On the Hunt

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, the children’s mother screamed and stamped her foot. Captain Charette, performing sensitive adjustments on her dirigible’s engine, looked up, hefting a spanner.

“Trouble?”

Herr von Hedwig answered her.

“Anger.”

“Frustration,” his wife corrected him. “The trail was so clear for miles and miles and now we’ve lost them!”

They were standing miles below the surface of the earth in a volcanic tube, an almost perfectly round tunnel shaped by the action of ancient lava. They were following the trail left by Gerhardt as the children negotiated the tunnels between their fall through the Great Himalayas to their current, as-yet-unknown location. The last mark had been a sketchy painted arrow. Here the tunnel split into three paths, and there was no mark anywhere.

“They must have run out of paint,” Herr von Hedwig said. He was searching the walls and ceilings for scrape marks, but found none. “I’m afraid Claire was piloting. She’s far too careful to scrape her airship. If Adolphus had been flying we might have a sign.”

“Oh no, do you think anything has happened to him!”

“No, my love, no. I’m sure they’re all fine. Most likely, Gerhardt and the twins sat on him to keep him from flying. After that last incident…”

“I’m sure you’re right. I’ll check down this way.” Hera von Hedwig entered the far right fork. This tunnel smelled of mildew, and had a wide vein of flaking shale comprising the left wall. The damp air of the tunnel wore away at the fissile shale, leaving chunks and crumbles underfoot. Madame stepped on a recent flake, breaking it into crumbles, unaware that Gerhardt’s chalk arrow had been scrawled upon it. She searched nearly a mile of the tunnel, but found no sign.

When she returned, her husband had finished his search. Captain Charette had much better luck adjusting her racing dirigible’s engine than the discouraged parents had in searching.

“Well,” she said, “which way to go when we don’t know the way?”

“The right tunnel is damp and most unpleasant,” Madame said, “I think they would have avoided that way. What do you think, darling?”

“The left fork appears to go down. Presuming that they dumped everything out of the ship back when it first evened out in order to gain lift, I think they would be looking for a way up. I think we should try the middle.”

Agreed, they boarded the sleek red racer and chased down the middle tunnel, away from the path their children had found.