Slowly, his hands tight around the rope through his jacket, Tom slipped down the deep shaft. He kept his eyes averted from the black hole beneath him, looking instead at the sides of the shaft. Once, when he thought he had gone about seven hundred feet, he saw that he was passing through a stratum of thick clay and could see the preserved bones of long-dead mammals, protruding from the side of the shaft.
Finally Tom's feet touched solid ground and he released the rope. It was cold in the bottom of the shaft and he hastily put his jacket back on.
"Captain Strong?" he called. There was no answer. Tom flashed the light around and saw a low, narrow tunnel leading off to his left.
He walked slowly, and the newly dug sides of the tunnel seemed to close in on him menacingly. It was quiet. Not the blank silence of space that Tom was used to, but the deathlike stillness of a tomb. It sent chills up and down his spine. Finally he stepped around a sharp bend and stopped abruptly.
"Captain Strong!"
The Solar Guard officer was stooping over, his light resting on the ground, reading something he held in his hand. He looked up at Tom and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. Tom flashed his light in that direction.
"By the rings of Saturn!" exclaimed Tom. There in front of him, ripped open like a can of sardines, was the gleaming metal skin of the time capsule! The dirt floor of the tunnel around Strong and beside the capsule was littered with audio spools, sound disks, micropapers, and stereo slides.
Tom kneeled down beside his skipper and stammered, "What—what does it mean, sir?"