Lemuria by Burt Clinchandhill (most popular novels of all time .txt) 📗

rising a few inches before it slammed down again with a loud bang, then a few inches more up... and then down again.

He looked around him where tables, chairs, and workbenches were heavily shaking under the violent trembles. Is it an earthquake? As far as he knew, the region never had any.

The drill pipe shot some ten feet up in the air and broke the steel construction at the top, and pieces of metal started to fly around. Morozov looked around for a place to take cover but didn’t find any. Everything in the room was now moving. He decided to run for the door some fifty feet away, but only a few feet underway, a gas canister rolled by and ended his endeavor. He landed on the shaking floor.

Facing the remaining steel drill construction, which now buckled under the violence, he watched the drill pipe fire up further from the hole as a constant stream of pieces of pipe landed left, right, in front, and behind him. He raised his hands over his head, knowing that should a piece of pipe decide to land on his head, he would be dead for sure. Each piece of drill pipe, thirty-two feet long, weighed about eight hundred pounds.

It rained pipes for a little over a minute. Then the sound of metal clinking suddenly stopped, and a chilling sound, as if a thousand voices cried out in agony, took over. Morozov removed his hands from his ears as the last pipes landed on the floor, and the sound of something rising from the drill hole became louder and louder. Then, with a final violent rumble, a large steel object surrounded by smaller pieces of metal launched from the drill hole and high into the air. He recognized it as the drill head. It bounced off the steel roof construction and landed some ten feet in front of him, on the concrete floor, with a loud bang. In a few seconds, all the pieces had landed, and the room enveloped in complete silence.

Morozov got up from the floor and looked around at the devastation surrounding him. Furniture and tools lay strewn about, covered in a layer of grey dust and mud, pipes, and other pieces of metal. He checked out his body and smiled. He was okay.

How is this possible? I don’t have a scratch.

He carefully stepped over the debris and walked over to the hole, which now lay bare in the center of the building. He gazed into the completely silent hole. Nothing. He looked around and, finding his flashlight a few feet away from him, grabbed it and pointed it at the gap. Even without the drill pipe in it, he couldn’t see past a few feet down.

What the hell just happened here?

He looked around again, took a few steps back, and stopped next to the larger piece of distorted metal that had once been the drill head. Nothing stood out at first, but.... The drill head was made of three independent rotating bits that crushed everything that got in its way. One of the bits had completely broken off, and probably lay spread around the room in pieces. Morozov’s attention focused on the two remaining bits, and something that seemed to be stuck between them—something glistening.

He bent over and carefully, briefly touched the metal to see if it was warm. It was lukewarm, so he grabbed the piece between the bits and tried to pull it out. It wouldn’t budge. He wiped off some dirt to see what it was. It looked like a thin sheet of shiny, maybe golden metal. With one foot on the drill, he pulled the five-inch-long and three-inch-wide sheet of metal as hard as he could. Suddenly, the two bits rolled an inch and the sheet came loose, dropping Morozov on his back onto the floor. Upon rising, he took a closer look at the sheet and rubbed off more dirt.

Could it be gold?

“What the hell happened here?” a voice sounded as the crew ran into the building, looking at the ravage. “The entire mess hall was shaking.”

“Are you okay?” another crewmember asked as he neared Morozov.

Morozov looked at the nearing man, and quickly put the sheet of metal inside his jacket. “Um, yes, I think I am.”

“What did you do?” another oilskin suit asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” Morozov said, cleaning the dry dirt from his jacket. “One moment, I was smoking a cigarette, and the next, the whole installation started shaking and hissing, and pipes were blown all over the room. I’m lucky I wasn’t hit by anything.”

A crew member walked up to the drill hole, sat down on his knees, bent over, and sniffed the spot. “We must have hit and ruptured a gas pocket somewhere on the way up,” he said as he came up again.

“Well, on the bright side,” one of the men said, “nobody got hurt. And we don’t have to take out the drill pipe anymore. But on a less positive note, we’ve got an awful lot of cleaning to do.”

The men laughed out loud.

Morozov took a quick look through the opening in his jacket at the shiny piece of metal, and wondered if his retirement cloud might still have a golden lining.

—-End of Special Sneak Preview—-

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks and love to my wife Nathalie for her support and re-reading the Lemuria manuscript.

Thank you, Rose, for re-re-reading the book and keeping me consistent.

Erica, I’m glad you know where the commas go.

Special thanks to all those involved who contributed. You know who you are.

And another special thanks to Dan Brown, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, and Tom Clancy for the pleasure they gave me reading their work and giving me the inspiration to write.

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About the Author

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Dutch renowned author, Clinchandhill, had long-discovered his passion for writing at