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Page 349
gesture. Gregory was just a few feet beyond him, transfixed.
I gingerly lowered myself down off of a small ledge until I was standing next to the big man. If anyone had bothered to ask me, I would have unashamedly informed them that old E.G. had just discovered a whole new dimension to his fearsclaustrophobia. It was every bit as disturbing and irrational as my long harbored and openly acknowledged fears of heights and sharks.
The reason we were pausing was obvious. The cave ahead abruptly forked off in two directions. The one to the right took a sharp right turn some 20 feet from where we stood. The ceiling was lower, and it narrowed down to the extent that I wasn't at all certain it was big enough to accommodate either Jake or me.
To my way of thinking, the passageway to the left looked like it had far more potential.
We started disconnecting the life line and slipped it back through the D rings until Madden and I could operate independently from Gregory and Kelto. While we were going through that little exercise, I tried to get a better understanding of my surroundings. At the moment, we were in a chamber where two entirely separate forces of nature had been at work. We had the nearly smooth surface of basaltic material which indicated

 
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