Chapter 35 Chapter Thirty-Five Into the Deep Well

They have been walking the maze of city streets for 20 minutes.The surrounding scenery is confusing, but for the guide device, they would have lost their way.There is no complete plan for how to conduct search activities.So, they just walk blindly through these quirky, geometric streets. In three or four minutes, the search team spoke with Admiral Hellman by radio to find a location with a clear signal. After going deep into the city, Hellman's voice in the earphone gradually became weak and indistinct. "At this rate," Nicole said again, "our search will never end. Dr. Brown, why can't we search separately? Your team, Frances and I..."

"Please pay attention, please pay attention." When David Brown walked to the open area between the two buildings, Hellman's voice became clear, "Have you received the message just now?" "I'm afraid not, Otter," replied Dr. Brown. "Can you repeat that?" "Yamanaka Hiroshi, Walkerfield, and Elena have searched one-third of the cylindrical sea ice, and found no trace of Takashi. It is estimated that he cannot go further north unless he goes to a certain city. But That way, we should be able to see where he left behind. So, you're probably heading in the right direction."

"Also, there is another big news. Twenty minutes ago, the big crab we caught started to move. It wanted to escape, but its tools couldn't do anything to the cage. Taburi was very excited and was working on it. A bigger, stronger cage, put the original cage on another layer, and it will be safe. I have sent Hiroshi Yamanaka to fly back to the Beta camp to help Taburi, and he will be there soon... Wait... Walkerfield is calling urgently... I'll switch the channel to him." In the city of "New York," Walkerfield's English accent is recognizable, though his voice is barely audible through the headphones. "Spider-bots!" he yelled in reply to Heilman. "Do you remember the spider-creatures that Laura Ernst dissected? By the way, we found six of them on the cliffs on the southern shore of the Sea of ​​Columns, and they had crossed Our makeshift camp. Also, something has apparently repaired the two malfunctioning crab creatures we saw heading towards the South Pole..."

"Camera!" Frances yelled into the microphone. "Did you take a video?" "What? I'm sorry, I can't hear you clearly." "Frances wants to know if you have any cameras?" Admiral Hellman relayed. "Of course, my dear," said Walkerfield, "the automatic camera on the front of the helicopter and the hand-held camera you gave us this morning are working non-stop, without interruption. This spider is very strange, I have never seen anything Animals can run so fast... Besides, have you found any traces of our Japanese professor?" "Not yet," David Brown said aloud in "New York."

Admiral Hellman repeated what Brown said to Walkerfield and Elena who were sitting in the helicopter, and told the situation here.They will go back to Camp Beta to refuel, Walkerfield said. Heilman said, "How are you, David? Given the whole situation, do you think you should go back to Camp Beta, given that you still have to keep in touch with the self-righteous fellows on Earth? Sabbatini and De Jardin can continue to search for Takashi. If necessary, we can replace you with someone else, and the helicopter can bring you back by the way." "I don't know, Otter. I haven't..." But Frances flipped the switch on Brown's intercom, cutting them off.He glanced at her exasperatedly, then softened again.

"We have to discuss it," she said decisively, "wait a few minutes and call him back." Nicole was taken aback when they heard their conversation. Obviously, neither of them cared about Dr. Gao An's fate at all.Frances insisted that she must return to Camp Beta immediately and resume the interrupted camera plan; Dr. Brown looked worried because he had now deviated from the original "established" plan of action. Both said their reasons for going back were stronger and more important.What if the two left 'New York' together?No, in that case, Nicole will be left here alone.Maybe she should go back with them, and after a few hours, when the matter is settled, reorganize the search for Dr. Gao An...

Nicole was enraged, and suddenly she yelled at them, "Absolutely not! I've never seen such a presumptuous..." She couldn't find a better word, "One of our colleagues has disappeared, Needing our help, he may be hurt, maybe even dying, and you guys are here babbling about your own selfish ideas. It's disgusting." She paused to catch her breath. "Let me tell you," continued Nicole, "I'm not going back to Camp Beta right now. If you give orders, I won't carry them out. I'm going to stay here until the search is over. At least that's what I'm going to do first." Mission accomplished. I know that one's life is far more important than all the camera and media clutter."

David, Brown blinked like someone had slapped him. Frances smiled darkly and said, "Okay, okay, so this hidden life sciences officer knows more than we think." She glanced at David, then turned her back to him. Nicole said, "You wouldn't mind waiting a moment, we have something to talk about in private." Frances and Dr. Brown walked to a skyscraper 20 meters away and talked redly. Nicole turned and faced the other way.She was mad at herself for being out of control, especially for divulging what she knew about their contract with Schmidt-Hagenrist. "They're sure to guess that Gallos told it," she thought. "Anyway, he's still a good friend of mine."

Frances stepped up to Nicole while David Brown was on the phone with Admiral Hellman. "David is in contact with Hellman to get the helicopter to pick him up. He's sure to find his way back. I'll be here with you in the search for Highshore. Anyway, I'll be able to film what's going on in 'New York'." Listening to Frances's voice, as if nothing had happened, Nicole could not see the true thoughts in her heart. "Besides," Frances added, "I promised David that we will finish our search and return to camp within four hours." During the first hour of the search, the two women barely spoke, ignoring each other.Frances let Nicole choose her own course of search.

Every 15 minutes, they stopped to radio and contact Beta camp once, and to determine the location. "You are now 2,000 meters south of the snowmobile and 4,000 meters north of the snowmobile." When they stopped for lunch, Walkerfield told them that his task now was to keep in touch with them. "You are now on the east side of the central square." They walked towards the central square first, because Nicole felt that Takashi must have come here.They found an open circular square of low buildings, but there was no sign of him.Nicole and Frances then went to the other two squares and searched carefully the central areas of the two circles.They found nothing.

Nicole had to admit that she was out of ideas now as to what to do. "It's an astonishing place," Frances said, as they rested on a one-meter-high metal square box. "It's hard for my camera to show the real situation of these scenes. Everything is so quiet. , so tall, so...extraordinary." "There are some buildings here, without your camera, it is hard to describe. For example, these polyhedrons, every district has them, and the largest ones are always built around the square. I have been thinking, do they symbolize something? Why are they built here?" Tensions ease between the two women, who share what they saw and felt on their trek. Frances was particularly fascinated by the gigantic grid structure seen in the city center connecting two skyscrapers. "What do you think those grids are for?" She asked lazily, "there must be more than two thousand grids, more than fifty meters high?" "It's futile to guess." Nicole glanced at his companion, "Let's keep looking." "Wait a little longer." Frances was not in a hurry, "There is still something between us." Nicole stared at her strangely. "I think we can all take off our masks now and be honest with each other," Frances said in her falsely friendly voice. "If you doubt what medicine I gave General Posov the day he died, you Why don't you just ask me straight up?" Nicole looked him in the eye for a moment, then asked, "So what did you do?" "Do you think I did it?" asked Frances slyly. "If I did, why did I do it?" "You're still playing your game." After a pause, Nicole added, "You're not going to admit anything. You just want to know how much I know. But I don't need to confess. Science and technology have their own conclusions, The truth will come out to the world." "I doubt it very much." Frances jumped out of the box. "Someone wants to find out the truth, but the truth is always hidden." She smiled coldly. "Now, let's go to the professor!" On the west side of the square, the two women meet an even more glamorous spectacle.From a distance it looks like a very large barn.The black spire is 40 meters high from the ground and about 100 meters long.This "barn" has two fascinating features. First, both ends are open; second, although the inside cannot be seen from the outside, it is transparent from the inside.Both Frances and Nicole confirmed that this was not an optical illusion, and those inside could indeed see outside from all directions, except of course downwards.Images reflected from neighboring tall buildings are precisely aligned so that all nearby streets can be seen from this "barn". "Simply fantastic!" Frances raved as she photographed Nicole standing on the other side of the wall. "Dr. Takagishi once told me," Nicole said, stepping around the corner, "that it would be unbelievable that the city of 'New York' hadn't been carefully designed for a purpose. This is Rama Is it the center of the city? Maybe it is. But alas, if it were not for some reason, no one would spend time here." "You seem like a devout follower of him," Frances sneered. Nicole stared silently at her Italian female colleague and thought, "Now she's prodding me again. She never really cared what I thought, and maybe she didn't care about anybody." "Hey, look here," said Frances after a moment's silence.She took a few steps into the "barn" and pointed to the ground.Nicole walked over and stood beside her. On the ground in front of Frances, there is a deep rectangular well, about 5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide, quite deep, maybe about 8 meters.The bottom of the well is dark, and the walls of the well face down vertically, without any unevenness. "There's another bite on that side. Look, there's another bite on the other side." There are nine deep wells, each identical in appearance, scattered across the southern half of the "barn".On the northern half, nine small balls are precisely arranged on the ground. Nicole found that some miraculous association was forming in his mind.These objects gave her a kind of guidance, and that was the meaning and purpose of all these things.She began to feel flustered and overwhelmed. They were almost through the entire "barn" when a faint emergency call rang on the intercom. "They must have found Dr. Takagishi," Nicole yelled, rushing out from the other side of the "barn". Once out of the "barn", the emergency call signal almost shattered her eardrums. "Okay, okay," she responded hastily, "we can hear you. What's going on?" "We've been calling you for over two minutes," she heard Richard say. "Where the hell are you? I had to use the emergency signal because it was louder." "We're in a wonderful 'barn,'" Frances replied behind Nicole. "It's a surreal world, mirrors pointing in one direction, and incredible reflections..." "That's great!" interrupted Richard, "but we don't have time to talk, ladies please take the shortest road to the sea of ​​columns immediately, the helicopter will be there in ten minutes to bring you back. If There's a place to land in 'New York' and we'll fly right into town to pick you up." "Why?" asked Nicole, "what sudden event happened, in such a hurry?" "Can you see the South Pole from you?" "I can't see it, there are too many tall buildings here." "Some strange things happened around the 'little horns'. From the tips of the six 'little horns', huge arcs of light spewed out, one arc connected to the other, and the six 'little horns' were strung together. It was very spectacular. Thrilling. We all thought something out of the ordinary was going to happen." Richard hesitated, "You should leave 'New York' immediately." "Okay!" Nicole replied, "we'll be on our way." She turned off the intercom and turned to Frances. "Did you hear that when we ran out of the 'barn' just now, the sound of the emergency signal suddenly became very loud?" Nicole thought for a while, and then said, "The materials of the walls and roof of this building must reflect Radio signal." She suddenly came to her senses, "This is the answer to Gao An's accident... He must have entered this 'barn' just like us." Frances did not follow Nicole's train of thought. "Really? So what's the matter?" She said indifferently after taking the last panorama of the "barn", "It doesn't matter now, we have to meet the helicopter immediately." "Perhaps he's in one of the wells down there," said Nicole, still agitated. "It must be, it must be! He's surveying in the dark, and he must have fallen in. . . . Wait," she said to Frances, "Just a little while." Nicole rushed into the "barn" resolutely, came to the edge of a deep well, bent down and supported the edge of the well with his hands, turned on the lights, and shone toward the bottom of the well. There's something there! She waited a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the light.It seems to be a bunch of things.She moved quickly to the next well. "Dr. Takagishi!" she yelled. "Are you here? Takagishi-kun!" she yelled in Japanese. "Come on!" Frances yelled at the end of the "barn." "Let's go, Richard sounds like he's in a hurry." At the mouth of the fourth well, although there was a light, Nicole could not see clearly what was going on below.There must be something there.But what exactly?She lay down on her back, constantly changing the angle of observation, trying to see if the pile of black shadows were her friends. Rama's lights began to flicker on and off.Inside "The Barn," the visual experience becomes eerie and dizzying.Nicole glanced back to see what had happened, but she lost her balance and slid most of her body into the mouth of the well. "Frances!" she yelled, supporting the opposite wall with her hands, "Frances, help me!" Nicole yelled again. Nicole waited a minute, and when no one came, she concluded that Frances had left.Her arms soon became sore, and only her legs were still on the ground outside the mouth of the well; her head was on the side and 8 cm below the mouth of the well, and the rest of her body hung in the air, the only thing that kept her from falling. The fulcrum is her hand tightly propped on the opposite wall. The light continued to flicker on and off, but the intervals between flickers became shorter and shorter.Nicole looked up to see if he could grasp the mouth of the well with his other hand.There is no way.Her head is too low.She persisted for a while longer.At this moment, despair began to creep into her heart, and her arms began to tremble.Finally, Nicole made a sudden effort to rise up, and clasped the edge of the well with his hands.She almost made it.But at that moment she fell again, her feet slipped, her head slammed against the side of the well, and Nicole fell to the bottom, unconscious.