Escape From The Center of The Earth (To The Center Of The Earth Book 3) Read online

  ESCAPE

  FROM

  THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

  GREIG BECK

  www.severedpress.com

  COPYRIGHT: Greig Beck 2021

  “Descend, bold traveler, into the crater of the Jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the calends of July, and you will attain the center of the Earth. Which I have done, Arne Saknussemm” ― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

  Scientists Detect Signs of a Hidden Structure inside Earth’s Core

  March 5, 2021: Researchers have found evidence that Earth’s inner core appears to have another even more inner core within it.

  “Traditionally, we’ve been taught the Earth has four main layers: the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core,” explained Australian National University geophysicist Joanne Stephenson. “Our knowledge of what lies beneath Earth’s crust has been inferred mostly from what volcanoes have divulged and seismic waves have whispered.”

  But now, Stephenson and colleagues had found more evidence Earth’s inner core may have two distinct layers.

  “It’s very exciting,” she added. “And might mean we have to re-write the textbooks!”

  PROLOGUE

  They laughed at him. All of them. But he had been right.

  Arkady Saknussov held his arms wide, face turned heavenward, and basked in the hot, red glow from the boiling ceiling miles above.

  Stretched out before him, a near-endless sea sparkled with its reflected crimson, amber, and fiery highlights. Things swam languidly in its warm primordial depths, some hidden just below the surface, and some lifting long, chitin-armored snouts above the waterline to bellow in bass-deep calls of mating or warning.

  What a wondrous world, he thought and closed tired eyes, sat down, and drew in a deep breath, inhaling the scents of a brine ocean, drying seaweeds on a shimmering black shoreline, and a hint of primordial sulfur. A far cry from the frozen Russia he had left behind—how long ago—weeks, months, years? It didn’t matter anymore.

  Saknussov suddenly opened eyes rimmed with a touch of madness and jerked to his feet to stand rod-straight.

  “In the year 1485, I claim this land in the name of Ivan III, first Tsar and true ruler of all Russia.”

  He slapped hands over his mouth, eyes rolling, and he jerked back down, sniggering. Shut up, fool, they’ll hear you. After another moment, satisfied he was still alone, he exhaled in a long sigh.

  This place had taken its toll on his body and mind, but at least he still lived, unlike his team that were all now gone. Some had fallen from heights, some drowning, some simply vanishing in the labyrinths, and some dying the most horrible deaths from strange infections or by the tooth and claw of the terrible things that inhabit this inner world.

  Death would come for him as well soon, and he looked down at himself. He was nearly destroyed—his clothing was just tattered rags, his stick-like arms and legs were covered in abrasions and open sores, and the broken bones in two of his fingers had erupted through the skin.

  Saknussov decided to just watch the sea for a while. He already knew he’d never make it back to the surface, never be able to talk to anyone about his wondrous discoveries. And worse, he’d never be able to warn anyone.

  He looked up at the hellish red sky. “Don’t follow me.” He lowered his gaze. “For God’s light does not reach down here.”

  But he knew they would come. One day. Because curiosity was an irresistible drug…and in the end, just as deadly.

  EPISODE 11

  “I thanked God for having led me through the labyrinth of darkness to the only point at which the voices of my companions could reach me.” ― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

  CHAPTER 01

  Kol’skaya (Kola) Superdeep Borehole – Pechengsky District, Oblast Province, Russia

  Oskar Svegeny was bored, like he was every time he and Grigory Valadin had pulled a long shift at the borehole. Though the hole itself had been closed for nearly thirty years, they still needed to monitor and maintain the site, as the many miles-deep hole had never been filled.

  Oskar quickly read from the monitors and checked off the never-changing details. And he guessed never-changing was good.

  The Kola Borehole was a scientific “what-if,” the result of a drilling project that was to bore as deep as possible into the Earth’s crust, with the project goal being a target depth of just on forty-eight thousand feet—nine miles.

  Drilling began 24 May 1970 and by 1989, they had reached a depth of forty thousand two hundred and three feet, which at the time was the deepest man-made point on Earth. It was a satisfying display of Russian ingenuity and engineering.

  But then, just a few months later in that year, drilling abruptly stopped. Reasons given were that they encountered higher than expected temperatures that damaged their drills. Also suggested was that there was a change in the rock characteristics with a strange decrease in density and greater porosity, which caused the deep geological matrix to behave like plastic.

  But Oskar knew that wasn’t all—there were other reasons, whispered ones, that stayed out of official reports. The engineers refused to work on the site at night, as from the depths there were noises that unsettled the crews—low mumbling, grunting, yelling, and agonized screams—the voices of the damned it was said.

  Then there was “the attack.” A crew working at the lowest level said they were set upon by things that literally forced their way out of cracks in the walls—human-like but not human. They dragged several of the crew away before they could be helped. They searched, but they were never found.

  The Kola Borehole was sealed that year and never reopened. People never talked about it again, and it quickly vanished from scientific interest.

  Now, just a few monitoring staff remained. Good money to sit, bored, and babysit a hole drilled, as the rumors went, all the way down to Hell.

  It was Grigory’s turn on the monitor, and as he listened, his eyes screwed shut and mouth turned down in distaste. “Ach.” He shook his head. “They should blow this abominable place up.”

  “Huh, what?” Oskar continued to read his magazine. “Why?”

  He took the headset from his ears. “Like they say, the voices of the damned.” He tossed the headset onto the desk in front of Oskar. “Listen.”

  Oskar’s mouth turned down. “I’ve heard it. A thousand times. It’s supposed to be just the geological strata shifting. So what?”

  “Just… listen,” Grigory pressed.

  Oskar sighed, put his book down, and lifted the headset. He held it to his right-side ear.

  He bobbed his head from side to side. “The usual: popping, clicks, weird grating noises from the depths. Maybe it’s whales.” He scoffed. “Nothing new.” He went to pull the headset away.

  “Wait,” Grigory urged.

  Oskar lowered the headset. “No, I have better things…”

  Grigory flicked a switch and put the sounds up on the overhead speaker.

  After another few seconds, there came something that could have been a woman sobbing. Oskar frowned. And then looked up slowly.

  “Help me.”

  The Russian swallowed the dry lump in his throat. “Is in English,” he whispered. “This is a joke, yes?”

  Oskar shrugged. “How? There are no other listening devices linked to this site, and we are a long way from any potential external surface or atmospheric interference.”

  Grigory closed his eyes and concentrated.

  “Help me. My name is Ally, Ally Bennet.”
>
  “Horse shit. It’s a prank.” Grigory lunged for the speaker and switched it off.

  “Sure it is.” Oskar shared an uneasy smile. “So, we do what we always do: record, record, record.” He placed the headset on the desktop. “And stop listening to ghosts from nine miles down.”

  ***

  Days later, Oskar uploaded the recording to a haunted hotline site in Moscow as a bit of a joke and because he knew it would interest them.

  An hour later, it was picked up in the normal data scoops carried out by one of the American spy agencies and now other ears listened to the strange recording of a woman calling for help from nine miles below the Earth’s surface.

  CHAPTER 02

  Western Pacific Ocean, The Mariana Trench – 36,201 feet down

  “You won’t believe this, but I think there’s a cave down here.”

  Barry Gibbons slowed the deep-submergence vehicle, or DSV, down to little more than drifting speed. The eight tiny propellers around the craft worked in bursts just to keep him near motionless in the inky black water.

  “Big one. Real big.” He leaned forward, staring out of the reinforced bubble screen. “This is going to sound insane, but there looks like there’s some sort of structure in there.”

  “Say again, DSV Omaha, did you say a structure? Like, a man-made structure?” Topside, Frank Abbott, head of his surface crew, sounded like he brought the mic closer to his mouth.

  “That’s right, Frank. But I didn’t say man-made, did I?” Gibbons chuckled.

  “Barry, make sure you’re—”

  “Recording. Got it, and…” Gibbons started the video recording feed, “…transmitting.”

  ***

  Frank Abbott, up in the ship’s monitoring and control room, saw the small screen flick to life and the images start to be revealed. He strained to make out the huge cave at the bottom of the Mariana Trench—the water pressure there was a crushing eight tons per square inch, or about a thousand times the pressure at sea level. It was also bone-numbingly cold, and as lightless as Hades, so, when something was black in the already stygian blackness, it was damn hard to see.

  They were working in an unexplored area of the trench, and given the massive rip in the ocean floor was 1,500 miles long with an average width around 43 miles, there was a lot of real estate down there that no one had ever even gotten close to, let alone seen.

  Abbott narrowed his eyes; the images relayed weren’t as clear as he would have liked, and so far, the feeds were limited to the circles of light from the DSV’s multiple, powerful lamps. Beyond them was a seeming infinity of nothingness.

  He knew that usually at those depths, there was a form of deep-sea mud made up of degraded rock and detritus that rains down from above. He expected there to be some large, heavily armor-plated copepods, some blobby cephalopods, and an occasional rare and boneless-looking fish. But not now.

  Abbott sat forward, his mouth hanging open. A few of the other support crew had turned from their own control panels to watch over his shoulder.

  He began to smile. “This is impossible.”

  There were columns, towering edifices, and steps—had to be—and using the DSV’s arms for comparison, they were all on an unbelievable scale. And everything seemed as old as time itself.

  Some of the columns were broken or crumbling, encrusted with grey-green mosses and strange growths hanging between the ancient stone edifices like monstrous cobwebs.

  “Is that some sort of sunken city?” Benson asked from over Abbott’s shoulder.

  “Maybe if they were giants,” Abbott replied. “See the DSV’s claw out front?”

  “Yeah.” The sound engineer rolled his chair closer.

  Abbott clicked on the mic. “Barry, hover and rotate slowly.”

  “Roger that.” Barry Gibbons in the DSV slowed and spun the craft in the ink-black water.

  The powerful lights illuminated more of the carved stone around the edges of the hole in the ocean trench’s floor. Much was still out of range of the lights, but what they could see was of titanic proportions.

  “You getting this?” Gibbons asked breathlessly and extended the claw.

  “Oh yeah,” Abbott said over his shoulder. “That utility claw is ten inches across. Now using it as scale, look at the step riser.”

  Benson and the group surrounding him leaned closer, and Abbott drew the image back a little as the DSV maneuvered along the giant step’s side.

  “Holy shit. I thought that was a wall.” Benson blew air between his pressed lips. “It’s only one of the steps. That’s crazy.”

  Sure enough, the set of step risers must have topped out at around twenty feet—each—and they led from a platform surrounded with broken columns, downward toward the edge of the hole, and then kept on going.

  “I’m going to take a closer look,” Gibbons said almost reverently. “Over.”

  Abbott nodded and then remembered to speak. “Yeah, okay, Barry, roger that. Watch your clearance. Over.”

  “You bet, Frank, over,” Gibbons replied.

  The DSV pivoted in the water and then headed toward an opening that was more like a cavernous wound in the bottom of the ocean.

  Up in the command center, the DSV’s signal fragmented for a moment.

  Abbott frowned. “Barry, you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, but check this out,” Gibbons answered.

  The image cleared to show something hanging mid-water.

  “They look like rocks, but they’re just hanging there. Floating.” Gibbons hovered over the hole and reached out with the DSV’s utility claw. He nudged the object, making a solid sound as if he struck stone. But the thing floated away like a kid’s balloon.

  “Maybe like some sort of pumice.” Abbott looked at Benson and the pair shrugged.

  “I’m marking it down as just another anomaly among all the other anomalies.” Gibbons chuckled. “Wanna know something else weird? The water over this hole is warm, seventy-six degrees warm. That’s tropical.”

  “Must be some sort of volcanic vent in there,” Abbott replied. He checked the depth reading of the craft. “Barry, you’re now at 36,201 feet—the Mariana basement.”

  “And there’s more to go.” Gibbons angled the DSV to look down into the massive void. “Dropping a globe.”

  In another few seconds, the DSV ejected a small, round illuminated ball that gave off light in all directions. It was weighted and should have plummeted down into the abyssal void. But instead, it too hung in the water just like the stones.

  “It’s like everything over this hole has negative buoyancy. But there’s no current I can detect,” he said, and then, “I’m taking her in.”

  “Roger that.” Abbott couldn’t tear his eyes away. Or even blink.

  Gibbons started the DSV’s motors and began to enter the void. Almost immediately, the screen started to crackle with static.

  “Whoa,” Barry Gibbons said.

  “Speak to me, Barry. What’s happening?”

  “I’m in. But strange. Picking up speed. Even though there’s no current,” he replied.

  On the screen, there was no sensation of rushing water or turbulence, but the depth readout from the DSV started to accelerate.

  “What the hell is going on?” Abbott’s brows snapped together. “Jesus, Barry, pull up, you’re accelerating.”

  “I… can’t… (crackling static) … stop…” Barry Gibbons sounded like he was straining, and Abbott could picture him pulling back on the controls.

  Then the screen totally whited out.

  “What just happened?” Abbott shrilled. “What’s the read?”

  “He’s still there but going down. Fast,” Benson said.

  “Pull back, Barry. Do you hear me? Pull back, for God’s sake.” Abbott half stood in his chair as he leaned over the console.

  “Thirty-five thousand—forty thousand—forty-eight…” Benson shook his head. “Eighty thousand, and still accelerating.”

  “That’s impossible.
It can’t be that deep!” Abbott yelled.

  “Gone.” Benson sat back, his face beaded with perspiration. He turned. “It’s gone.”

  “Implosion.” Abbott sat back slowly into his chair.

  “I don’t know,” Benson said. ‘The signal faded out and wasn’t cut off. More like he…”

  “Like he just went out of reach. Because he kept descending,” Abbott whispered. He turned. “But to where?”

  CHAPTER 03

  Boston, Massachusetts – Ellery Street

  Matt Kearns whistled softly as he stopped at his front gate to open the mailbox. There were several letters, most of them those annoying ones with the little plastic windows in front that let you know how much you owe someone for something.

  He tucked those under his arm and reached for the final piece of mail, a small box all the way from a place called Huntsville, Alabama.

  He turned it over, and then shook it. There was something small inside that was heavy, unusually heavy, and he closed his mailbox while looking again at the handwriting on the front—neat, professional, and in ballpoint.

  Matt couldn’t remember if he had ordered something online lately but was intrigued by the small package.

  Entering his front door, he tossed the letters on the entrance table and headed first to the kitchen to grab a beer from the refrigerator. He glanced at the phone to see if there were any messages—none—and then headed to the front room where all the light was streaming in the windows.

  He flopped onto the couch, had one sip of the beer—a big one—and then he went to work opening the box’s wrapping of brown paper and way too much tape.

  It took him several extra seconds, as there were more layers than he expected, but he eventually got to the ordinary-looking box, and lifting the lid, he found cotton wool. He pulled the top layer away and his eyebrow rose.

  “Whoa,” he whispered. “Hello there, beautiful.”

  Matt lifted the not quite silver-dollar-sized coin free and held it up. He could immediately tell it was gold by the weight. And it was old, very old. Even gold can oxidize and “pit” with age, but it can take thousands of years.