Land to the North - Chapter Nine

I woke with a start, sure that something was wrong. I kept my eyes closed as I listened to the sounds around me. Nothing had changed from the night before, or the hours before. I opened one eye and saw Eric sitting erect on his sleeping bag. He was staring straight ahead, unmoving. I could see rivulets of sweat dripping down the side of his face and I wondered what had happened. My thoughts turned to half remembered stories of rattlesnakes and cobras crawling into sleeping bags so that neither occupant could stir.

I rolled to the right and saw four men standing there. Each held a long spear, the point tipped with hammered gold. The ornate carving on the long, black shaft suggested the weapons were more ornamental than dangerous, but I was sure that one could inflict a fatal wound if the bearer decided to try.

The men were dressed as if for war. They each sported a chest protector of padded armor. They were wrapped in capes of bright colors and held shields that were decorated with many symbols. Each wore a garment that reminded me if a knee length kilt and they wore knee high boots of a material that looked like snake skin. Two of them wore helmets that might be gold and the other two wore plain headbands.

As I sat up, one of them pointed his spear at me. He was a short, stocky man with long black hair, an oval face and oval eyes. His skin was a deep tanned and his nose was board. I shifted slowly and he said, "Manos arriba."

I shot a glance at Eric who shrugged.

"Manos arriba," the man repeated, his voice carrying a note of irritation now.

Slowly, I raised my hands as he had commanded. I couldn’t believe that he had spoken to me in Spanish. As I waited, one of the others began a long speech in a language that I couldn’t begin to understand.

While two of the men watched us, the other two moved so that they could search our packs. They pulled out the equipment, tossing away the things they didn’t recognize and stuffing the rest into sacks. They took the knives and the machetes from us but ignored both our rifles and pistols.

Later I would wonder why they ignored the firearms. They must have seen them before. Others had explored the Inner Earth and they had taken firearms with them. But these men didn’t seem to understand what they were or how important they would be to their civilization.

The two then went to our boat, searched through it, destroying some of our supplies, throwing some into the river, and stealing the rest including the steel headed axes, extra machetes and extra knives. When they finished, they chopped holes in the boat and pushed it into the river to sink.

As the two men approached, the one who spoke Spanish ordered us to our feet. I noticed that Eric was carefully measuring the distances among us, figuring the angles and wondering the same thing that crossed my mind. Could we draw and fire before these men could respond? Would the attack throw them off balance long enough for us to kill them?

Eric’s hand shifted closer to his holster. I noticed that his was unsnapped. Mine was not.

Just as it seemed that he had made up his mind, a dozen men, armed with long blowguns and crossbows appeared at the edge of the jungle. Their clothing, a uniform of some kind, matched that worn by the men who had captured us.

Eric grinned and said, "Wouldn’t have worked after all. Now too many of them."

I knew exactly what he meant.

The man closest to us snapped, "Silencio."

Prodded by the spears, we picked up what we could of our gear, salvaging some of the jerky and a couple of boxes of ammo for the rifles and the pistols. I was surprised they left those with us, after taking our knives, but it was possible they just didn’t recognize them as deadly weapons. They had left our first aid kits and canteens attached to the belts.

Again we crossed the meadow, but this time entered the jungle at the first real break in the foliage, the one that we had passed the day before. Two of the men with crossbows went in first, followed by two with blowguns and then our four guards surrounding us.

Within minutes, the jungle became so dense that it was like dusk. The trees and bushes that bordered the trail were lost in the gloom. They were shadowy shapes barely visible.

And the humidity seemed to climb about one hundred percent. It hung heavy in the air, almost visible. Around some of the trees, near the ground were wisps of white that looked as if the roots were on fire, but was a light fog.

Our captors didn’t waste time. They made good progress, prodding us with their spears when we slowed even slightly. None of them spoke and I was reminded of our patrols in the Army. Noise discipline once we were into the bush. These men hadn’t spoken to one another since we entered the jungle.

Around us, I could still hear the sounds of the animals and the buzz of insects. A huge, muddy looking moth dived out of the trees, flashed by me face and then disappeared again. When I flinched, ducking to the right, the men laughed and then we were again wrapped in silence.

After several hours of hot marching, we stopped and the men ate a quiet, quick meal. Since I could not see the sun, and even if I could, it wouldn’t have given me a clue about the time of day, I assumed it was lunch. Eric and I drank from our canteens and when our captors offered us nothing, we ate some of the jerky we had salvaged.

Before we had a chance to rest, we were up and moving again. Each attempt to ask questions was met with a quiet, quick rebuff. It might be a guard telling us to be silent or it might be a blow with the shaft of a spear. We gave up quickly, assuming that we would find out all we wanted to know before long.

Early on, I began hearing a babbling to the right. Water splashing over rocks. It seemed to come closer and I realized that we were paralleling a stream. It was a clue that might be valuable later.

Sometime in the afternoon, or what I assumed was the afternoon, I became aware of a roar, as if water was falling from great height. The jungle seemed to be lighter as if the sun was breaking through a think cloud bank. Then, suddenly, we were out of the jungle, standing on a high cliff, looking into an open valley several hundred feet below us. To the right, the water cascaded over the edge, dropping straight into a huge pool far below us. The mist rose from it creating a multicolored rainbow to the side of the waterfall.

We turned to the left where there was a rocky path that lead down. As we approached it, I saw the village spread out below us. Hundreds of thatched roofs along narrow streets that lead to a central plaza. It wasn’t exactly a square because only two of the sides were parallel.

The path changed to a stairway cut into the solid rock of the cliff. It was lined on one side with a low, stone wall that looked as if material had been quarried elsewhere and brought to the stairway.

Our captors seemed to be conditioned to using the steep stairway. They got into a rhythmic movement so that they were racing downward and Eric and I were hard pressed to keep up. Besides, there were no railings along the stairs, just the low stone wall on one side. A misstep could send one of us tumbling into space. But the men seemed not to mind the apparent danger and keep pushing at us.

By the time we reached the bottom, I was breathing hard and sweating heavily. When the men stopped, I bent over, my elbows resting on my knees as I gulped air. My legs ached from the strain of running down the steps. I turned my head and saw that Eric was in the same shape as I. Our captors, however, were showing no signs of the strain of the rapid trip and descent on the stairs. It was all a big game to them.

They waited patiently, letting us gain our breaths, and then urged us onward. The path we followed at a gentle slope had been paved with blocks of stone cut from somewhere else. They were polished by the feet of hundreds, thousands of people, and were as smooth as the finest marble. There were ditches along either side that were carpeted in short grass.

We entered the town, following a road that was also paved in stone. The houses on either side were of adobe with yellowing thatch on top giving them a golden color. As we moved deeper into the town, the inhabitants came out to watch us. Some deserted the fields where they tended crops. They lined the streets, at first, just scattered clumps of humanity staring at us. As we neared the center of the city, the number of people increased.

The were all short and stocky, each with dark hair and dark eyes. The men and women were about the same height, and the closer we moved to the plaza, the brighter the colors they sported. It was as if we were moving from the poorer sections of town, into the wealthy. And the more wealth, or the higher their station, the more colors they wore. Many had intricate capes that had been woven from the brightly colored feathers of birds. Many held ornaments of gold or silver.

The cheering began the closer we got to the plaza. As we moved into the center of the city, the people rushed forward, lining the sides of the plaza. At the far end was a tall building, a structure of pyramidal shape with a long ramp leading to a massive door. Men in white cloaks and holding spears of solid gold guarding the ramp, facing each other across it.

We were led to the foot of it. Around us danced children. Boys and girls, thirteen or fourteen years old. They were dressed in diaphanous white cloth. There was something innocent, yet sad about them.

The people now burst into cheering that I didn’t recognize, although, from their tone, I could tell that they were praying. A priest, at first, seemed to be speaking privately with his god, and then he began to shout, as if angry. He looked down at Eric and me, pointed, his finger stabbing down, accusing us of some unknown crime.

Two of the white-clad guards, dropped their spears and came toward us, but then grabbed one of the girls, lifting her to her feet. She wailed in fear as they dragged her toward the man on the ramp.

They left her standing in front of the man. Her posture was rigid. She held her hands behind her back, thrusting her chest out. She seemed to be shaking slightly as she held her head high, her eyes closed.

The man yammered on, lifting a sparkling knife high, the point aimed at the girl.

The crowd now looked up, fascinated by the show going on in front of them. They all seemed to hold their breath, anticipating the final act.

The man stopped speaking, looking at the sky, and then at the girl. He plunged the knife into her chest, just under her breastbone. For a moment she stood as if transfixed. As the crimson stain spread across her white garment, her knees buckled and she fell. As she dropped, her blood pumping from her to pool under her, the crowd began to chant again.

Once more the guards came down the ramp. This time I was sure they would come for me. Their eyes seemed locked on mine. I decided that I was going to sell my life dearly. I wasn’t a docile young girl. I would shoot the guards and then the man on the ramp. The crowd would probably tear me apart, but it was better than standing there quietly.

But they didn’t come for me or Eric. They selected one of the boys and took him up the ramp. He seemed to be oblivious to everything around him as he assumed the same position as had the girl. Arms behind his back and chest thrust outward.

Again there was a prayer and again the man killed the youngster in front of him, to the wild approval of the crowd. As the boy fell next to the girl, the chanting erupted again.

My arms were seized then and I struggled to free myself. I stomped on the foot of one of the men. He was startled enough by the pain of the assault that he loosened his grip. Free of him, I spun on the second, slamming my fist onto his jaw. He dropped to the ground, moaning.

My hand clawed at the snap on my holster, and as I tried to draw my pistol, three men rushed me. One held back as the other two waded in. I forgot about my weapon, punching outward. I hit one man near the eye and felt the fragile bones of his face break. He screamed in surprise and pain, but kept coming.

I twisted to the right and threw a punch at the other man. I missed and staggered forward, off balance. As I did, I felt a blow to the back of my head. There as an explosion of light and I sank to my knees. For a moment the world swirled in front of me and when my sight cleared, one man held a sword to my throat as two more lifted me to my feet.

This is truly it, I thought. I had been through a war, shot at by everything from pistols to howitzers, had fought the Hun hand to hand and I was going to die near the foot of a ramp, the sacrifice to some deity of which I had never heard.

I glanced at Eric and saw that he was held as firmly as I. At his feet lay the body of one man, blood pouring from his mouth. I didn’t know whether Eric had killed him or merely knocked him out.

With the chanting growing in volume, I fully expected to be taken up the ramp to where the bodies of the children lay, their blood staining the stone as it ran down toward the plaza, but that didn’t happen. Instead, we were dragged to the side. The crowd parted, letting us pass. We were taken through a stone doorway, down a hall lighted with flickering torches and bubbling fat lamps until we came to a stairway. We were forced down it until we had reached a stone passage. Our footsteps echoed as we walked along it. I could hear water dripping somewhere.

We stopped in front of an iron door. One man opened it, and stepped. Eric was shoved into the cage. Before he could catch his balance, I was pushed in after him. The door was slammed and locked. The men then turned without a word, vanishing from sight, taking the torches with them. We were left in the darkness.

My first reaction was to feel my along rough stone of our cell. I found a slit in wall that was barely large enough for my hand. I leaned into it and although couldn’t find the end I learned the walls were impossibly thick. I continued on until I came to the iron door.

As I touched it, Eric said, "I don’t understand this. Why throw us in prison?"

I kept my hands roving over the surface of the door. I could feel huge bolts on our side and I found a tiny slot near the floor so that food could be pushed through. At the thought of food, I caught another odor.

Trying to ignore that, I sat down, my back to the door and said, "They obviously think we’re someone else. Someone who has been here before."

"Took our knives away from us but not our guns. How do you figure that?"

I shrugged, knowing full well that Eric couldn’t see the gesture. "They’ve never seen guns before and don’t think of them as weapons."

I didn’t like that explanation because we knew others had explored the region before us. They would have had guns. If not pistols, rifles and should understand them, but they didn’t bother with them.

"I should have drawn when we had the chance at the boat. We let them take us too easily."

"And we would have died when those men with the crossbows opened fire."

"That’s better than letting that one jerk stick a knife into my chest."

I didn’t want to talk about what we should have done any more. There were other things we needed to thing about and do. I patted my pockets and found that I had no matches. I asked Eric if he had any.

"Yeah. I’ve got most of a box."

"Then we can have a little light." I moved to the right, feeling my way along the rough stone floor. It was damp and slimy. I hoped that it was mud that I was feeling. I came to a raised area covered with dirty straw. I twisted a handful together and said, "Use one of you matches on this."

The match flared and Eric touched it to the straw. That burned slowly and gave us the opportunity to examine our cell. It was a stone enclosure that was twenty feet across, twenty feet deep and twenty feet high. A green moss climbed the walls and I hoped that meant it received sunlight sometimes. I pushed my face into the slit and saw that it might be a window to the outside, although there was a stone now blocking it.

I turned back to the interior. There were six raised platforms, each covered with straw. There was a single hole in the floor that was giving off a stench that made me believe it was our toilet. The room could have held more captives. There was no sign that they had held anyone recently.

The stones of the walls were so well cut that there wasn’t the thinnest crack between them. We wouldn’t be able to climb them. The door was made of metal that could easily be iron. There was a lock on it and I thought about trying to pick it, but even if that was successful, I was sure that there was a bar across it on the outside holding it closed.

As the straw burned down close to my hand and I could feel the heat from the fire, I said, "I think getting out of here will be a piece of cake." I dropped the straw and was about to crush out the flames when I decided that wasn’t necessary.

"Getting out of here is easy?" said Eric. "How is it going to be easy?"

"Next time the open the door, we shoot the guards," I said

Land to the North - Chapter Eight

We left the boat and crossed the beach, and then the grassy field in front of us. I glanced to the left where there was a stone cliff that seemed to climb into the very heavens and I could see no top to it. The cliff rose steadily, straight up until it was wrapped in a mist not at all unlike the one we had spent the morning in. I say morning because the sun looked as if it had just reached its zenith, indicating that it was noon or maybe a few minutes after.

We stopped at the edge of the jungle, some five or six hundred yards from the bank of the river. Looking down the pathway in front of us was nearly impossible. In only a few feet, a blackness wrapped the trail, making it seem like the bewitching hour of the darkest midnight. The sunlight was cut off completely by the dense, thick foliage. There were a few sounds from the dense vegetation. Animal noises like a giant snake slithering along the trail, or the rapid patter of tiny feet, as if an animal was fleeing the snake. There weren’t the calls of wild birds or the screams of monkeys that jungles on the surface would have rocked with.

Eric stood there, staring down the trail, as if he could actually see something, and then turned toward me. "What do you think?"

I scratched my head in thought and then wiped the sweat from my face. I turned, studied the cliff behind us and then looked at the perimeter of the jungle.

"We could either enter here, or work our way farther to the south," I said. I don’t know how I had determined that the direction to the cliff was north and the opposite way was to the south, but it seemed to make sense to me.

"I like the second choice. I don’t want to enter the jungle until we have to."

"The third option," I said, "is to return to the boat and let it take us farther downstream. That would be the easiest way for us to travel."

"Granted," said Eric. "But we wouldn’t have a feeling for the land then. It seems to me that the best idea is to search the land here until later afternoon, penetrate the jungle at some point, and return to the beach toward nightfall, if we haven’t found anything interesting by then."

"Good," I said, not relishing the idea of searching the foliage. I had read too many of the jungle adventure books and was concerned about what might lie in that direction.

We skirted the jungle, stopping occasionally to stare into the depths of the vegetation. Nothing was visible to us that we hadn’t seen before and if we wanted a clue about what was ahead, we would have to enter. We finally found another path that broke the nearly solid wall of green in front of us. We stopped to examine it. A dirt path that was well used. It ran straight for nearly fifty feet before we lost it in the gloom of the jungle.

"What do you think?"

"If we’re ever going to learn anything, we’re going to have to use a path. This one is as good as any."

"Right," said Eric. He unslung the rifle that he had over his shoulder and checked the safety. "Let’s go."

I followed him, holding my own rifle in my hands, my eyes leaping from side to side.

The path looked as if it had been graded through the jungle. The forest around us came together about ten feet over our heads making it look as if we were walking down a long, green tunnel. The dirt under our feet had been compressed by the pressure from a thousand others until it was as hard and as smooth as concrete. Very little light filtered through and that which did had a distinct, green cast to it.

In only a few minutes we were out of sight of the entrance to the jungle path. I turned once, glancing back, but could see nothing except the gloom around us.

And I could smell the jungle. First it stunk of mildew and rotting vegetation. It also was rank with the odor of wet dirt. I say wet dirt instead of mud. And finally there was the taste of humidity around us. Damp air that hung around us, soaking us like wet blankets in a sauna.

Eric’s pace slowed as the heat began to get to him. We had come up from the late winter or early spring of the Midwest, through the colder areas of Canada, to a point far above the arctic circle, and suddenly, we found ourselves in a tropical environment. The heat bothered us greatly.

But we continued on. The path widened in spots, the ground on either side bare, as if these were some kind of rest areas at the side of a long road. No shelters had been erected and there was no evidence of any fires, but then who would build a fire in this sweatbox of a jungle?

Finally we came to a much wider area where the canopy over us broke and the light from the sun filtered through. The grass had grown tall in the clearing. The path wound through the center of it, and there was a portal in the green that looked just like the entrance we had used to enter the jungle several hours earlier. To one side, it seemed that the trees had been draped with gauze that hung from the highest branches and brushed the ground.

Off to the right, there was a rustle in the grass, and I could see the blades rippling as if something was trying to sneak through it. I moved in that direction, wondering what was there. I spotted a large mass, maybe two or three feet across, brightly colored, as it slipped forward. I stopped, fascinated. Then the head poked out, onto the bare, brown earth of the path.

It was a scale covered, triangular head nearly four feet long. A thin tongue flickered from the reptilian lips as the hooded eyes blinked in the bright sun. As I stood transfixed, the massive head turned toward me. The beast stopped moving as the tongue probed the air and the eyes blinked rapidly.

I wondered if the rifle I carried had sufficient power to kill the snake. I had yet to see the whole thing, but it had to be sixty or seventy feet long and the pattern on its scaley back seem to be diamonds. I was afraid that I had found the largest rattlesnake that had ever lived.

Eric, who had frozen as the first sound, began to retreat very slowly, his eyes locked on the snake. He was mumbling, over and over, "Oh God. Oh God."

I heard a quiet click as he snapped off the safety and then the metallic rattle as he chambered a round.

At the sound, the snake drew itself up, as if coiling to strike. I knew the smaller American rattlers could lunge out to nearly one third of their length with ease. That meant we were well within the striking distance of this beast.

"Freeze," I hissed.

Eric followed my command.

The snake watched us, as if waiting for movement, or maybe wondering if we were prey. When neither of us made a threatening move, it began to crawl away, toward the gauze hanging from the trees.

We watched its progress through the grass, amazed at the size of the creature. I knew that the bite of a normal rattlesnake often was not fatal, but the danger here was not from the venom but the fangs. They could have pieced the body.

And I didn’t think about it then, but what kind of creature would a snake of that size attack? What was its prey? It could have swallowed an elephant had one been available for it to eat. It certainly could have swallowed a human.

The snake stopped when it reach the gauze curtain, seemed to inspect it and then turned away from it, and us, entering the jungle to what I thought of as the west. That was the direction we had been heading, but we now had no desire to travel that way or to find that snake again.

Eric slung his rifle after putting on the safety, but left the round chambered. He stepped from the path, into the thigh high grass, walking toward the gauze curtain.

As he approached it, I saw small, black creatures the size of dinner plates suddenly spring from the trees, catching themselves in the gauze. Some of them fled upward, as if escaping an enemy. Others seemed to slide downward, spreading out in a lopsided formation.

I followed Eric, stopping short of him. He was staring upward and then said, amazed, "They’re spiders. Big, ugly spiders."

I moved closer and at the bottom of the web, I could see the bones of the animals that had been caught and eaten. There weren’t just small animals either. Some of the bones were large and I was sure that I could see a human rib cage in the web.

Then Eric pointed and said, "That’s a skull. A human skull."

Almost as if the sound of his voice irritated them, the spiders began to swarm. One of them leaped clear of the web, sailing through the air, trailing a thin strand of silk.

Eric dropped to one knee and grabbed at the butt of his rifle, slipping it from his shoulder.

I aimed at the spider like it was a clay pigeon on a skeet range. I pulled the trigger and felt my weapon kick as it fired. The round caught the spider in the abdomen and it exploded into a red mist and fragments of dark meat.

Eric got to his feet and began to back up, his eyes on the spiders. They were all in motion now and there was a strange warbling sound coming from them. A trilling that rose and fell like the siren on a fire truck. Eric aimed his weapons at one of them still in the web and fired. The creature vanished in a flash of red that stained the gauze crimson.

One of them dropped to the ground near me and reared up on its hind legs, showing me its long fangs. It was waving the front legs in the air, as if to frighten me. I knew that if I turned, the spider would leap onto my back. Instead, I pointed my rifle at its head and fired. The creature flipped over, onto its back.

With that, they fell silent and stopped moving. Eric fired again and again, working the bolt of his rifle and ejecting the spent cartridges. He killed seven of the spiders and then glanced over at me.

"Let’s get out of here."

I didn’t need any encouragement. As soon as he passed me and back into the jungle, I spun and followed, expecting to feel one of those spiders leap at me. The skin on my neck crawled with the tension. Shivers ran up and down my spine. But the spiders didn’t attack. Maybe it was the deaths of their fellows that stopped them. Watching their brothers turned into splashes of blood and meat stayed them, although I couldn’t believe that spiders had any real intelligence. I knew there weren’t that many varieties behind us that worked in harmony, there were a few. Instinct rather than intelligence drove them.

Or maybe it was just that we stayed out of the web and because of that, they let us retreat.

When we were clear of the area, Eric stopped and turned. "My God," he said. "You don’t even have to get entangled in the web. They come out after you."

We’ll just have to be that much more careful," I said, surprised at how calm I sounded. The encounter with the snake and the spiders left me shaking. Spiders and snakes were two of the creatures that inspired the most ridiculous of responses. Nearly everyone feared them instinctively, but because we were so much larger, we could overcome that fear. Except here. Spiders that were over a yard across and seemed to attack their prey and a snake that dwarfed telephone poles.

Eric looked at me, a strange smile on his face. "I just had a thought. What if the spiders that attacked us were scouts and the big ones have yet to show themselves?"

I suddenly felt eyes on my back and I jumped. I spun, leveling my rifle but there was nothing there. Not even a bit of wind.

To Eric I said, "Let’s use the boat until we clear the jungle area. Drift on down the river."

"Well," he said, "I’m not convinced that it’s the best idea because the water could hide things worse than either the giant spiders or snakes."

"Thanks," I said. "Thank you for bringing that up."

"Any way," he said, "I think you’re right about one thing. We should get out of here. We can beat it back to the boat, gather some fire wood and set up camp for the night."

I wasn’t sure that I was keen on that plan either. It seemed that we would be safer in the boat, even if it was anchored only a few feet off shore.

We worked our way through the jungle and burst onto the open plain an hour or so later. I dropped to the ground, the breath rasping in my throat. Sweat was pouring from me and my clothes were drenched. I had already drunk all the water in my canteen and cotton had formed in my mouth. Relief, however, was only a few feet away, on the bank of the river.

I glanced up, at the sun, and saw that it hadn’t moved. I pointed and said, "Eric, the sun is stationary."

He glanced at me, raised a hand to shade his eyes and then looked up at the sun. It seemed as if it was only a few minutes afternoon, just as it had for the last several hours.

"Yeah," he said. "Just as my father described it. He said that on entering, he discovered that the sun didn’t move. The land of perpetual light.

I laughed. It actually took a load off my mind. I hadn’t wanted to spend the night ashore, not knowing what other creatures might be roaming freely. I envisioned giant leeches and giant tigers and massive lions. Now, they wouldn’t be able to sneak up on us in the dark because there would be no dark.

Eric took his watch from his pocket and looked at the time. "We’ve been traveling for several hours since we came ashore. Now we don’t know how long we were in the fog, but we were awake for several hours. I suggest we assume that it is six in the evening and plan from there."

"All right," I agreed. "Then it’s time for supper."

"You get that ready," he said, "and I’ll draw water from the river."

"Good."

We set up our makeshift camp on the edge of the grassy plain, close to the river and away from the jungle. The nearest trees were fifty or sixty feet away and the main jungle a good half mile away. Nothing could get to us easily, without us spotting it. Any creature would either have to cross the meadow or the mud of the beach.

We ate in silence. I had wanted to fish to add something fresh to our supper, but Eric had said that we could do that in the morning. Now, it was important to get the camp established and that a meal of jerky and coffee wouldn’t be all that bad. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been eating that for some time now.

The fire was a smokey one because the wood was damp. I didn’t like that because I felt it was advertizing our presence, but I didn’t know to whom. I couldn’t explain the feeling. It had seemed that someone had been watching us from the moment we had come ashore, and yet, I had seen no evidence of that. I finally could stand it no longer and kicked the fire out, pouring water from the river on it to extinguish the last of the embers.

We talked for a while, our eyes drawn to the stationary sun waiting for it to dip to the horizon but it never moved. A few light, wispy clouds drifted toward it. The sky over us had a natural blue tint to it but it didn’t have the depth that the sky outside had. Rather than stretching toward infinity, it seemed that someone in a plane could actually reach the top of it where they wouldn’t be able to travel any higher. I didn’t know if the impression was because I knew that I was inside of the Earth or if it was because I could see something that wasn’t visible on the outside .

Eric finally suggested that we try to get some sleep. He didn’t think it was necessary to stand watch. Other than the beasts we had seen deep in the jungle, the animal and plant life seemed relatively harmless.

I agreed with him and watched as he spread his sleeping bag at the edge of the meadow, using the grass for a mattress. Because of the tropical heat, he laid on top of it. For a moment he was still and then he sat up to unbutton his shirt. He pulled his backpack close to use it as a pillow and then settled down again.

"Relax, Dave," he said, his eyes still closed. "We’re perfectly safe here. Nothing’s going to get at us."

"Sure," I said, and then spread my sleeping bag out near his. But I didn’t like the idea of both of us sleeping at the same time. Maybe it was my military training or maybe it was the strangeness of the land we’d found or maybe it was the few glimpses we’d had of some of the local fauna, but I was uncomfortable. I could still feel those unseen eyes on my. I knew there were dangers out there, even if Eric refused to acknowledge them.

It wasn’t long before I heard a single, ragged snore and knew that Eric had fallen asleep. He had one arm over his eyes to block that ever present sun. I sat there quietly, listening to the sound of the water in the river and the rustling of leaves as a light breeze blew. The last thing I wanted to do was go to sleep now, with Eric out of it.

It was just as Eric said, however. I sat quietly watching, but nothing left the jungle or the water. No beasts tried to creep up on us to devour us. Overhead I saw a bird or two and from the jungle came the occasional cries of animals, but nothing that was frightening.

Slowly, I relaxed, thinking of all the explorers who had set up camps all over the world and who had not bothered with guards or sentries. It wasn’t as if we had unlimited manpower. With five or six people we could have mounted a guard rosters and no one would have been taxed by it, but here, it was impossible. There were only the two of us.

Finally I laid back, my head resting on my pack. I placed my hat over my eyes and found that I didn’t like that. I put my hat on the ground beside me, telling myself that the slightest sound would awaken me, just as they had when I had been fighting they war in Europe. I could sleep through artillery barrages, but the scrape of a foot outside my bunker would bring instantly awake, a weapon in my hand.

For a long time I laid awake, listening to the sounds of this strange new world around me. Quiet, relaxing sounds that dulled the senses and helped bring on the sleep. Then, just like Eric, I was out of it.

Land to the North - Chapter Seven

(Blogger's note: Earlier chapters follow this.)

Eric was right! Unless we both had gone crazy, and given the circumstances that seemed like a real possibility, it was suddenly much warmer, nearly tropical. I reached for the compass that lay on the bottom of the boat, warm water washing over it and retreating with the motion of the waves. I turned it over and looked at the needle. It was spinning wildly as if we were standing over a lodestone deposit.

Eric nodded as he saw that and said, "There is no way that we could have drifted into the tropics and still be alive. We’re talking about thousands of miles."

It wasn’t until then that I realized what the warmth and the fog meant. I felt the excitement course through me like an electrical charge. I was light headed with a stomach that was flipping over. I reached out and grabbed his arms.

"We’ve done it," I shouted.

He nodded happily and shouted right back. "Of course we’ve done it. We had the tools and we had the knowledge."

"A drink," I said. "A drink in celebration." I reached inside my coat for the flask and realized just how hot it was. My shirt was soaked with sweat. I laughed and stripped the heavy parka. I wiped a hand over my face and stared at the perspiration staining my palm.

"Eighty or ninety degrees," he said. "With humidity to match that."

I pulled the top off the flask and held it up high. I was about to speak when the words deserted me. I had planned to christen our discovery Jansenland or may Olafland when I realized that we had discovered nothing, other than a warm passage. A warm water passage that no one had ever written about with any authority.

But I was thirsty, and I wasn’t going to let a technicality dampen the excitement, so I said, "To us. Discoverers of the land to the north."

I took a deep drink and felt the liquor burn its way to my stomach.

Solemnly, Eric took my flask and grinned at me. He too, held it high, but said, "We have discovered no land. Yet. But to us, anyway, two of the greatest adventurers who ever lived.

I liked the sound of that. We could call ourselves adventurers because that was what we were. Explorers suggested that we were in virgin territory, but adventurers implied no such thing.

I took the flask back and said, "To us then. Adventurers."

As I capped the flask, I asked, "And now what?"

"I would suggest that we try to get our bearings and figure out what is going on. The maps and compass are of no use now. We need to see the sun and the stars so that we can get a navigational fix."

I nodded and looked upward. There seemed to be a bright ball hanging overheard just visible through the mist. I thought of the sun on a foggy day, but this, somehow, didn’t seem to be big enough or bright enough to be the sun.

I turned my head, but could see nothing near me. I reached over the side of the boat and let my fingers drag in the water. It was quite warm and I lifted them to my lips. The water was fresh, not brackish.

"This is a river," I said.

"A river?" said Eric. "That’s impossible."

"This water is fresh," I said. "It’s not salt water and it’s not cold water. We’ve entered some kind of inland waterway."

"But the current would take us toward the ocean," he said. "There is no way that we could drift into a river from the ocean."

"Are you suggesting the current carried us here?"

"No. That makes less sense than anything else. I don’t know what to think," he said.

Which puzzled me somewhat. He was supposed to be the expert on finding the way into the Inner Earth. It was his family who had visited there before, yet, here he was, denying what we were seeing, or feeling, or experiencing ourselves. His attitude was a bit frightening, given the circumstances.

As we continued to drift, I became aware of the sound of the water against stone. A quiet, wet slapping that penetrated the fog and echoed around us. We had been talking in quiet voices, as if afraid of something hidden behind the mist, but I suddenly shouted, "Hello!"

A split second later my voice bounced back to me as it reverberated around.

"We’re in a cave!" said Eric, amazed.

I shouted again and that seemed to confirm it. Somehow we had floated into a giant cave that was hidden in mist. And then I noticed something else. There was a low, quiet rumbling, like heavy machinery or artillery in the distance. An indistinct sound that I couldn’t quite identify. And the longer that we drifted, the louder it became.

"Maybe we should try to find the bank," I suggested.

For a moment Eric sat stonily still, his head cocked as he listened to the rhythmic pounding. He shook himself, almost like a dog that had just emerged from a pond, and then looked at me.

"The bank? Yes. Let’s try to get to the bank."

I reached over for the oars, which had been dragging in the water. I sat on the bench, facing the rear and asked, "Which way?"

Eric shrugged and said, "To the right?"

"You mean starboard?"

"Whatever," he said. Even with his claimed Viking heritage and the sailing exploits of his father, he knew very little about the sea. He had been born in the Midwest, about as far from a major body of water as he could get.

I used the oars to turn us and began to pull for the side of the river. Eric moved to the bow and held his hand out into the impenetrable mist, almost like a blind man feeling for obstructions. When he realized that his hand wouldn’t provide much warning, he took one of the axes, holding it out, like some kind of probe.

It wasn’t long before the slapping of the water against stone became louder and I knew that we were approaching the bank, or maybe more accurately, the wall of a cave. I stopped rowing, content to let our forward motion drop off as the current caught us again, dragging us along with it.

A second later, the axe scraped solid stone. Eric pushed against the rock and slowed us so that we kissed the stone wall. It extended upward, into the mist, giving us no clue as to its height.

Eric used the axe to push off, and we continued to drift with the current. Eric had moved so that he was sitting near the center of the boat, in the bow, using the axe to keep us off the rocks. I had pulled in the oars and was happy to sit quietly because it was so hot and humid.

As I stared upward, through the mist, wondering what was hidden behind it, I noticed that the sun was becoming brighter. At first there had been only a dim, glowing ball over us, providing a little light, making the fog seem like a steamed over window seen from two feet away. But now the sun was becoming a glowing orb that hurt my eyes to look at. And I saw that the surface of the water around the boat was clear. I could see down into it, almost to the bottom. The cliffs climbed high to become lost in the mist, but I realized that I could see much farther.

Of course, I hadn’t thought about being able to see the sun while we were inside a cave. The glowing orb had to be the sun, but if we were inside a cave, it couldn’t be. At the time, I just didn’t think about that.

There was a sudden wailing, like a giant beast caught in a trap. A trumpeting that came and fell and then there was silence. I felt cold shivers up and down my back, hoping that the animal was not aquatic. I wasn’t sure how the small boat would stand up to assault from some of the larger animals.

From overhead there was a leather flapping of wings, like some giant bird, or more accurately, a bat. The shadows obscured in the mist were huge but unrecognizable.

"Sounds like it’s above us," said Eric.

I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or not. Eric was saying that the animal was on the bank above us. I suddenly had the vision of a huge cat waiting in ambush, waiting to pounce on us, but that never happened.

And before I could worry about it, the fog vanished. We had drifted out of it. One second we were in the thick of it and the next we were clear of it. The rock walls seemed to have disappeared with the fog and to the right was a muddy beach. Behind it was a luxurious jungle growth of tall palm, teak and coconut trees. Broadleaf trees with deeply green branches. Below them were huge bushes covered with brightly colored flowers. Reds, yellows, and oranges punctuated the landscape. Farther away, was a meadow, carpeted with grass that didn’t look very tall. A breeze rippled it, making it look like the waves on a pond on a summer afternoon.

Eric moved to the center of the boat and put the oars into the water. He pulled us toward the beach until the bow scrapped on the soft mud.

"We’ve landed," he said.

"Yes," I agreed. I picked up my rifle and climbed from the boat. I dropped to the muddy beach and waited. When nothing happened, when no beast attacked, I took a step forward, toward the plain spread out in front of us.

Eric dragged the boat higher and then tied a rope from the bow to the nearest tree. That finished, he shouldered his pack and picked up his rifle.

"Let’s go," he said.

I turned and looked at him. I could see across the river now. It was wide and slow moving. Opposite us was another jungle, this one coming right down to the water’s edge so that the leaves and some of the trees and bushes dipped into the river. Overhead I could see a couple of birds windmilling on the air currents. Large, dark birds with huge, leathery wings that looked more bat like than bird. They were watching us and the ground under them, looking for easy prey. They were somehow both fascinating and disturbing.

Overhead, the sun had taken on a strange quality. It seemed closer and brighter than it should have been and I wondered if it was because we had traveled so far to the north. And then I realized I was standing in a tropical garden and not the frozen wastes that I expected.

I moved to the boat and pulled my pack from it. I struggled into it, shifting the weight until it sat on my shoulders comfortably. I fastened the straps, bent and picked up my rifle again. I turned, facing Eric and asked, "Now what?"

"We explore, of course."

When he said that, I suddenly realized what he believed. We had found our way into the Inner Earth and any doubts I once had were gone. Slowly, I examined my surroundings, so different than anything I expected and so different from anything that I had ever seen.

"Explore what?" I asked, although I already knew the answer to that.

"Explore the land we came to find. We’re inside the Earth’s crust now."

He didn’t say, "And to find my father." I wouldn’t learn about that until later.

Land to the North - Chapter Six

(Blogger's Note: Earlier chapters follow this.)

Early the next morning we rowed across the Union Strait. There were small islands around it, some of them barren wastes and others covered with brush, bushes and trees. We landed on some, walking inland a few hundred yards before returning to the boat. None of them showed any sign of having a warm, concealed entrance to the Inner Earth. Each was just a frozen land with windswept plateaus waiting silently for the first warming rays of the late spring. We saw only a few animals, mainly in the distance, and the tracks of fewer large predators.

The whole day was spent slowly working our way across the Union Strait, spotting islands and checking them out. We ate a quick, cold lunch on one of the small islands, not taking time to start a fire but instead, sitting among the branches of a toppled tree for shelter. When we finished, we climbed back into our boat and continued rowing to the north.

By nightfall we hadn’t made much progress. The constant starting and stopping, not to mention the brisk winds, slowed us considerably. We finally landed on a large island with a single small hill in the center that seemed to dominate the island. There were a few short, scraggily trees and the occasional bush. We found enough wood for a fire for warmth and ate another meal prepared from our jerky.

It had been a long, hard, cold day, even though it was late spring. There had been little reward for all our work. We both were tired and we fell asleep early. As the sun climbed higher in the sky the next morning, we were both ready to go again.

By noon we had made our way across the strait and were close to the land of Victoria Island. Eric and I argued briefly over the next move. I suggested that we put into shore and make our way across the island on foot. Eric wanted to use the boat to scout the shoreline, working our way to the north. If we saw anything of interest, we could always land to chase it down.

As I studied the map, I could see the wisdom of Eric’s plan. We could carry much more in the boat rather than in our backpacks so we could continue farther to the north.

The currents suggested that the tree that Ramsey reported could have come from the northen edge of Victoria Island, or maybe even farther north. Since it was a warm weather tree and was found in an icy sea, it was probable that it had been growing on the edge of an island that had a warmer climate than anything we were finding here. We shouldn’t miss anything by using the boat. Travel would be simpler and maybe even faster that way.

"Yes," I conceded. "We should use the boat as long as we can."

So, we turned toward the west and continued the journey. Each of the days took on the sameness as the last. Rocking in the boat during the day and then putting into shore at night where I lay on the hard ground, the sensation of the wave motion still with me, trying to keep warm.

We rounded the Wollaston Peninsula and explored Prince Albert Sound. We crossed the Amundsen Gulf and surveyed the Minto Inlet. Finally we found ourselves in the Prince of Wales Strait, Victoria Island on the east and Banks Island on the west. With Banks Island so close, we alternated between it and Victoria Island, exploring each for a couple of hundred yards behind the beach and searching the open ground with binoculars.

And each day we saw fewer signs of life. We would see a bird overhead, or a fish in the water. The snow revealed the footprints of animals, but we rarely saw the animal. Of course there were no signs of human habitation anywhere close now. We were too far to the north and too far from anything that could support a family or a village.

And each day we were farther north. We broke out into the Viscount Melville Sound. We beached out boat on Russell Point late in the afternoon several days later. The sun was toppling toward the horizon and I was cold. Cold from the water sloshing in the bottom of the boat and cold from the wind that roared at us unabated. I was cold from sleeping on the ground and cold from eating cold food.

Annoyed with the lack of progress, I carefully unfolded the map, holding it low so that the wind wouldn’t rip it from my hand and said, "You realize we’re miles north of the farthest reach of any of Ramsey’s maps or photographs. We’ve really ignored what he photographed for us."

"I know," confessed Eric, "but I don’t think he was able to get far enough north. He needed fuel and a base. He could range much farther in a day than we can, but I believe he only eliminated the mainland of Canada. We have to push on."

"Melville Island is almost seventy-five miles across open water," I said. "We’ll never be able to navigate that distance in our boat."

I pulled my compass out of my pocket and opened it. Given where we were standing, with open water in front of us, and land behind us, I knew where north was supposed to be, but the compass pointed to the northeast. We were close to the magnetic north pole and that was going to make navigation across open water tricky at best.

"So, what do you suggest? asked Eric. "That we give up?"

"No," I said. "I think that we should explore Victoria Island more fully before we try anything else. I mean, it’s right here, in front of us."

Eric shook his head sadly and asked, "You really think we’re going to find our entrance on Victoria Island? If it was there, someone would surely have stumbled across it before now and we’d know exactly where it was."

"But there are stories of entrances in California," I countered. "No one has stumbled onto them and let the world know."

"David," he said, "this isn’t going to be easy. I never said it was, but if we’re going to find anything, then we’ve got to continue to the north, to Melville Island. Once we’re there, it’ll be simple to hop from island to island, but we have got to cross the Parry Channel."

I sat down then, on the cold, frozen sand, the wind tearing at my clothes and studied the map. I could see that Eric had a point. To continue around Victoria Island would only take us farther from the islands to the north. If we were careful, we could make it and although we didn’t have sufficient water for a long crossing, there was enough ice floating around us that water wouldn’t be a problem for us.

"Tomorrow then," I said.

Eric stood with his back to me, his eyes on the open water to the north where Melville Island would be if we could have seen it. "Tomorrow," he said. The word was torn from his lips by the cruel biting wind.

"Tomorrow," he repeated.

The next morning was a warmer, clearer day. We set out, taking turns rowing. By late in the morning, we were out of sight of land and I found that unnerving. The compass pointed to the east now and that made my head spin. I knew which way north was, but the compass didn’t care about what I thought I knew. It continued to point in the wrong direction.

We didn’t talk much, having long ago exhausted most of the topics. I wished that we had gotten a better boat with a motor on it, but then I hadn’t expected to spend so much time on the water. I finally said as much to Eric.

"I know," he said. "I didn’t have any idea that these islands were separated by such great distances. At least that was the impression I got from my father. I should have studied the map more closely."

It was at that point I realized just how amateurishly we had put this expedition together. We should have been studying the maps of the area we planned to explore. I hadn’t though much about it because I believed that we would be on the mainland of Canada, far beyond the arctic circle but still on the main land of the continent. Now we were hopping from island to island, driven on by the knowledge of how far we had come already. It would take weeks to get back to civilization and all the time we’d put in already would be wasted.

When night fell, we continued to row, and while Eric slept in the bottom of the boat, I was trying to stay warm and dry by rowing. As Eric dozed, I watched the luminous dial of the compass sitting close at hand. The stars blazed overhead. The air was crisp and cold, but the effort of rowing kept me warm.

I watched shooting stars flare into brightness and die quickly, more in one hour than I had seen in my whole life. Brilliant streaks of light in a rich variety of color.

There was almost no sound around me. Just the gentle slap of the water against the bow of the boat and the quiet, rhythmic breathing of Eric as he slept on.

A quiet, dark world that held no dangers except for the cold winds that blew constantly and tried to rob the body of its warmth, and an ocean that could swallow us completely. I felt myself grow drowsy and felt my eyelids shut. I would jerk awake as I relaxed and began to fall over. For minutes, my heart would pound and I would think that it would be hours before I would fall asleep again.

And then, suddenly, Eric was shaking my shoulder, shouting at me. I opened my eyes and found myself surrounded with a gray mist that obscured the bow of the boat only a few feet from me. Eric, although only inches from my face, was a shadowy shape.

"David," he asked when he saw my eyes fluttering open, "are you all right?"

I sat up and said, "I’m fine. I just fell asleep. That’s all."

"For how long?" he asked.

I reached up and rubbed my eyes. My hand brushed across the stubble on my face. More than could have grown in a few hours overnight. It felt like several days growth.

"I don’t know," I said.

Eric helped to a sitting position. My bones ached and I rubbed a sore spot on my shoulder.

"You notice anything?" he asked.

"You mean other than this thick fog?"

"Yes," he said. "Other than the thick fog."

"I’m hungry," I said. I felt my stomach rumbling as if I hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. "I’m thirsty too."

He waved an arm and said, "It’s warm. Much too warm."

Land to the North -- Chapter Five

We left by eight o’clock the next morning, driving north on paved roads. For a while we followed the Missouri River but it broke away to the west and we continued north. We crossed the border into Iowa, ate lunch and continued on. By late afternoon we were at the Minnesota border. As the sun disappeared, the sky clearing and a sheet of late arctic air settling on us, we found rooms in a hotel only a few miles north of the border. It hadn’t been a bad day’s travel, though it had been tiring.

When I said my good nights to Eric and turned on the electric light in my room, I couldn’t help smiling. Here I was, starting on a great adventure that would rival that I had in France during the Great War. I was traveling into uncharted territory, into lands that no one suspected existed, and yet, on my first night of the journey, I was resting in a warm hotel room with electric lights, the latest newspaper on the desk and a hot shower down the hall.

The only way for it to be better was if I could write to Sara and let her know what I had seen and where I was. I had tried to telephone her the night before and she had seemed, momentarily happy to hear from me. I suspect that she thought I had finally come to my senses and was telephoning her to let her know the expedition was off.

But when I said that we would leave in the morning, her voice turned icy, hard, and without emotion. This was not the news she wanted and she made that clear. I had asked if I should notify her of my return but she was noncommital. I think she wanted to say yes but didn’t want to give me the slightest hint that her position was not as strong as she said it was.

We ended the conversation, if not affectionately, then cordially, much as a divorced couple might say good-by after a meeting with the lawyers.

I was sure that her attitude would change when I returned from a successful expedition. And successful it would be. We had carefully researched the history, we had made a successful reconnaissance by air. All that remained was to follow up on the ground.

The next morning we did the same thing we had the day before. We ate a large breakfast and were on a major highway out of town by eight. It was late afternoon as we approached the Canadian border, which I had thought nothing about. But as we neared it, I realized that we were carrying firearms and ammunition, not mention a large number of crates with food and other supplies. But as we slowed and then stopped, the guard just asked us the nature of our visit to Canada.

Eric smiled at him and said, as calmly as could be, "Fishing. We heard there are some great lakes for fishing in Canada."

"Right you are. The best in the world," said the customs man. He walked to the rear of the truck, peeked in the back and returned to the driver’s side of the cab. "Looks like you boys plan on being here for some time."

"Four or five weeks," said Eric. "We need some permits or anything?"

"Not from me," said the man, "but before you establish your camp, you better check in with the local authorities. Good luck to you."

We continued north then. Each day was a repeat of the last until we were far enough into Canada that the pavement changed to graded roads and finally to tracks across the tundra. The nights were cold enough that the ground remained hard, and the days warm enough to be comfortable.

As we made our way farther north, there were no longer bridges across the rivers. But there were fords and the truck handled them all easily. Finally, we found ourselves almost a far north as we could get without driving into the arctic ocean. The ground was still snow covered, the towns small and far apart, and the nights frigid. Sleeping in the back of the truck and eating cold food from cans made it seem more like a real expedition than it had in the earlier days of hotel rooms and restaurant meals.

The maps and aerial charts and photographs made for us by Randall Ramsey led us to the bare spot that we had seen on them, but it turned out to be nothing of use to us. A bog that generated its own heat because someone had set it on fire and the smoldering peat had melted all the snow around it.

We camped there that night because we didn’t feel like traveling farther. Eric had believed that the slash of brown earth, seen from the airplane, would provide us with our first real clue, but, of course, it didn’t. So we started our own campfire, ate our supper in silence and turned in early. I had known it wasn’t going to be easy.

The following morning, we left the bog, skirted it and headed to the west where Ramsey had claimed to have seen the tree drifting. By noon we had reached the end of the land and parked on a cliff that overlooked an expanse of open ocean.

Eric, standing on the cab of the truck and using his Zeiss binoculars, carefully surveyed our surroundings. Finally, he slipped to the ground, put the binoculars into their case and looked at me. His breath was smoking in the chilly air of the late afternoon.

"Nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing. White as far as I can see with no break in the snowy surface except for patches of ocean."

We climbed into the truck for the protection it would provide. "Now what?" I asked.

Eric got out a map and studied it for a few moments. "I think," he told me, "that we’ll want to bear to the east from here. Then, if the ice is think enough, we can cross to one of the islands there, probably Victoria Island, and continue on to the north."

I leaned over and examined the map. "Ramsey puts his sighting of the tree farther to the west."

"Yes, but the current could have brought it from Victoria Island or somewhere even farther to the north. My father was well into the arctic circle when he first found his way in."

"I don’t know," I said. "Most of my research seems to indicate that the best entrances are in caves, some of them in California." With the cold beginning to seep into my bones, the promised warmth of California took on an added importance.

"But we’d have to walk a hundred miles inside the caves before we had the chance of finding anything. Those entrances are far from the center of things, and even if we find the right cave, there are so many ways to get lost. No, if we can find our way in up here, we won’t have to walk for hundreds of miles."

"Your father tell you that?" I asked.

"My father told me that," he said.

"Then I suggest we start a fire, cook our dinner and prepare for the morning."

Eric folded the map and jammed it toward the glove box. He glared out the window, at the sun as it slipped toward the horizon that was a long way from us. Reds and oranges blazed across the ice and snow, reflecting to the high cirrus clouds over us. I knew that he was angry about another day wasted, but there was nothing we could do about that. We’d want the whole day to make our way across the ice.

Early the next morning, after a cold breakfast eaten hastily out of cans, we tried to start the truck. I spun the crank, but the weather had been cold and the oil was thick. After nearly twenty minutes, my arms aching with the strain, we realized that we were not going to be able to force it to start.

For an hour, we roamed the plateau, searching for wood. Once we had a huge pile gathered, we build a small fire over several large stones. When the fire was good and hot, we retrieved the stones from the flames and rolled them under the crankcase and oil pan of the truck, being careful to avoid the gas tank because we didn’t want to blow ourselves up.

When those stones cooled, we rolled hotter ones into their place and in only minutes, we were able to start the engine. Eric was so anxious to get going, that he started to drive off and although I was sure the fire would burn itself out, I made him stop long enough for me to extinguish it completely.

Once I climbed back into the cab, we began a bumpy, slow trip across the open prairie or tundra, avoiding the deep ravines and sinkholes and skirting bogs and stands of trees, few through there were. We stayed near the coastline, looking for a way down to the ice choked water.

Victoria Island was off to our left as we drove to the east. Eric stopped periodically and used his binoculars to survey the island, but there was nothing visible to suggest a warm entrance to the Inner Earth.

We eventually found a way to the beach. We drove along the frozen sand but there was no way for us to continue to the island. Eric did find a place where the rocky cliff retreated so that there was an overhang. We decided that it was the perfect place for our base camp. Nothing would be visible except from directly in front. Our truck and other equipment would be protected from the elements while we were off exploring the island.

That night, sitting near the fire which I now thought of as a luxury, Eric, having finished his meal, said, "This is taking longer than I thought it would."

I was a little surprised by his tone. I thought we had been making very good progress. We had already exploded a couple of promising places, and while they didn’t pan out, it just meant we would have to look elsewhere.

"Tomorrow we find a way to get to the island," I said.

"You don’t understand," he snapped.

I didn’t understand his impatience. We hadn’t been traveling that long, we had most of our supplies left, and the map told me there was a small town fifty or a hundred miles to the east where we could resupply if necessary. Our only real problem was the cold. I didn’t like it.

Eric stood up, hands on his hips and looked out, across the open water where Victoria Island stood. "That is the key," he said. "I should have gone... we should have driven directly here."

That confused me. "Why?"

He turned to stare at me and said, "Because that is where my father and sister were last seen."

He didn’t say more, but it now all made some sense to me. It wasn’t a great adventure for him. It wasn’t a lark that we could tell the grand kids about in fifty years. This was a quest for him, and that explained some of his fire, his passion, and his desire to keep moving.

There wasn’t much that I could say to that. I let the conversation die, but I had some questions I would want to ask. There were things that I wanted to know.

The next morning, the truck started easily, but probably because we keep the fire burning throughout the night and kept the oil warm. We spent most of the day driving along the cliffs and on the beaches. We could assemble our boat, a wooden craft that broke down for storage, but by the time we finished, it would be dusk. Another day lost on the preliminaries, which didn’t put Eric into a good mood.

Eric backed the truck into a sheltered area we had found, with me guiding him. When it was parked, he turned off the engine and removed the key. Then, thinking about it, he opened the hood and took the distributor cap, effectively immobilizing the vehicle.

Together, we unloaded the boat and out tools. We dragged the crates to the water’s edge and began the task of assembling the boat. With the cold wind whipping down on us, the job was harder than I would have thought. The thick gloves were clumsy and made the finer details impossible to work. We found that we had to use our exposed hands. That was something we could do for only a few moments at a time before we were forced to don our gloves again to warm our hands.

I stopped long enough to gather drift wood and start a fire close to us. The wind fanned the flames, once I managed to set the wood ablaze, and the fire burned hot. It warmed us quickly, making the job easier.

We finished in the twilight of the day. We left the boat there and walked up the beach to the truck. Eric suggested that we put up our tent and I heartily agreed. That seemed to be the last luxury we would enjoy for a long while.

After a meal cooked over the fire, we assembled our packs, leaving the canned foods and heavier items in the truck and opting for the jerky and dried foods. Eric found a space in his pack for a copy of the book about his father. We made sure that we had plenty of ammunition for our weapons and I realized that if we had been thinking, we would have purchased the same kind of weapons for each of us so that we could have shared the ammo. The 9 mm Mauser would not take the .45 caliber ammo I needed for my Colt automatic.

We both packed the handheld lamps and a supply of the batteries for them. We feared that we didn’t have enough. We had no idea how long our artificial lights would last, once we discovered the cave and began our descent.

With everything ready, we adjourned to the tent and wrapped ourselves into our sleeping bags. Even the building excitement bubbling in me didn’t prevent me from falling asleep quickly. I had just realized that we were finally on the expedition, as I imagined it would be, when I fell asleep.

Land to the North -- Chapter Four

(Blogger’s Note: This whole book is being uploaded one chapter at a time and will therefore be in reverse order when completed. For those who have not yet read it, the earlier chapters and the Prologue follows this. I leave it that way so that those loyal readers who have been following the story won’t have to scroll down to find the newest chapter... Yes, it might be a pain, but that’s just the way it is.)　

　

Ramsey returned two weeks later. He called one morning, claimed that he had want we wanted and set up a meeting for that afternoon. Eric and I drove to the airfield, a tiny dirt strip outside of Kansas City. There was a large building, the hangar, a corrugated tin structure with a dirt floor and a windsock on the roof. To one side of it was a small, wooden building with a rusting pickup truck parked nearby. We walked across the patchy grass, scraped our feet on the cement step, and entered.

Inside there was a large table in the center of the room. Maps of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa dominated one wall. A counter, slanted, ran along one wall and was littered with flight planning aids including maps, charts, rulers, plotters and NOTAMS. A tiny office with large glass windows was stuck in one corner. A bright light burned inside and I could see Ramsey sitting at his desk in there.

Apparently Ramsey heard us and came out to greet us. He was a short, stocky man with black hair and bushy eyebrows. There was stubble on his chin and an unlighted cigar in his mouth, using it as a prop to prove how tough he was. He wore a leather jacket that creaked when he moved. He held out a beefy hand and said, "Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome."

As Eric shook his hand, he asked, "Have you had time to develop the film?"

"Don’t waste time, do you? said Ramsey. "Yes, I’ve developed the film and had blow ups made. According to my calculations, you fellows owe me an additional three hundred, eight dollars and ninety-two cents."

"Show me what you’ve got," said Eric, "and then we’ll talk about money."

Ramsey took his cigar out of his mouth, looked at the end of it as if inspecting its ash, though it was unlit. He leaned on the table, grabbed a packet and dragged it closer. "These are the photographs I made. All were taken from three thousand feet. I’ve only had the ones that show some landmarks blown up."

He smiled and shook his head. "Most of it was just miles and miles of white with nothing there to use to navigate."

As Eric and I examined the aerial photos, Ramsey pulled out a chart and laid it out. "Now, what I’ve done is this. I’ve marked each of your aerial maps with a number and then drawn a square on this map that shows where the photo was taken. Naturally there are some gaps, but it gives you a good idea of how to get from one square to the next."

Eric produced a magnifying glass. He thumbed through the photos quickly, separating them into two piles. When he was finished, he used the magnifying glass to examine each of the charts in the smaller pile. Once he called my attention to the corner of a photo and asked, "What do you make of that?"

I took the glass and leaned closer. There was a dark smudge that might have been an island in the sea, or bare ground in the middle of a snow field. Try as I might, I couldn’t see any detail in it.

While I looked it over, Eric questioned Ramsey. He asked him if he had seen anything strange on any of his flights.

Ramsey rubbed his chin and stared at the ceiling, as if there was the answer written up there. "What’d you mean?" he finally asked.

"Anything that didn’t seem to belong. Something out of the ordinary."

"No, I didn’t," said Ramsey. "Did notice a tree floating in the ocean. That was a little strange because it had leaves on it. This time of year and that far north, I’d have expected it to be bare."

"Where was that?" asked Eric. He pulled the map close and said, "Point it out to me."

Ramsey touched the map and said, "It was somewhere around in here."

Eric looked at the number in the square and lined it up with the photograph of the area. He set it next to the one where we had spotted the brown smudge. The two went together to form a single large chart.

I could see that Eric was excited. It was the first tangible evidence we had found that wasn’t from old texts and second-hand accounts. Granted, it wasn’t much, but then it was more than either of us had expected. A slash of bare ground and the trunk of a fully foliaged tree. Either could be explained by natural occurrences and Occam’s Razor demanded that the simplest explanation that accounted for all the facts was the best. That ruled out the Inner Earth, but Occam’s Razor was a logical argument and logic sometimes flew in the face of reality.

Eric questioned Ramsey further, asking him if he saw anything else that he found strange. When Ramsey came up came up with nothing, Eric to his credit, asked, "Where did you land your airplane?"

Again Ramsey referred to a map. "There’s a small town here, about a hundred miles from the major search area. I could refuel there and buy supplies. It was inconvenient and reduced the amount of search time, but it was the only town anywhere close where I could find the supplies I needed."

"Yes," said Eric. "You talk to the locals?"

Now Ramsey grinned, looking almost sheepish. "Found a small pub and did some time in it."

"Good. Good. Now in your conversations with the locals, did they mention anything to you that you found odd? Maybe talk about a valley nearby that is uncommonly warm? Or maybe people and animals disappearing? Or maybe strange looking and sounding people around?"

Ramsey took a new cigar from the pocket of his leather jacket, bit the end off it and spit that to the floor. He dug in his pocket for a match, didn’t find one and didn’t light the cigar. Instead he propped a foot up on the edge of a wastebasket, leaned an elbow on his knee and thought. After a few moments, he said, "Now, you have to understand that you didn’t ask me to look around on the ground or to talk to the locals. You didn’t say anything about any of that."

"Yes," said Eric agreeing, "I didn’t want to color your thinking and I didn’t want to divert you from your main mission which was the photography. Now, think back. Did anyone say anything that you thought strange?"

"I’m afraid not," said Ramsey shaking his head. "Our talk didn’t get around to that. Mostly, I told them about flying airplanes and about the Great War." He chuckled and said, "Didn’t have to buy too many drinks either. They kept them flowing as their reward to a war veteran."

"Well," I said, gathering the aerial photographs, maps and other charts into a single, large pile. "I think we have about everything we need."

Eric pulled his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. He opened it and counted out the additional fee. He handed the money over and said, "I’ll need a receipt, of course."

"Of course," agreed Ramsey, chomping on the unlighted cigar. He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and scribbled, "Received $308.92, payment in full for services rendered. He handed over the paper took eight cents from his pocket, grinning.

We thanked him and he told us to come back anytime. He’d be right there and he’d love to work for us again.

Outside the door, almost before he had closed it completely, Eric spun on me and nearly yelled, "What do you think about that? We have something?"

His excitement was contagious. I stopped walking and said, "I think we have something. What do we do first?"

Eric hurried toward our truck and opened the driver’s side. He said, "We get back to town, pack our clothes and throw them into the truck. We then head north."

I looked at my watch. "First thing in the morning would be better. A good night’s sleep, a big breakfast and we’ll be on our way. It’s too late today to make much of a dent in the trip."

I didn’t say that I wanted to talk to Sara one last time. I just couldn’t leave it the way it was now. I hadn’t talked to her since she had walked out of the restaurant several days earlier.

Eric looked as if he was going to protest the delay and then nodded. "You’re right. I’ve waited this long, spent years dreaming of this moment and I suppose one night, either way, won’t matter all that much."

We climbed into the cab of the truck and Eric started it. He slammed it into gear and backed up. He turned onto the muddy road and we rattled our way back toward Kansas City.

"Damn!" he said. "I know we’ve got something now." He glanced at me and added, "It’s the tree you know. Currents are flowing in the opposite direction. There is no way for a tree with leaves to get into the arctic ocean unless it originated farther to the north. Not to the south."

I didn’t say anything to him, but I knew he was right. I could feel something and knew that we were about to embark on a great adventure.

Land to the North - Chapter Three

(Blogger’s Note: This whole book is being uploaded one chapter at a time and will therefore be in reverse order when completed. For those who have not yet read it, the earlier chapters and the Prologue follows this. I leave it that way so that those loyal readers who have been following the story won’t have to scroll down to find the newest chapter... Yes, it might be a pain, but that’s just the way it is.)

Finding a pilot and a plane to rent turned out to be an easy task. After the war ended there were many men who still desired to fly and who had bought surplus aircraft from the American government. Any excuse to get into the sky for hire was good enough for them.

It was a little more difficult to find one who would fly toward the north pole. Aerodromes were few in the northern reaches of Canada and Alaska, but there were some. Our pilot, Randall J. Ramsey, who had shot down German airplanes and strafed German lines for the British was more than happy to take our five hundred dollar fee, plus expenses, our maps and camera, and fly over the frozen wastes and icy seas looking for the island that I sometimes thought of as mythical.

While Ramsey was in the north, having flown out a couple of days after we made our requests, Eric and I roamed downtown Kansas City searching for the equipment we would need for the expedition. Eric had arrived with a list of what he thought we would need and we spent a day in the library reading about the expeditions outfitted during the exploration of Africa. It gave us plenty of ideas.

Once that list was completed, we inventoried everything that Eric had brought. He had thought of rope, great coils of it, backpacks, knives and machetes, a high powered hunting rifle with plenty of ammunition, a Mauser broom handle pistol taken off a dead German officer, cartons of canned food, hand-held electric torches, shovels and axes. He was a little light on medical supplies but we remedied that easily. There was so much that forty men couldn’t have carried it all.

"Doesn’t matter," said Eric, crouching in the rear of the truck. "That’s what this vehicle is for. We drive as far as we can and then establish a base camp. We range out from there."

"Sounds good," I said. "We should add to the food supplies, we’ll need canteens and another weapon or two and ammo for me. Oh, and how about a short wave radio?"

"How would we power it?" asked Eric.

"Batteries. We wouldn’t have to us it all that much. Just in an emergency."　

"Yes," said Eric. "That’s something we should have."

He dropped from the rear of the truck and secured the flap. We hurried into the foyer of the nearest building, listening to the wind howl.

"I think we should delay our departure by two or three weeks," he said. "Let the weather have it’s last good blow."

I thought about that and nodded my agreement. I didn’t tell him that the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. We were heading into practically virgin territory. The map that Eric had given the pilot was marked with large white squares that warned "Topographical data incomplete or unavailable."

That was something that I just didn’t like and I imagined Ramsey liked it even less. When we went in, we’d have a better idea of what was there than Ramsey did, but then he was flying over it and could get out quickly if he had to. It made me think of the great expeditions to the Himalaya Mountains and the guides who led the parties up the slopes of the mountains. It seemed that someone always preceded the explorers.

Sara didn’t take the news with a great deal of aplomb. At first, she sat across from me, in one of the finest restaurants in Kansas City while a small band played quietly in the background. There was the clink of knives and forks against the fine china and muted conversation. There were white cloths on the table, a cut glass vase with a greenhouse flower as the center piece.

After we ordered, Sara waited, a half smile on her face. I knew that she was anticipating something and it wasn’t until later that I realized what it was. She thought I was going to ask her to marry me and I had been so caught up in planning the expedition that I hadn’t even thought about that.

When the wine came and the waiter left, having gone through the ritual of opening the bottle, allowing me to taste and accept the wine and then filling our glasses, I said, "I would like to propose a toast." I lifted my glass and said, with great enthusiasm, "To the North Pole!"

The fire went out of her eyes and her face paled. She set her glass on the table without drinking from it. She looked directly at me and asked, "What are you talking about?"

I felt a sudden panic. I thought that Sara would be supportive of the expedition, though sitting there I began to wonder why I thought that. Maybe I had believed that she would see the scientific contribution we would make. Maybe she would understand that this was something that would transcend our time and put me up there with Magellan and Columbus.

And suddenly I know that she wasn’t thinking in terms of scientific contributions. She was seeing her life collapse around her and she didn’t like it. The little things that she had ignored as I tried to talk to her about them were suddenly more important than she had thought.

Quietly, her voice icy and her words quite sharp and distinct, she said, "The North Pole." It was almost as if she had never heard the words before and that I had spoken a foreign language.

Feebly, I said, "Eric Jansen arrived here a few days ago. I introduced him to you, remember. We’ve been working up a plan to find the entrance to the Inner Earth. An entrance his father had seen."

"To the Inner Earth? The Inner Earth?" she said. "I told you that’s a myth and I thought we had finished with that nonsense weeks ago."

"Jansen has maps and descriptions from his father and grandfather. They’ve both seen it," I said, realizing that I didn’t sound convincing even to me.

"How much money is this going to cost you?" she asked, her voice still low but now dripping with sarcasm.

"Very little..."

"So an old Army buddy shows up and asks for money and you feel obligated to give it to him."

I was now on the defensive and unsure of how I’d gotten there. I didn’t like the feeling but said, "It’s not like that at all. I didn’t give him money and he didn’t ask. I contributed to the expedition. Money to hire a pilot and some for the supplies I’ll need when we push north, but I’ve given no money to Eric."

"Well, that makes it better. The mark doesn’t understand how the con works, but can tell me he’s given away no money."

I was surprised by her suggestion of a con. But I also knew that money wasn’t really the issue here.

She looked down at the table and fingered the silverware next to her plate. "So. When are you leaving and how long will you be gone?"

"Not long at all. A couple of weeks. We’re going to wait for the weather to warm up some more and I’ll be back by fall."

"A couple of weeks. Fall isn’t for months."

"I’ll be here until we leave. It’s not like I’m going off tomorrow."

"And what am I supposed to do all this time?"

"It’s really only a few weeks," I said. "It’s not as if we had anything planned."

"You’ve made that abundantly clear."

I realized what I had said and tried to recover. "I mean we haven’t planned..." But that wasn’t any better.

She stood up suddenly, tossed her napkin onto the center plate. She looked as if she was going to say something to me, but then just turned and fled.

I caught her at the front door where she was demanding a taxi. I touched her shoulder but she jerked away from me, refusing to turn around. The maitre ‘d was behind me, mumbling into a telephone while Sara stood facing the frosted windows, staring at the darkening street.

The one time I hoped the taxi would be slow was the one time that the driver broke the current land speed record. The maitre ‘d approached, glanced at me and said, "You cab is here, madam."

Without looking at me, she said, "Thank you." she slipped along the wall, keeping her back to me until she reached the door. With one hand on the knob, she hesitated. Without looking back, she said, "If you ever get over these childish adventures, you let me know. Until then, I don’t want to see you again."

She opened the door, letting in an icy blast of late winter air. She ran to the cab, climbed in and I saw her face at the rear window momentarily and then she was gone.

I went back into the main room, waved off the waiter and slowly drank what was left of the wine. When I finished the bottle, I staggered to the door and asked that someone find me a cab. Naturally, I had to wait thirty minutes.

Land to the North -- Chapter Two

(Blogger’s Note: This whole book is being uploaded one chapter at a time and will therefore be in reverse order when completed. For those who have not yet read it, the earlier chapters and the Prologue follows this. I leave it that way so that those loyal readers who have been following the story won’t have to scroll down to find the newest chapter... Yes, it might be a pain, but that’s just the way it is.)
　
　
　
I spent weeks trying to find Eric Jansen. I wrote letters to the War Department but they were buried under requests from families of men lost during the Great War. I wrote letters to the newspapers in all the major cities from the east coast to the west. I tried to find Emerson, the man who wrote about Olaf Jansen and then I tried to locate Olaf. It seemed that Eric, along with everyone who knew anything about Olaf and his Smokey God had dropped from the face of the Earth.

Sara was beside herself. She tried to interest me in the theatre or vaudeville and even suggested that we spend some time watching the movies in the local movie house. They were interesting diversions, but couldn’t take my mind off the haunting stories told by Eric.

Then, out of the blue, the situation changed. There was a knock at my door one night and when I opened it, there stood Eric Jansen. He looked tired, pale, haggard. His blond hair was now quite long and he had grown a beard. His blue eyes had taken on a wild look. He had always been a tall man, but now he was thin as well. He didn’t look well, almost insane with the intensity of the fires that burned within him.

For a moment I stood there gaping at him, sure that he was an apparition conjured by my desire to find him.

"May I enter?" he asked, his voice low, quiet and a little raspy.

"Of course," I sputtered, stepping back and gesturing at the interior.

Jansen crossed the threshold, glancing around, and then fell into the only chair in my room. A thread bare, overstuffed chair next to a small table that held an electric lamp and one of the volumes I had been reading.

I shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed. I noticed that Eric’s clothes were old, patched and frayed, but they were clean. Although his boots were scuffed, there was no mud or snow on them. He carried an old satchel that he placed carefully at his feet, as if it held a great but fragile treasure.

"Did you mean it? He asked without preamble.

The question seemed to have nothing to do with the current situation, but I knew what he meant. After his stories on the ship and the books, magazines and the articles I had read, I was prepared for the question.

"Yes," I told him. "Yes. I meant it."

"Good!" he said, nodding. He gestured at the satchel and added, "I have had almost no luck. With Admiral Perry’s reports and the races to various poles, the scientific community laughed at my information. They claimed it was the delusions of a rather unstable mind."

I started to speak but he waved me to silence.

"Oh, they all said to come back if I found evidence. If I had real proof, but I knew they were laughing behind my back."

"Then the expedition is off," I guessed.

"No," he said tiredly. He closed his eyes as if resting, as I gathering strength. "No, I’m going north to look for the entrance. I’m going to make them eat those words."

"Then you have financing."

"I have," he told me, "a thousand dollars and no scientific backing. I have a truck, a camera, and a pistol. That is all that I have."

The disappointment I felt was overwhelming. I stood and moved to my window. Outside, on the street below me, I saw a few people. A horse drawn carriage rocked by. I turned and asked, "Then why are you here?"

"We don’t need much to get the expedition going. My thousand and my truck might be enough, but I can’t do it alone. There is too much, and when I succeed, I’m going to be in the same boat I’m in now. No one is going to believe one man."

"Two men might not be believed either."

"You are correct, of course," he said. "But two men, with different backgrounds who have documented their trip with photographs and artifacts, will have a better chance of convincing our learned friends. We’ll be able to gather enough raw data, I think, to convince them to finance a real expedition."

I turned from him and wandered around my room. I touched the low bookcase holding the volumes that I had yet to read. Books on a variety of subjects ranging from astronomy and anthropology to zoology. I had the layman’s interest in all the sciences and followed the latest discoveries. I knew that astronomers were searching for a mysterious ninth planet in our Solar System, that a few scientists were suggesting what was to be had on an atomic level, and that a theory suggesting that life evolved from lower orders into the higher were all the rage. But I wasn’t a scientist. I was a dabbler in science with no formal training. I said as much to Eric.

"Neither am I," he said. "But much of science has been explored by men such as ourselves. Men with vision. Men with a little information, who have the courage to follow their theories. You claimed to be such a man."

His statement was flattering. Me, a man of vision with the courage to follow that vision.

"If we have no backing," I said, "then how do you propose that we proceed?"

He grinned, but didn’t question my use of "we." Instead, he said, "It’s simple enough. I have mapped a route for us. Much of it is easy. We use the truck to drive north, into Canada, winding our way to the upper reaches of the continent. A small boat to take us to the icecap, and then we hike toward the opening that my father saw there."

"Your father said that he sailed into the opening."

"Ah," said Eric smiling, "you have been doing research yourself."

"Some," I said noncommittal.

"No matter," said Eric. "My father maintained there were land entrances as well. Caves that lead down and that one of them is in the arctic."

"It is my understanding," I said, "that the arctic icecap is just that, ice. There is no land under it. That it floats on the ocean."

"A theory," said Eric. "Who’s to say what lies under those tons of ice? I suggest that there is a volcanic island under a portion of the ice. A dead volcano with a shaft that will take us into the land that my father first explored."

That made sense, I had to admit. I nodded then and asked, "Do you have any idea where your island is?"

"A very good idea." He leaned forward, opened his satchel and pulled out a map. He opened it slowly, carefully, as if it was quite brittle, glanced at the table next to him and then stood but walked toward my bed. As he spread the map on the bed, he said, "My father gave me a few clues, and then researching the available literature, I picked up others. I believe that we can reach one of the caves. I have marked the search area on the map."

He had circled an area that was quite large. Parts of Alaska, Canada and the arctic ice cap were within the boundaries. It was literally hundreds of square miles.

"This is the best place," he said. "I think there may be an entrance in the mountains of Peru or Equador, but it would be disguised, hidden in the jungles and guarded by the Indians. If we managed to get close, I think the Indians would attack and prevent us from entering any of the caves."

"Just a very general idea," he responded. "But the jungle and the Indians make it a very undesirable portal."

"I’m not that keen on the arctic one," I said. "Especially in the winter."

"But it’s late February now. By the time we could get the expedition ready and travel north, it would be May. The best time of an arctic expedition to begin. We’ll have the whole summer in front of us."

I had to admit that it seemed that Eric had thought his way through the whole thing. He had arrived with his truck, his map, a little money, and his itinerary. I was reluctant to join him, only because I had become used to the luxuries of Kansas City. I liked the warmth of the steam heat, the convenience of the electricity, and the ease of restaurant meals.

"We’d want to be back by autumn," he said. "If we haven’t found anything by then, the weather would turn against us."

I sat on the edge of the bed and studied the map. As I looked at it, I realized that I had decided to go. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that I had made the decision, but I knew that there was no longer a question about it. I was going to go. I might have decided at the moment I opened the door and saw who it was, or it might have been when he pulled out the map. All I knew now was that I was in. I was going.

"An aerial search would help us eliminate a great deal of barren territory and open ocean."

"I thought of that, but I can’t afford to buy an airplane. Besides, I don’t know how to fly one."

"Neither can I, but I would imagine that we could find someone with both a plane and the experience who would help us with the search."

"We don’t have unlimited funds and there is a great deal of equipment and supplies that we still need."

The potential of the find was so great that a small investment could pay gigantic dividends. If nothing else, the story of the expedition would be worth something. An article, with suitable pictures for a scientific journal, the Saturday Evening Post or National Geographics certainly wasn’t impossible.

Eric looked at me and asked, quietly, "Then you’ll go?"

"Of course," I said. "Was there ever any doubt?"