Stuck!

Every time the tunnel branched the children stopped the ship and got out to examine their choices. They looked, listened, and smelled, straining for a hint of the Earth’s surface. For the most part, they just picked a random way. Whenever they made a choice, Gerhardt marked the tunnel.

He was out of marshmallows, but now that they could disembark he marked the wall with paint or chalk or whatever else the little ship could spare, signing GvH, so his parents knew where to find them, and so their path of discovery was marked for posterity.

“Perhaps we shall go down again,” Gerhardt said, “and find the center of the earth like Professor Lidenbrok.”

They were not going down, but up, ever so slightly, for the rest of the night and into the third day, when the smooth walls of their volcanic tunnel opened into a natural cave. The cave branched off their tunnel to left and right, but they could not get out and examine the cave to decide which way to go. The floor of the cave was covered with water!

“It’s an underground river!” Adolphus was making a map of the tunnels they traveled and the tunnels they passed, using the ship’s compass and altimeter to help him. “I shall call it Hedwig Fluss.”

They decided to go downstream. The twins used the spotlight to search for blind cave fish to study. Gerhardt fashioned a fishing line to search for blind cave fish to eat. They were going to fast to catch anything, really, but the change of scenery brightened everyone’s mood considerably.

The cheerful air of exploratory expectation lasted seven hours. Gerhardt and the twins were trying to make a net to drag under the ship to catch their fish, Adolphus was decorating his map, and Bettina was helping Claire steer. Adolphus and the twins should have been sleeping in preparation for their steering shift, but everyone was too excited to think about that.

Then trouble began (again). Claire noticed drag on the ship’s controls. With the same amount of thrust, they weren’t going as fast. She let up, releasing the engine controls and listening. She heard nothing unusual. The engines hummed, the river rushed beneath them, Gerhardt and the girls bickered companionably about net making.

Claire gently engaged the aft engine pods. They moved forward, but again she felt the drag, and this time she heard a scraping sound.

“We’re stuck!” She released the engine controls again, and leaned far over the instrument panel, trying to see all around the ship.

“The cave is getting narrower,” she said. “Our balloons are scraping the ceiling.”

Claire and Adolphus lifted Gerhardt to the gondola ceiling, where an access panel lead to the balloon net. He decided that it was possible to bring the net closer to the ship, but he would have to crawl all over the rounded top of the gondola.

“Too dangerous,” Claire said.

“Nonsense! Faintheart’s not afraid, are you?” Annabelle called up though the hatch.

There was a short silence.

“It is a bit slippery up here.”

Mirabelle sighed. “Come down. We’ll tie you to a line.”

.

.

This story began with On Grandmothers. The previous episode is Out of Cookies and the next is Airships Float?

Photo credit Michael Spencer.