“Wait,” Doc said, “I thought I saw something.”
“Moving?” Krysty brought her blaster forward.
“No. A vehicle possibly.”
Krysty moved the torch again. The flames jumped and remained burning bright yellow in the steady supply of oxygen. The chamber was almost twenty feet across and thirty feet deep. Flaming bits of the torch dropped the intervening distance, and some of them landed on a metal surface halfway buried in the mountainside.
Canted on its side, the blue-and-white fuselage lay crusted over by boulders and dirt that had worked its way from the top of the mountain to the hidden chamber under the fissure. The rear propeller was missing, as was much of the tail section, and the main rotor held one bent blade stretching up. The others were buried somewhere under it. The Plexiglas bubble was almost covered, as well, but enough of it showed that the multiple fractures threading through it were apparent.
The facet of the craft that most interested Krysty was the word Rescue lettered on the door.
She looked around the fissure opening and thought she might be able to make the climb. “I’m going in,” she told Doc.
The old man looked at her. “I don’t wish to offend you, my dear Krysty, but the idea of you in that cave harbors no good thoughts in this weary old head despite the present temperature, which has undoubtedly slowed the flow of blood through my brain.”
She handed him the torch and shrugged out of her backpack. “Good thoughts or not, that was evidently some kind of rescue airwag. There could be medicines and dressings inside that we can use.”
“Then I beg of you, let me go there in your stead.”
She gestured with the torch, pointing down as far as she could. The flames wrapped around her fingers for just an instant but not long enough to burn. “That’s pretty steep. Do you think you could make it any better than me?”
“I would surely give it the effort,” Doc replied.
“Doc,” Krysty said, “I’m in better shape than you for this sort of thing. If anything happens down there, I’ll need you up here.”
The old man covered her hand with his and looked at her solemnly. “As you wish. I am yours but to command.”
Krysty clambered into the fissure, her nasal passages and throat burning as she fought the gag reflex against the sulfur smell. Once inside, she fashioned a mask over her nose and mouth from a handkerchief, then took the torch from Doc and started down.
The grade tilted steeply. She took a tacking course, not heading straight for the helicopter, but rather making for the other side of the flattest section of stone she could find a few inches below her initial position. She made two more angled passes before she got close enough to the aircraft to touch it, scooting on her butt part of the way so she wouldn’t start sliding.
In the center of the chamber, the torch pretty well illuminated her surroundings. Craggy walls seemed to pulse in on her with jagged teeth as the torchlight ebbed and flowed, and a dark crack opened up beneath the helicopter.
Resting her hand on the craft gingerly, Krysty peered into the crack under the helicopter. The blackness extended a long way. She shoved the torch farther into it but still couldn’t see the bottom.
Shifting a rock with the toe of her boot, she nudged it over the edge. The rock hit the sides of the crack as it passed, making loud whanging noises as it dropped farther away. She finally gave up on it when she realized her breathing had gotten louder than the impacts.
“Are you all right?” Doc called down.
“Just eyeballing things before I go any farther,” she replied. Still moving slowly, she went to the front of the helicopter and peered inside.
A skeleton that had gone gray white in death sat strapped into the pilot’s seat, dressed in a red short-sleeved shirt and gray slacks. The material hung in shreds, worried at by insects and beasts, faded and ravaged by time. Layers of dust and dirt caked the dead man and the inside of the helicopter.