Monster: Tale Loch Ness (44 page)

The claustrophobia was intense.

Scotty had only a few inches on either side of his shoulders, and he was continuously dislodging sharp fragments from the bore wall as he descended.

The harness fit tightly; it was painfully digging into his sides. Looking above, he could see a circle of sky. He could not see down.

He maintained contact with the surface, describing sensations, receiving depth readings. His helmet had a communications system and a lightweight communications line.

He would have preferred an unencumbered descent, but the helmet had been necessary. Even though there had been no trace of gas in the mud flow and no intermediate loss of circulation, there was always the chance of a bore wall fracture releasing methane from a hidden reservoir.

"Six hundred feet," Tony Spinelli called.

Scotty shifted his legs. They were down weighted by the hanging rifle. The feeling was uncomfortable.

The descent slowed.

"Seven hundred feet!"

He reached the puncture point, turned on his helmet torch, and jerked his body down into the cavern.

Eighty feet below was the floor.

"Let me down," he said. "I'm inside."

They lowered him to the basement.

Securing the rifle and removing his stomach pack, which contained a small camera and first-aid gear, he took off the descent jacket and harness.

The jacket and harness quickly disappeared up the bore.

He sat on a boulder and looked around. He was perched in a long tunnel. He could hear water dripping. There were no other sounds. It was very cold; fortunately, all three of them were wearing thermal suits beneath their outer garments.

Spinelli notified him that Dr. Rubinstein had started his descent.

Scotty waited.

Pebbles fell from above. He could hear sounds in the bore. Dr. Rubinstein appeared, dangled high near the ceiling, then touched the ground moments later.

Scotty helped the researcher undo his jacket and harness and then sent both pieces of equipment back up to the surface.

Dr. Rubinstein vigorously attacked the cavern walls, taking samples, running a nonstop commentary with Dr. Fiammengo ,above.

Lefebre appeared through the opening and dropped to the cavern floor.

Scotty noted the irony; he was now locked in the cavern with the last man on earth he would have chosen as a companion, a mass murderer as well as the man who held an ax over his and Mary MacKenzie's heads.

"What's the cavern's composition?" Whittenfeld asked, his voice crackling through the communications lines.

"It's metamorphic and representative of the surface," Scotty replied, examining the piece of rock. "Highly metamorphosed quartz-feldspar-granulate with some evidence of igneous intrusion. However, I'm sure as the cavern heads toward the sea, it begins to pick up some old red sandstone."

"Your intitial conclusions?" Whittenfeld asked.

"There's no evidence of cavern formation," Scotty replied. "If I had to guess, I'd say we're inside a miracle. A cavern structured out of an inactive fault. Maybe one that intersects the Glen Markie fault. But a closed fault nevertheless."

Whittenfeld acknowledged the message. Scotty informed him they were disattaching their communications lines and would be heading toward the northeast.

"Let me check the rifles," Lefebre said.

Scotty and Dr. Rubinstein handed the Frenchman the rifles, receiving them back moments later.

"You don't think rifles will stop this thing if it appears, do you?" Dr. Rubinstein asked.

"No," Lefebre replied. "But I have ten grenades and several packets of nitroglycerin that will!"

Scotty pointed. "We'll start out that way."

They began to walk.

The cavern ran level for several hundred feet, then sloped downward. The surface was surprisingly free from debris, and it wasn't as slick as they had anticipated.

Their torch beams danced ahead of them, crossing indiscriminately. The sound of their footsteps echoed, as did Dr. Rubinstein's voice, as he made audible notes to himself. Both were accompanied by Lefebre's high melodic whistle of recognizable operatic melodies.

At first, Lefebre and the music seemed incongruous companions, but Scotty realized that no matter how inhuman Lefebre had become, he had still come from civilized human stock.

They stopped several times to take rock samples, paused near a steep dropoff, listened to the trickle of moving water, then carefully moved forward, hugging the cavern wall They reached an underground lake.

Dr. Rubinstein sampled the water. It was fresh.

Scotty checked his watch. They had been walking for an hour. They surveyed the underground lake. They could not pass!

"You can probably reach the next cavern by swimming down under this," Dr. Rubinstein theorized.

Scotty suggested they rest there, then return to the bore hole and inspect the tunnel's other branch. They all sat. Dr. Rubinstein tried to speculate on the source of the cavern's oxygen supply. Lefebre finally stopped whistling.

"We've appreciated the accompaniment," Dr. Rubinstein said.

Lefebre removed a piece of ivory from his pocket and began to whittle the edges with a knife. "Music calms the savage beast," he observed cryptically, with the barest of smiles.

"You' re an expert on opera?"

"Just an aficionado. There's much to learn in musical theory. There's a great challenge."

Dr. Rubinstein glanced at the lake; the water was almost black. "Then you're more than an aficionado."

"Call me a student, too. A serious student. I studied opera. I learned orchestration. I'm still intensely interested."

"Literature and music," Scotty said sardonically. "You've achieved a great deal."

Lefebre swiveled face to face with Scotty; the mutual revulsion was intense. It was obvious both were waiting for the moment when they could shed all pretenses. "It's not what a man achieves in life. It's what he overcomes."

"What have you overcome?"

"A rotting, rat-infested orphanage. Poverty. Pellagra. Cholera. A bullet wound in my skull. Ignorance! Does that satisfy you, Bruce?"

"You're a martyr, Lefebre!" Scotty said facetiously.

"No. I'm a man. And I've ascended. What have you overcome in your pampered existence?"

"Hatred. Bigotry. Anger. Greed. Everything despicable. Everything you represent!"

The ripple of water in the lake became the only sound. Dr. Rubinstein sensed that only the flimsiest of gossamer strands was holding the two men apart. He could see them seething to attack. Whatever it was that held them in check held with tremendous strength. He realized, though, the restraints would not last long.

Scotty stood, suggesting they start back.

With Scotty leading, they reached the opening in the cavern ceiling forty minutes later, reattached their communication lines, reported their progress, then disattached the lines and started in the opposite direction toward Loch Ness. The topography was identical to the conditions they had already encountered. The route rose initially, then began to descend again. They had walked no more than a quarter mile when the tunnel narrowed considerably.

"This is where we block it," Lefebre declared.

Scotty did not reply. Neither did Dr. Rubinstein. Instead, they moved past the constriction.

There was another underground lake directly ahead, also impassable. "It appears we penetrated the cavern at the top of one of its roller-coaster rises," Dr. Rubinstein said. "On either side, the tunnel sIopes down to lower-level pools."

They examined the water margin; Lefebre, gripping his rifle tightly, split off.

A short time later, Lefebre's voice rang out. "Here!" Scotty and Dr. Rubinstein came running.

Lefebre pointed to the shoreline. Part of an enormous print, a flipperlike foot, was embedded in the soft water boundary.

"My God!" Scotty said, stepping into the hole.

It was six feet across.

They searched for more prints. They found none. Scotty photographed the one exhibit. They returned to the well bore.

Scotty notified Whittenfeld they had found an enormous footprint. He could hear a jabber of excitement. He then asked them to drop the jacket and harness. Both appeared soon after.

Dr. Rubinstein was the first to be hoisted out.

Scotty followed many minutes later, after Pierre Lefebre.

Scotty returned to the cavern the following day with two company demolition experts and led them to the cavern constriction. The experts rigged charges to bring down a portion of the ceiling, enough to close the tunnel.

When the job was finished, Scotty set a television camera and strobe in a safe vantage point, then accompanied the demolition experts back to the surface.

Reaching the work tent, they joined Whittenfeld, Lefebre, Dr. Rubinstein, and Dr. Fiammengo. The demolition experts detonated their charges.

The television clouded with smoke and dust, but gradually cleared. They had the picture they wanted. The ceiling had fallen precisely as planned. Although the tunnel was not completely closed, enough had been sealed off to prevent any large

animal from ever penetrating.

They were ready.

"We sink the trap!" were Whittenfeld's final words.

The air carried the pleasant scent of heather and mountain pine. The breeze that whisked through the shopping district was warm, energizing. Inverness was energetically alive beneath the northern sun. Or at least that was Mary MacKenzie's impression as she hurried about, tending to chores and a carefully constructed schedule of meetings.

At three o'clock, she stopped by the executive offices of the Highland Regional Council. A message was waiting from Chief Inspector MacKintosh, who had obtained the information she'd asked for. She phoned constabulary headquarters, and a desk sergeant suggested she come by.

Ten minutes later, she was in the constabulary's waiting room. MacKintosh soon appeared.

"This is the rundown," MacKintosh declared, waving a sheet of paper in the air. "The car was leased by a Dr. Allen Rubinstein, an American citizen, residence Boston, affiliation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We checked his passport declarations. He's here as a representative of the Phenomena Research Bureau, whatever that is. We also did a back check on his previous entries into Great Britain. He's been here several times, each time as a member of the Academy of Applied Sciences."

She felt her blood run cold. She was familiar with the academy, the council having been asked to approve academy activities in the past. Dr. Rubinstein was a Nessie researcher. He was here dealing with Scotty Bruce on a regular basis. There was the lost submersible, the web, the inconsistencies. It all indicated just one thing, and she was suddenly convinced the proof lay in Travis House.

She drove to Old Edinburgh Road.

Scotty's new jeep was parked in the Travis House driveway. She honked, but no one emerged from the house.

Walking through the gate, she knocked on the front door. Nothing. She called Scotty's name, knocked again.

No reply.

Even though the jeep was there, he obviously wasn't home.

She parked her car out of sight. Taking a screwdriver from the car's glove compartment, she returned to the house, walked around the side to the den, and looked through the window. The inside lights were out. The view was dark, uncommunicative. She pried open the window with the screwdriver, climbed inside, looked around, and sat at the desk, glancing through a technical book on oil-well fracture gradients. She then noticed several pictures and drawings piled on the side of the blotter.

She looked at the top photo—two terrified men in a mechanical vehicle, water pouring over them. Picking it up, she noticed the photo beneath, showing the head of an animal. She lifted the stack, examining the other photographs. More shots of the thing—a dinosaur? She looked at the drawings. The first few were design reductions of the metal web. The next sequences were artist's renditions of a dinosaurlike thing resembling the animal in the photos. And then the final set of renditions depicted the animal entering the web, getting deeper inside, the web closing around it, trapping it.

She put down the drawings. She felt sick. She was suddenly conscious of the rapid beat of her pulse. Her hands turned clammy cold.

She searched the desk drawers. There was nothing there. She looked around the room. A book was sitting on the arm of the lounge. She looked at the title:
Textbook of Paleontology
. She examined the book shelves. One shelf was completely filled with volumes on the Loch Ness monster.She found the tribunal report.

Angry, she walked from room to room searching. She climbed the staircase, inspecting the bedrooms—again nothing—and then went up to the attic. The attic door was open. She entered.

She was awe struck. There were maps on the walls. Plans. Notes. Pictures. A blowup of a strange footprint. She rifled through reams of material. She found more renditions, then finally a notebook outlining procedures, the step-by-step plan to catch a creature that had sunk the
Columbus
.

She questioned her state of consciousness. Was this all real? Was this a dream?

Suddenly, she felt the pain, a terrible pain of hatred that knifed into her soul.

He'd deceived her, lied to her, used her.

She left the attic, returned to the den, grabbed the phone. Dialing a number, she waited, then spoke.

"I'd like to speak to Mr. Droon," she said.

A Geminii company car stopped in front of Travis House. Scotty stepped out. Since the jeep had not been working right that morning, a driver had been placed at his service.

He entered the house as the car disappeared, popped into the kitchen, and returned to the den with a beer. Sitting at the desk, he inspected the pile of pictures and renditions. Strange, he was sure he'd left them in a different order. Had someone been in there?

He heard a sound and looked up. Mary MacKenzie was standing in the den doorway. Her face was granite hard, furious.

"Good evening, Mr. Bruce," she snapped.