answered.

Then Sam spoke, and I could hear the panic in his voice.

“Hey…”

I looked at him and he turned to us. His headlamp was off. His eyes were wide and white.

“The light. The light near the door. It’s gone.”

Exhibit 1 - Map

“Are you sure,” Denise asked.

“Yes,” Jim said, once again holding the binoculars up to his eyes. “It looks like water from the stream is going in the central smaller opening. The dome is hollow. There is a large chamber inside. I can see across the interior to the far wall inside. There are some carvings or markings inside that I can’t make out.” Jim handed me the binoculars.

“Who could have built such a thing,” Denise asked. No one answered. The cold rain continued to fall. After a minute of looking through the binoculars myself I told the group,” Jim is right, the dome looks like it is hollow, and there is definitely a dim light inside of some kind.”

 “Hey, look at this,” Denise said. She was pointing to the stream near our feet. When I looked down I noticed a rectangular flat stone just below the surface of the water lying in the streambed.

“Look, another,” she said pointing out slightly farther, “and, another.” We could now see a series of the stones lying in a straight line leading to the door of the dome. Sam squatted down and ran his hand over its surface and then down the sides.

“The surface is very smooth. The edges and corners are sharp and unworn. It isn’t lying on top of the bed. It seems to go down quite a way, this must be a massive stone,” he said as he stood up.

The rain was still falling and a cold wind had begun to blow wisps of grey fog down from the higher elevations.

”Well, should we go over and check it out?” I regret suggesting it now of course, but at the time it seemed rational. We were cold, exposed and all alone in a hostile environment.

“Are you kidding me,” responded Sam. “Isn’t every hair on your body standing on end? This is the creepiest thing I have ever seen. Something here is not right, don’t you feel it?”

“What I feel is cold and wet,” I responded.

“There is nothing outwardly threatening about the structure, I think we should go over and take a look inside,” Jim added. “The glacier that covered this valley had been here for more than ten thousand years. I’m not sure that there were any known cultures here that could be responsible for its construction. Maybe there will be more clues to whoever built it inside.”

“I don’t know,” said Sam.

“Aren’t you a little curious about it,” asked Denise.

“Of course I am, but I can’t ignore this feeling I have that something is a little odd here. Remember, we still don’t know what happened to Mr. Debarr and Dr. Benson. What if whatever took their bodies is in there.”

“Sam, I don’t think a bear would go in there,” replied Jim.

Sam shot back,” what if it wasn’t a bear.”

Denise answered,” we’ve got the guns Sam, we’ll be careful. The door is right there if we get in trouble. If we don’t like what we find we’ll just turn around.”

I remember thinking to myself that Sam was a coward. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We didn’t listen to him.

I went first. No one talked. The stones set in the streambed were just under the surface and the tread was rough, despite being under flowing water and ice for thousands of years. There was about four feet of space between each stone so we had to jump from one to the next to cross the stream. This seemed a little odd to me at the time. Why wouldn’t the builders of this structure just place the stones a stride’s length apart. Later on, we learned, they had.

I stepped onto the last stone before the entry when another earthquake shook the valley. It wasn’t as strong as the quake we had experienced earlier but it made us stop and wait. We were now in the center of the valley and we could hear the echoes of falling rocks and landslides on the peaks above us. When the quake was over, I turned back to make sure everyone was okay and then turned towards the dome.

The brown rock that the dome was composed of was made of fine grains within a darker matrix interlaced with marbled iridescent bands of a milky white mineral. The surface was perfectly smooth and we thought slightly warm to the touch even though we approached from the shaded side. The “doors” were vertical rectangular openings 8 feet high, 5 feet wide and 15 feet apart that faced downstream. Between the doors was a smaller opening of the same width, but only 3 feet high. The threshold of each door was slightly higher than the stream’s surface but the smaller opening was placed slightly lower so that water from the river flowed down and into it. I could see by looking in through the door that the walls of the dome were about a foot thick. The interior was hollow, without a floor and appeared to be the ceiling of a cylindrical chamber that was carved down into the very earth. The threshold of the door continued inwards as a stone ledge and curved around to the right wrapping along the inner wall of the dome until it reached a point directly across from the door where it met a corresponding ledge from the other door and a ramp that ascended from below. All the walls and surfaces were polished smooth and reflected a warm orange light that came from somewhere unseen below.

“Look at that,” I turned and saw Jim standing next to me in the door looking up at the ceiling.

“Wow,” said Denise now squeezing in as well.

The ceiling was carved with a strange pattern of circles. A large central circle orbited at various distances by four slightly smaller ones that were in turn surrounded by a random-looking pattern of much smaller circles. Each one carved with a unique pattern of shapes or lines. Several of the smaller circles were so far away from the central one that they were just above the surface of the ledge. A later count would show there to be 127.

I stepped inside.

“Eric, hold up,” protested Jim.

Denise followed with,” Eric what do you think you are doing.”

“I’m getting out of the rain. It feels warm in here,” I responded.

“What if the ledge isn’t stable,” Denise asked.

“It seems quite safe,” I said and then just to be sure I jumped straight up and landed with a thud. “Solid as a rock.” I could see from where I stood that the ledge was quite thick.

Sam finally poked his head in,” what was that?”

I stepped forward, looked down and froze. I could now see over the ledge and down into the chamber. It went down for thousands of feet. I felt dizzy and froze. A warm draft blew up and over my face accompanied by the slightest smell of sulfur. A blurry orange glow radiated upwards from the bottom of the chamber far below illuminating what lay before me. The ramp that descended from the ledges we were on joined with two more ledges about twenty feet below. These ledges in turn joined another ramp that descended to two more ledges in what seemed like a never ending series of ledges and ramps going down. The stream water that coursed through the opening in the dome became a waterfall that fell through an opening in each level of ramps down into the depths.

“Amazing,” I heard Jim say behind me and I felt him grab my jacket and pull me gently backwards. I turned and saw him standing next to me looking up at the ceiling carvings. Sam was standing in the doorway taking pictures with his camera and Denise was on her knees holding on to the edge of the ledge and looking at the place where the water poured into the chamber.

“Eric,” Jim said,” this has got to be the find of the century. Evidence of an advanced civilization deep in the Brooks Mountains at the same time that most of humanity on this continent was hunting Mammoths with spears.”

“Who made this thing,” Sam asked. “The stone work is extraordinary.”

“I think I found something”, Denise said. She was lying on her side with her back to us on the ledge next to the water opening. I noticed for the first time a wide, dark seam etched into the rock around the opening that permitted the water of the stream to cascade into the chamber. Her right arm was outstretched and her hand was wedged into the seams gap.

“I think I know what happened to that climbing team that went missing up here,” she said pulling her hand back out of the seam holding something. She rolled over and held out her hand. She was holding a slightly corroded camming device. She pulled the trigger and the cams moved together.

“It was jammed in the gap. It still works,” she said holding it up for us to see.

It was then that I noticed the stem end of the cam where the remains of a sling were tied.

Normally the sling would be looped through a carabiner which would in turn be attached to a climber’s rope. Cams are placed into cracks while rock climbing to protect a climber from falling. Sudden pressure generated from a fall puts pressure on the cams to open and put pressure outwards inside the crack to hold the climber.

“Unfortunately, if the sling doesn’t work it doesn’t matter if the cam does,” I said grabbing the piece of nylon webbing that hung from the stem. It was obvious to me that it had been cut.

Part II

I opened my eyes, Denise had her hand on my shoulder and she was asking me if I was alright. I nodded and began to look around. Our plane was partially on its back in a small ravine next to a small stream. I heard Sam calling to Mr. DeBarr, but he did not answer. It was then that I noticed the smell of fuel and the feeling of cold that had started to creep through the damaged walls of the small plane. Next to me Professor Huxley released his seatbelt and slowly lowered himself to the ceiling. I did the same and turned around to check on Hal and saw him laying on his back, his eyes were open and his head was bent back at an odd angle. I moved towards him, but Denise stopped me with an outstretched hand.

“I’m sorry Eric, Dr Benson is dead,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I don’t think he had his seatbelt properly fastened. When we hit, he flew out of his seat and hit his head against the wall.”

“Mike is dead too,” Sam said, his voice quivering as he lifted his fingers from the pilot’s neck.

Jim who had been looking out the window turned back to us and said,“we need to leave them and get as much gear out of the plane as possible. There is fuel leaking from the wing tanks.”

Frantically we worked to open the front left side door and then threw out anything that we could free from the wreckage that would help us survive until we could be rescued. Unfortunately, the case that contained our satellite telephone and emergency locater beacon was in the front of the plane near Mike and was completely encased in crumpled metal. Most of our cold weather survival gear, tents, sleeping bags, food and scientific equipment had survived however and Sam, Denise, Jim and I busied ourselves loading it into our packs and carrying it out of the ravine and up onto a small flat area about 100 yards above the wreck. Dark clouds rolled across the sky and it began to rain mixed with snow. We acted quickly to set up our tents and stow our supplies. The rain became a downpour and we retreated silently to our small yellow tents. I spent the next several hours in the relative comfort of my sleeping bag unable to sleep or to forget the memory of my dead friend’s face. None of us talked. The rain continued to fall and soon the sun dipped shallowly behind the mountains and I slept. 

The following morning was cold and grey. A damp mist clung to the mountain side and an odor of damp lichens and dark earth permeated the air. I had crawled from my tent to prepare something to eat when I heard Denise yell from somewhere near the plane. I called out to Jim and Sam’s tents, but got no response so I ran towards the direction of the wreck. I found Denise standing by the plane’s still open front door mumbling. I asked her what was wrong and she pointed inside. Hal and Mike’s bodies were gone.

We walked the short distance back up to the camp to tell the others. There had been no sign that the planes door had been forced open, the few broken windows were too small to admit anything bigger than a housecat, and there were no tracks on the ground around the plane, so we ruled out a bear taking the bodies. We agreed that Jim and Sam must have returned to the plane in the night to retrieve the bodies.

      When we got back to camp, we found Sam and Jim but they said that they had both been awake earlier when Sam remembered an emergency cell phone that his girlfriend sometimes packed in his equipment. They had found it and had tried to climb the side of the valley in attempt to get a signal, but were unsuccessful. Then they noticed the worried looks on our faces and asked us what was wrong. We told them about the bodies. Dr Huxley looked perplexed.

“It had to be a bear, but that just doesn’t sound like something a bear would do.”

“What do you mean,” I said.

“Look at this valley,” he said. “its wide open for miles in any direction. A bear would have had to drag those two men for miles to not be seen right now.” He looked around as if to proof his point, and he was right, there wasn’t anything moving except us. In fact, the valley was virtually barren. It was the height of summer, and even here at this elevation and latitude there should be wild flowers everywhere, but instead there was only short brown vegetation clinging to the rocky ground.

“Perhaps we should take another look at the wreck.”

We started to walk towards the plane, but then Jim stopped and put his hand up. “Do you feel that”, he asked. I felt the ground under me shudder and then it shook. Hard. Sam fell to the ground backwards. Denise and Jim dropped on to their knees and I stood with my feet splayed like a surfer. Several large rocks rolled down from the valley’s walls, but none came close to us. After about two minutes the shaking stopped and we picked ourselves up.

Sam was visibly excited. ”wow, that was a big one. I’ve never been knocked off my feet by an earthquake before.” We made sure he was alright and then continued our walk.

We when we got to the crash site, Dr Huxley was as perplexed by the lack of tracks in the dirt around the wrecked floatplane as we were. He started to climb around the plane looking ready to give up. The right side wing projected up into the sky. Slowly he pulled himself up the wing stepping on the wing support struts and inspecting the surface until he reached the end and stopped and stared.

“Someone hand me a camera.”

Sam passed up his camera and Jim took a dozen photos from different angles. He then climbed down and showed us the camera’s screen. Two faint bloody claw prints gripped the wings tip. We could see where the tips of the claws had squeezed and punctured the wings thin metal skin. 

“Well that decides it,” Sam said. “It had to be a bear right?” Jim starred at each of us in turn and then turned to Sam.

“Bears have 5 digits, the claws that made these prints had only 2.”

“What do you think made the prints then?” we asked.

“I don’t know. It must be a bear print, but the bear must have only two digits or it could only grip the wing tip with two digits. I’m not sure. I’m also puzzled as to why a bear would climb all the way to the wing tip in the first place.” Jim’s expression was one of true puzzlement as he looked back and forth from the plane wing to the plane’s door.

Sam looked back towards the camp and asked,” Do you think it’s safe to stay in the tents tonight?”

“Where else could we stay, the plane is obviously not safe,” Jim responded.

I regret offering it now, but I said,” what about the structure Dr Benson saw, it shouldn’t be more than a mile or two away up the valley, and it looked like there were several caves in its face.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We could leave a note in one of the tents by the plane telling anyone looking for us where we are. They will be coming for us today or tomorrow, but I don’t want to stay out here in just a tent.”

“We do have the rifles, we could take turns keeping watch” said Denise.

Sam answered immediately, “it’s too open out here, it just doesn’t feel safe.”

Jim responded, “I am curious about the structure and it would take our minds off of…things,” he said glancing at the plane. “Sam is right, it probably will take the authorities a day or two to come looking for us. It will give us something to do. Let’s check it out, if it’s nothing we can always come back here to the wreck.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay,” agreed Denise.

“Let’s go,” said Sam.

We grabbed our big packs and stuffed them with our sleeping bags, food, warm clothes and strapped the guns to the outside. We had two 338 rifles for protection and two 44 caliber pistols. As it turned out our firearms would serve us well in the following days, yet they were not enough to save us. Our ammunition supply was limited to 25 rounds for each of them.

Our walk to the terminus of the glacier and Dr Benson’s mysterious structure was uneventful. We saw nothing. The ground was rocky and devoid of any life except a coarse black lichen that clung to the sunlit side of the larger rocks. Water in the stream coming from the glacier fed lake was tainted somehow, even after we had pumped it through our portable filter it was brownish and tasted foul. We found a cleaner tributary running down from the sides of the valley and filled our bottles and a large collapsible bladder that Sam carried in his pack.

About half way to the lake we began encountering small outcroppings of a strange dark brown rock, the same brown rock that we had seen from the air as we circled the rock structure. Sam marveled over it, he said that he had never seen anything like it in all of his studies. Denise also was perplexed that she had not encountered it before during one of the many trips she had made in the Brooks.

As we got closer to the glacier and its lake we used binoculars and spied the low dome of strange rock that protruded from the Earth like a welt. We could see that it indeed had two door sized openings on the side facing us and that there was also a smaller opening at the level of the water in between them. Jim noticed faint tendrils of steam rising upward from the openings. The dome projected up from the center of the streambed with the river issuing from the glacier’s lake passing around it on either side. It looked to be shaped from a large outcropping of the strange rock, but its surface was smooth and polished. It was about 50’ in diameter and about 15’ high at the center of its domed peak. A cold rain began to fall. We put on our rain jackets and pack covers and quickened our pace towards it.

When we finally reached the shore of the stream across from the strange structure a cold fog had descended into the valley and the rain was now a downpour. We dropped our packs and Jim asked for the binoculars. I handed them to him and he lifted them to look across the stream to the dome’s door about one hundred feet away. He held them steadily and adjusting the focus several times and then lowered them slowly and looked at me and said,” there is a light inside, a faint orange glow inside the door.”

Disclaimer: “Transcription 17 is a work of fiction. All characters, events, institutions, and governmental organizations described or named within are products of the author’s imagination.”