Wormholes Read Online Free PDF

thought, about the size of a shoebox and wedged hard in the wall. She continued to chop the hard earth, reaching around the rock with her fingers to pry it out. She yanked hard at the same time that she realized her fingers were wet.
    “ DAMN! ” she yelled. The rock had plugged a hole into an underground stream bed! The slippery rock fell heavily into her lap, and she was inundated by a gush of cold muddy water. She kicked back with her feet, but the downsloping bottom of the tunnel had immediately become a water slide and she skittered down into the flow. She tried to dig in her heels, but the mud wasn’t deep enough and she began to slip. She fell onto her back, the cold muddy water gushing into her nose and mouth. She slid farther downward, the wet suffocating muck collapsing in on her. The rope remained slack as she slid. The men were still feeding rope as she went. They thought she was still okay. The meaning of the distant rush of water hadn’t registered with them yet. She shouted, but the sound was a stifled wet gurgle in the rushing mud and water, which was filling the little tunnel.
    She slid downward, coughing and gasping for air, faster and faster, realizing that the camera was now out of range of the iPad. She had to do something! She could let go of the rock, but using her arms wouldn’t help. They weren’t strong enough. She spread her legs and tried to jam them against the tunnel sides. But they continued to slither along. The tunnel was so slick! She couldn’t get a breath in the thickening, foaming mud. It rose over her head. She was drowning. She was gathering speed. Still the rope trailed slackly. Soon she would be buried. They could never pull her out.
    The toe of her left boot caught on a rock wedged in the tunnel wall and she skewed sideways and jammed herself in the tunnel, the mud and water rushing over her, oozing over her. She held herself there with all the muscle she could muster, tightened her stomach muscles and with a deep grunt forced her body upward. If only there was air above. She felt her face break the surface. She spat the mud from her mouth and shouted. It was not articulate, just a hoarse bellow, but she hoped it conveyed her danger.
    The rope jerked taut! She felt herself being hauled against the slimy pitch-black current upstream. The cold sludge flowed and gurgled around her and she struggled to breathe and hold tight onto the rock and reach up to grasp the helmet camera.
    Abruptly she was pulled beyond where the stream had broken through. She allowed herself to be dragged over the damp earth and into the floodlights.
    “Okay, okay,” she waved weakly, staggering to her feet, still clutching her cargo, covered with mud. She spat again and tried to clear her eyes with the back of her wrist. She felt strong hands under her shoulders bearing her toward the basket. She shivered as the cold air of the cavern washed over her wet body.
    “You alright?” It was Lonnie.
    She nodded and coughed hoarsely, bringing up an earthen taste.
    “Let’s get her out of here,” he said to the men. They crawled into the basket and Lonnie instructed the crane operator over the radio. The basket jerked upward swinging back and forth across the floor of the cave. After switching off the camera and stowing the rock, Dacey untied herself and leaned panting and coughing on the rail, watching the vast, dark chamber fall away beneath her. She shook her head. She still couldn’t figure the damned thing out.
    The crowd standing at a safe distance around the crater saw the disconcerting sight of the basket rising into the sunlight carrying three relatively clean rescue workers and one thoroughly mud-covered, bedraggled woman geologist. The crane’s gears ground slightly as it swung the basket clear of the hole and set it down on what was once a quiet suburban lawn. Dacey waved away any help, as well as requests for television interviews, crawling laboriously out of the basket, still clutching almost