Free Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck

warm; volcanic activity, you think?”
    Silex nodded. “Hmm, it’s got to be twenty degrees warmer down here than up there—above freezing easily. It does all make sense, though. The Antarctic is still quite geologically active. We surface dwellers just don’t know about it as most of it happens under the ice. In fact, Mt. Erebus is erupting constantly.”
    “You’re probably right. That would account for the ice cap being so thin here, allowing the plane to break through, and also why this cave system isn’t totally iced up.” Aimee drew in a breath and wrinkled her nose. “Do you smell that? Strange—sharp and acrid, a bit like ammonia.”
    Silex moved in closer to her. “Sub-surface oils can contain all sorts of natural contaminants—paraffins, cycloparaffins, aromatic hydrocarbons. Hell, I’ve smelt deep pumped oil that smelled of roses one moment and rotten eggs the next. Every time it’s different,” Silex tried to look rakish, but ended up just leering. “I love being out in the field.”
    Aimee didn’t like the way he was peering into her face as he spoke. “Aimee, I know you miss Tom and I know you don’t want my sympathy, but we’ll find out what happened to him. I really hope we can work together and learn from each other. I can help you a lot with your career. In fact, I think you should head up your own company; you know you’re good enough. It would be my pleasure tohelp in any way I can.” His head was bobbing up and down slightly, like a heron scanning for tadpoles. He reached out to grasp her upper arm. Aimee smoothly intercepted it with her own hand and turned it into a friendly handshake.
    “That’s very kind of you, Dr. Silex, thank you.” Maybe she had been overly sensitive. Maybe he just has a very different personality to what I’m used to, she thought. He’s probably more worried about me than anything else. She released his hand, gave him a small nod and a smile.
    “OK, you just let me know if I can help. Well, we’ve got work to do. And please, call me Adrian!” With that he turned and gave a friendly wave over his shoulder and headed briskly towards the main group.
    Monica surveyed the giant hollow carefully. From her experience, caves could be anything from wet and slimy, to dry and dusty, and for the most part unless they were newly formed via earth movement, they were geologically very old. This cave bothered her—it was strange. It had to be millions of years old, but there appeared to be areas that looked recently gouged—although recent in geological terms could mean tens of thousands of years. The ceiling was what she expected, but the ground and walls of the cave looked like something had been dragged along them, abrading every protuberance smooth. Glacier pipes could do that—the heavy, dense ice moving underground and wearing away the rock over a period of thousands of years, but usually they needed more of a slope—strange.
    The light from above coupled with their eyes now adjusting to the semi-darkness allowed the farther walls to be seen in more detail. To everyone else it just looked like more broken cave debris, but to Matt Kerns it was a magical impossibility.
    “Can’t be, can it be? Not Mayan, no, no older, much,much older.” He scurried off from the group with Monica in pursuit, trying to slow him down.
    Alex noticed the small commotion and called to Takeda, pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at Matt’s disappearing back. Takeda nodded and followed them. Once Matt was in among the fallen debris he stood for a few seconds, waving his torch back and forth so he could take it all in. Though heavily worn, two colossal stone heads, lips full, the noses wide and the faces flat and broad could be made out from the broken rocks. Both were about nine feet in height and looked to weigh close to twenty tons each. There also seemed to be a destroyed dwelling which was actually carved into the wall—not built onto it, but hewn from the very cave wall