Chapter Twelve
Trapped
Sharianna immediately began to regain normal control of her body. “I’m alright, I think,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“We hoped you could tell us,” answered Mom.
“I took a picture of the symbols,” Sharianna replied, “after that…I’m not really sure what happened,” she said contempla-tively, as she opened and closed her hand.
“Well, something happened,” said Joseph, as he ran his hand over the smooth obelisk. “There is no trace that the symbols were ever here.”
“Let’s get back to the robot,” said Mom.
Joseph picked up a couple of small moon rocks. “I think I’ll take these home. Hey, I heard somewhere that the moon rocks they brought back from the moon are the most valuable rocks on earth.”
“And how will you prove those are from the moon?” laughed Sharianna, as she regained her composure.
“Chemical analysis,” replied Joseph.
“They will put you in jail because they will assume that you stole them from NASA,” reasoned Mom.
As they approached the robot, Dad suddenly felt a vise-like grip on his arm.
“Dad,” Joseph said in a strained whisper, “look at the obelisk.”
Thomas could barely make out his words. He turned, and looked toward the obelisk. A tall, narrow, triangular crack had begun to appear. A dull, purple light emanated from the interior.
Mom and Sharianna followed his gaze.
“Stay here,” ordered Dad, as he stepped toward the obelisk.
“No way,” countered Mom. “We all stay together.”
They began to walk slowly toward the obelisk.
Percy bounded ahead and approached the narrow triangular doorway.
“Percy, come back here!” commanded Joseph. But he had already disappeared into the light.
They quickened their pace and burst through the doorway.
Percy was nowhere to be seen.
The room seemed to span the entire interior of the obelisk. The floor and walls were smooth and seemed to glow, emanating the strange purple light. They could see all the way to the top of the spire.
At the exact center of the obelisk was some sort of glass-like tube, about two feet in diameter that extended from the floor all the way to the top of the spire.
“Percy!” they all called out, almost simultaneously.
Suddenly, Percy’s head appeared from behind the pillar, followed by his body and his furiously wagging tail. He barked at them, turned, and again disappeared.
They ran toward the glistening pillar at the center of the floor, where they had last seen Percy, with Joseph in the lead.
“Wait, be careful,” admonished Mom.
As he approached, Joseph realized that Percy had not disap-peared; he had simply gone down a spiral staircase that began behind the pillar.
“Stop!” commanded Mom, as Joseph proceeded to follow Percy down. “We don’t know what is down there!”
“I agree, I think we should continue with caution,” concurred Dad.
“Come back here, Percy,” called Sharianna.
Percy came back into view as he happily bounded up the staircase. Sharianna grabbed onto the stretchy part of his spacesuit, at the back of his neck. “You stay with us,” she commanded.
They continued down as the staircase wound its way around the crystal clear pillar, which appeared to be full of some kind of liquid, all the while descending deeper beneath the surface of the moon.
Even the stairs were made of the same material as the floor and walls of the interior and emanated the same strange purple light. Thomas thought it odd that each step was so tall – about twice as high as a normal step.
“It looks like it is filled with water,” observed Sharianna, as she ran her hand over the clear tube.
They continued their descent. “How far do you think we have come?” asked Mom.
Dad replied, “I would guess we have been descending for at least twenty minutes. If we are walking a normal speed of three miles an hour, that would mean we have probably gone close to a mile.”
“You think we are a mile from the surface?” asked Sharian-na.
“No, maybe about a half mile, since the staircase spirals down,” he replied.
“Look, the bottom of the stair,” observed Joseph. The small, spiral tunnel gave way to a huge subterranean chamber. It appeared to be a natural cavern. The staircase ended on a round platform, about twenty feet across that encircled the glass-like pillar.
An arching walkway with a single handrail at about shoulder height led away from the platform and disappeared in the distance.
Joseph walked to the edge of the platform and looked over. “Look, it’s a pool of water.” The light emanating from the platform reflected off the perfectly still water.
As Joseph peered into the water, he thought he noticed a set of faint concentric rings progressing from the darkness toward the platform, as if it were the last remnants of ripples from some disturbance on the surface of the water.
“I think it is more like an underground lake – you can’t even see the end of it,” said Sharianna, as she strained her eyes to see beyond the light, into the darkness.
Joseph stepped back from the edge. “I wonder how far it goes.” Joseph drew back his arm and with much more strength that he would normally have on earth, flung one of the small moon rocks he had been carrying, far out into the darkness.
They all stood silent, involuntarily waiting for the familiar sound as the stone contacted the water, and yet realizing that without an atmosphere, the only sound they could hear was each other through the communication capability of their suits.
It was a total surprise when they heard the unmistakable plop as the stone splashed into the still lake.
Sophia exclaimed with excitement, “Hey! There must be some kind of atmosphere down here!”
“Shush,” whispered Dad, as he put his finger to his lips. “Listen.”
“Here…here…here,” came back the echo of Mom’s last word.
“Wow, this place must be huge!” shouted Joseph.
“Huge…huge…huge,” the ghostly voice replied.
“It sounds a little eerie,” commented Sharianna quietly.
The glowing walkway made a corridor of dim light through the darkness as it led away from the platform.
“What should we do?” asked Mom, who was torn by her anxiety of being so far from the robot and her intense curiosity concerning their new discovery.
“This walkway must lead somewhere interesting,” stated Thomas, as he proceeded down the path, followed by Sharianna, Percy, and Sophia, with Joseph taking up the rear.
Although caution forbade Thomas to continue, he felt strangely compelled to move forward.
Soon, Thomas could see by the light emanating from the walkway, a natural looking wall of rock, with a tunnel, part way up the rock face, into which the walkway led.
Joseph got tired of holding onto his other rock. “Hey, watch this.” Joseph wound up his arm like a big league baseball pitcher and let the other moon rock fly in another direction. As the rock disappeared into the darkness, they heard a horrifying, unearthly wail as it impacted something other than the surface of the water. It sounded to Joseph like a cross between the terrified squeal of a pig and the metallic roar of Godzilla. It was a nerve-shattering scream.
The deafeningly intense shriek reverberated through the cavern. The placid lake seemed to suddenly transform into a raging sea. The source of the tumult emerged from the darkness a few yards away and slammed into the narrow bridge between the little group of explorers and the platform.
Sharianna screamed as she clung to the thrashing railing. Mom and Dad clutched the rail and scrambled to maintain their footing on the careening walkway.
Percy and Joseph were both catapulted into the churning water.
The creature climbed onto the walkway; it looked like an enormous gl
ob of slimy brown luminescent jelly, pulsating as it expanded and contracted. The walkway was pushed down into the water by the weight of the enormous monster.
It sounds more dangerous than it looks, thought Thomas. At that instant, the gelatinous exterior of the creature seemed to peel away and was drawn, or sucked, into an orifice at the top of the body, revealing a hideous looking life form. It had one large foot, soft and muscular, similar to the foot of a snail. But that was the end of its similarities to the familiar mollusk of earth. It had a central large body segment with five arm-like appendages. The arms reminded Thomas of the trunk of an elephant, except that each arm terminated in a fearsome mouth with vicious looking metallic-like teeth. Above the mouth, near the end of each arm, was a single orb that emanated light. Thomas assumed these orbs were some sort of eyes. In place of the orb on the upper appendage, Thomas could see the very rock that Joseph had thrown into the lake; a sticky, bioluminescent liquid drained from behind the rock.
The surface of the monster looked as hard as a rock and was bumpy. A huge mouth with formidable metallic looking teeth opened up in the center of the body. The horrifying, bone-chilling scream again emanated from all six mouths, creating a terrifying cacophony. All four appendages turned and looked at the injured one. One of the appendages curled around and plucked the rock from the eye socket and placed it in the main mouth. Thomas could hear the rock being crushed by the powerful teeth.
Thomas wrenched his astonished eyes from the frightening scene and turned to see Sophia grab Joseph from the water and, with a single motion, lift him onto the walkway, which was no longer careening from side to side. Dad dropped to his belly on the walkway and, reaching far over the edge, grabbed Percy by his spacesuit at the scruff of his neck. Pulling Percy from the water, he stood up.
“RUN!” he screamed.
All four remaining eyes jerked to attention as the creature perceived their attempt to escape. Again, the blood-freezing scream filled the cavern as the creature crawled with astonishing speed toward the fleeing family.
Dad tucked Percy under one arm, like a giant football, as he ran behind his family. “Faster!” he yelled, as he looked over his shoulder at the monster right behind him. The last stretch of the walkway sloped up into the entrance of the tunnel, which was situated about twenty feet above the surface of the lake. He could hear the clamping of the metallic teeth only inches from his head as they flew the last few yards up into the tunnel.
The creature attempted to follow them into the tunnel, but it was too large. It began tearing at the sides of the tunnel in an effort to enlarge it. The teeth at the end of each appendage sank into the moon rock as if it were cream cheese. Each arm seemed to work independently, except the arm with the missing eye – it wandered aimlessly – but the other four were quickly enlarging the tunnel.
The family backed away from the creature, into the darkness of the tunnel. Sophia peered into the pitch-blackness and thought it strange that they were reluctant to leave the light that was emanating from the walkway, even though the monster was making surprising progress in its effort to reach them. Whenever the injured appendage bumped into the rock the beast emitted another gut twisting scream.
Sharianna clamped her hands over her ears but it was to no avail, since the helmet was hard and prevented her from plugging her ears.
Percy barked and growled at the creature, but Sharianna noticed that it seemed to agitate it more, so she knelt down and pulled Percy to her. “Shh,” she whispered, as she rubbed his head. “We’ve got to be quiet.”
Joseph noticed that once in a while the creature would deposit some rock in the large, central mouth. “It is eating the rock!” he exclaimed. The creature slowed down its excavation as it began to deposit more and more rock into its large mouth. Finally, it ceased tearing at the walls. It stood still as it peered into the darkness of the tunnel with all four of its remaining eyes. The light from its eyes lit up the tunnel for a short distance. The family quietly backed away deeper into the darkness.
Suddenly, the limbs wrapped themselves around the body, and the slime began spewing from the orifice at the top, until it was again a giant pulsating blob. Slowly, it turned and retreated to the lake, where it plopped into the water and disappeared.
Dad crept slowly toward the dull light at the entrance to the tunnel. He could see a trail of slime that was left by the monster’s single snail-like foot. He looked in the distance, toward the platform and the staircase that led back to the robot. About half of the walkway was under water.
“We’re trapped,” whispered Sharianna from behind him.