PART ONE: SILENCE AND SLOW TIME
He lost track of time almost immediately: his watch had been broken in the accident and none of his communication devices worked so deep underground.
The three of them had gone further into the cave system than anyone had ever been, and the thrill of being one of the first humans to explore such a special part of the planet had been awesome. The question had crossed his mind whether Conrad had experienced similar feelings when he’d led that ill-fated Martian expedition to an unexplored part of the red planet. If so, he could now appreciate how wound up his colleague’s nerves must’ve been, and how alert to unexpected dangers.
Of course, that didn’t mean he forgave the disastrous over-reaction that had condemned him, personally, and the Earth, in general, to a pernicious War of Nerves with a race of powerful and merciless aliens. He’d expected better from Conrad.
The LED light in his safety helmet was still working, albeit with less brightness than originally. He examined his situation carefully. There was a steady flow of water still crashing down through a huge rent in the roof, and he was on a small, slightly concave promontory close to the flow. He could see, or so he thought, that if he could get up to the edge of that crack, he should be able to find his way out.
Always assuming every other passageway wasn’t blocked.
He looked around for the others, but he was alone. The safety rope was only a few metres long and had frayed apart. He concluded that he must’ve landed on his rock shelf and they had been swept over, possibly suspended there until the force of the water had made the rope fray. That in itself suggested he’d been unconscious for some time.
He crawled over to the edge and peered down. The beam of the LED light wasn’t nearly powerful enough to penetrate to the bottom of this cavern, but he thought he could see several shelves and ledges further down the cliff face.
He shouted. His voice echoed around, bounced back to him from unseen walls and fathomless depths, but there was no other reply. He sighed, sat back from the edge and wondered what to do next. He found himself dozing off, a not unusual occurrence after a retrometabolic recovery.
A growing rumble above his head woke him with a start. Disorientated for a moment, he shook his head and then turned to look upwards. An immense boulder that must’ve been swept along by the water was now blocking the crack and the water had slowed to a trickle.
He watched, his breath coming in short gasps as he waited to see if the boulder would stay in place. The water flow ceased and apart from an occasional ominous creaking, everything was silent.
He was just starting to breathe normally again when, suddenly, the roof gave way and the boulder hurtled down towards him on a tidal wave of water. He barely had time to scramble out of the way as it hit the edge of the promontory, cracking the rock so that it shattered beneath his feet.
Helpless, he was thrown down into the darkness.
***
Reluctantly, he lifted his head again, unwilling to acknowledge his return to what had, over numerous short revivals, become such a brutal consciousness. Thirst scorched his body as if he lay under a desert sun; creating a merciless craving for water.
When he’d first woken up after the second fall, his legs were already partially healed from several breaks but the agonising pain in his lower back suggested he had broken his pelvis, or even his spine. He had no choice but to lie still for what had felt like hours, barely able to move even his arms.
Gradually, it had dawned on him that with every return to awareness some movement and sensation had come back. Although this was far from the speedy return to total fitness he generally experienced, he was able to distinguish minor improvements. As movement improved in his hands and arms, he discovered that by some miracle his ration belt was still attached to his harness. Although it took some time for him to get it open, once he did he devoured all of the remaining protein bars and cartons of isotonic juice.
He anticipated that this sustenance would speed up his recovery and free him from the continued intense pain. However, he was well aware that the problem was he could have already been here for days, or even weeks, because he had no idea how long his retrometabolism was taking to return him to fitness. His luxuriant beard and the fact that his hair was now flopping into his eyes was no real indication, as experience had shown that retrometabolism worked on hair follicles just as powerfully as it did on broken bones.
He closed his eyes again and was soon oblivious to everything around him.
***
Some unknown time later, he woke again and this time he managed to sit up. He knew he needed to concentrate and assess his new situation: where he was and whether anyone else was there. Although there had been no answer to his first frantic calls apart from disdainful echoes, he tried again. There might be a rescue team, searching for the three of them and he didn’t want to be missed just because he’d been separated from the others.
But once again, his calls were met by an indifferent silence once the reverberations died away.
The LED light in the safety helmet flickered and died when he tried to switch it on. It had likely been on continuously since the promontory had shattered, and although it had been fully charged when they set out, it was never going to last forever.
He desperately needed water. He could see nothing in the stygian gloom but he felt an unusually cold current of air against the left side of his face, and, with some unfathomable logic, came to the conclusion that it must have rained above ground and that water would be percolating through the rocks.
He deduced he was on one of the lower ledges he’d seen from the promontory. That meant he was even further from getting back to the upper levels than before, but still, he refused to give up hope. He was an expert at rock climbing and caving, and he’d be buggered if he was going to let a little thing like being lost in an unknown part of an unexplored cave system prevent him from getting out alive. Just as soon as his retrometabolism had completed its work, he’d be looking to find a way out…
He shuffled along, groping in the darkness, fearful of falling off the ledge. Even above the distance sounds of running water, he could hear a regular drip, drip nearby. He reached out his hands and touched wet rock. On examination, it turned out to be a fairly hefty stalactite and a slow stream of water ran down it, dripping onto the bare rock some inches below. He ran his hands down to the end and cupped them until there was just enough liquid for him to lap it up before it seeped through his fingers. Exhausted, he rested his head against the rock and tried to lick water direct from the source.
But there was still not enough to quench his raging thirst. The distant sound of running water coming from the river that had, over millennia, carved these vast underground cathedrals from the limestone mountains, only made the torment worse, so that now he felt he could truly appreciate the horror of the eternal punishment the Gods had given Tantalus.
He tried to speak, just to break the oppressive silence. His throat was parched and every muscle and bone felt bruised and torn. He gathered another handful of the foul-tasting moisture and lapped it up.
“I am Paul Metcalfe. I am Captain Scarlet of Spectrum,” he croaked before he needed more water.
After a couple more handfuls of water, he continued: “I was on holiday, trying to avoid the pitfalls of the Halloween holiday on Cloudbase. I’d wanted to explore this world-famous cave system ever since I first heard about it. I decided to go alone as my friend – my best friend – Adam Svenson wouldn’t come with me. Never one to volunteer for confined spaces is our Adam.”
He smiled to himself as the vague memory of Captain Blue’s obdurate refusal to go caving drifted through his mind.
Having had more water and eased his thirst, he continued with his homily: “It was on the first night after we turned for the surface, that something happened.” He frowned with the effort of trying to remember the catastrophic event that had swept his companions to their deaths and left him marooned. “A flood, an earthquake, an explosion? Probably any of them, possibly all of them.” A surge of anger surprised him with its force as he concluded, “And quite possibly the Mysterons.”
***
Determined to keep trying to find a way out of his lonely predicament, over the next innumerable hours, he cautiously shuffled and edged his way around the site, panting with exertion and grimacing with pain. He found a solid wall behind him and realised that not far in front of him there was nothing at all. He extended his arms and rocked from side to side, but felt no obstacles.
After another timeless period of rest, he inched his way to his right and eventually his endeavours were rewarded by the discovery of a rucksack. It must have been torn from its owner during the original landslide, but fortunately for him, it had also hit the ledge.
Biting his bottom lip at the pain of every movement, he dragged it towards him. Inside he found a veritable treasure trove: a working torch. The glare of the beam hurt his eyes, but lifted his spirits and the good luck continued as he saw more isotonic drinks and protein bars. At the very bottom of the rucksack, he found some pitons, a nylon safety rope and two safety flares.
Laughing with relief, he immediately consumed most of those rations in an effort to complete his retrometabolic recovery. The ongoing pain was a distraction to his concentration and prevented rational thinking about how to find a way out. Then he lay down, clutching the rucksack to his chest like a talisman, and slept.
He felt better when he woke, still cold, hungry and thirsty, but his back was less painful and he began to have hopes that before too long, he would be fully recovered. Buoyed up with this improvement to his circumstances, he switched on the torch.
A quick reconnaissance was enough to show him that it would be madness to set off a flare. The roof above him was now criss-crossed with deep cracks and several more boulders looked ready to fall. Any one of them was big enough to bring the whole of the unstable roof down with it, and he was not going to risk that again. What was worse – there was no obvious way out.
Nevertheless, he tried to keep up his spirits with thoughts of rescue. Surely, he thought, the remaining five members of the party would report that the three of them had not returned when expected. Search parties would set out to find them. All he had to do was wait.
And so, he waited.
***
He was still waiting. Alone, in the fetid darkness.
So, to quiet his increasingly despondent mind, he began to plan how he could get out of his predicament by himself and move upwards, towards those brave rescuers. The scheme quickly developed into something plausible, something that offered the possibility of success. It was tricky, sure, but he was skilled, strong and determined. He knew he could do it.
He prepared everything very carefully, checking the safety rope and the pitons for damage. He used the torch sparingly to conserve the battery, but studied the sheer wall at the back of the ledge in detail and plotted a viable route using small cracks and rough protuberances that would take him to a narrow fissure, far enough away from the earlier cave-in and just below the roof. From the reflection of the torch beam he could tell there was water trickling through and down the wall: that had to mean there was a channel for the water and it must be coming down from the surface.
He knew there was no certainty the channel would be big enough for him to crawl along, but he still had the small pickaxe attached to his safety harness and convinced himself that any chance to get out of this predicament had to be better than staying put.
More than anything, he’d always hated inactivity.
He visualised the climb over and over in his mind and had it off pat before he even tried to stand. The retrometabolism had healed the damage to his back, hips and legs, but he knew that, at least initially, such major injuries always left him weakened. On Cloudbase every recovery was followed by huge meals and gallons of fluid to recharge his ’metabolism’. These gargantuan meals were usually treated with sceptical amusement by Doctor Fawn and his colleagues, but he realised now that the lack of food was no joke.
“Still,” he reasoned with himself, “there’s no chance of a takeaway delivery here and I may get weaker the longer I delay… it’s now or never, Paul.”
Inching upwards, taking his time to feel carefully for the hand-holds and steps, he made slow progress, but just to be doing something lifted his spirits. He imagined walking out into the sunlight again and contacting Dianne to say: I’m safe, come and get me. He imagined Fawn’s satisfaction at having more insight into retrometabolism, and of sharing a glass of his illicit supply of single malt with Adam – and maybe even Colonel White, who so obligingly turned a blind eye to his breaking the rules.
He chuckled. This is going to work!
He reached the fissure and fastened himself to the rock as securely as he could. Then he began to explore the crack with his hands. It certainly felt like it widened just beyond the opening. He tasted the water; it was fresher than that dripping from the stalactite, so it must be coming directly from the surface.
Carefully he began to chip away, dropping slivers of rock down out of the way. The noise seemed to build up into a continuous echo as he hacked with more enthusiasm and dropped larger chunks.
The flow of water was getting faster, soaking into his clothing and making him shiver. But he drank what he could, sure that it would be to his benefit.
Finally, he broke off a block about the size of a desk printer. It was hard to manoeuvre and he was hesitant to drop it, but he had no choice. He turned to watch its fall as it bounced against the rock face setting up a thunderous cascade of sound in the surrounding gloom.
He stared in horror as the fissure split all the way down the cliff face and, before he knew what hit him, water gushed out of the now completely opened channel with such force that he was thrown away from the rockface. The rope held, but suddenly the pitons lost their purchase as the split grew and more water forced its way through the new cracks with the pressure of a fire hose.
He fell. He couldn’t stop himself. He heard himself screaming in anguished frustration and then there was just unbelievable pain and blackness.
***
When he regained consciousness, it took him a long time to work out where he was. He had landed on sharp ridges of rock and was lying awkwardly across them. Nearby he could hear water splashing into a pool so that some of the spray was falling on his head and face. The safety rope was still attached to his harness, but not to anything else. He realised he must have breached some kind of underground reservoir and by expanding the crack he had allowed the water to drain out.
He tried to move his arm and it was then that the real pain hit him. As the waves of agony ebbed away, he realised that wasn’t the worst of it:
He couldn’t feel his legs.
By sheer force of willpower, he groped for the torch on his harness and shook it. It flickered and gave a very dim light. He could just about see that he must have fallen – Lord knows how far – further into the cavern. Somewhere high above him was the ledge he had been on. Just as the torch began to fail, he noticed his hand was covered in blood, the skin sliced down to the bone by the razor-edged sharpness of the rocks he was lying on.
It explained the burning sensation across his body; with every movement his flesh was being flayed from his bones by the rocks.
Shivering with shock as much as with the burning fever he’d developed, he closed his eyes and rapidly sank back into oblivion.
***
When he came to, his head ached even more than the rest of him. Thirst was now his prevailing sensation, yet it took an age – or so it seemed – to scoop up some of the surrounding water and swallow it.
“I won’t leave here without help,” he confessed to himself. “Whatever happened and whenever it happened, I am as much a prisoner here as if I’d been captured by the Mysterons and transported to Mars. All I have left is the hope that someone is looking for me and will find me before it becomes too late.”
Time was now an irrelevance. He realised that thinking about it would only make every minute last an hour. For perhaps the first time in his adult life, there was nothing he could do to alter his situation or relieve his pain. He began to welcome the darkness that had been so threatening, as it hid the truth of his hopeless predicament. Instead, he lay as still as possible and played out treasured memories from his childhood and his adult life, like a film, onto the emptiness that surrounded him.
All he craved was something to drink, and all he felt was an overwhelming wish to be pain free.
He lay with his head turned towards the splash pool and his mouth open. Even swallowing the water took an increasing effort on his part. He considered how much longer he could last.
His food had run out, the drinks were long gone and what remained of his hope was fighting a losing battle against the rational realisation that nobody was ever going to come… With his willpower spent and spirit crushed by relentless pain and hunger, there was nothing he could do but pass the endless hours in restless sleep. He sensed that, due to his retrometabolism’s ceaseless effort to repair his injuries, this sleep often deepened into the insensible calm of death.
Yet, something inside him welcomed it: the oblivion, the respite from pain and mental anguish. But even this ‘peace’ was always followed by long, tormented periods when his sentient body was plagued by the powerful force of his alien retrometabolism still battling to complete his regeneration. The slow time of his entrapment and the oppressive silence of his prison was wearing him out – body and soul.
He wondered if, once he had no energy or willpower to fight the Mysterons and their power of retrometabolism, they would, by default, become his masters again… If that was his fate, he hoped against hope nobody ever did come looking for him…
Eventually, as he expected, he became so weak that even breathing was an effort. He lay on his back and stared towards the surface, where he imagined there might still be some people who would mourn his disappearance.
“So, this is going to be my end,” he thought. “I always expected I’d live to see the passing of everyone I know and love. That I’d face an eternity alone, fighting the implacable aliens who’re intent on destroying my world and everything on it.”
Visions of his family and much-loved friends hung in the darkness before him, almost as real as if they were there.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to them, his voice cracking with misery. “Dianne, Mum and Dad… Adam, Colonel… I let you all down. Please to God you can carry on the fight alone and save the Earth from utter destruction.”
He closed his eyes and drifted into a deep sleep, so deep that he was unaware when he breathed his last.