Digging a new drift down in Level #8, the lowest level of the mine, an immense shaft opens up. Boyd and a few others volunteer to explore it. Some 400 feet down, they find a passage that leads to an immense cavern from prehistory.
A petrified world.
A prehistoric graveyard.
Then a cave-in traps them down there. In the darkness and dank shadows of a fossilized world, they realize they are not alone.
Something has woken in the stone.
Something ancient and terrible and coldly intelligent.
And it is lonely.