“I had it,” Vince was saying. He had his neatly sorted rappelling gear spread out over the cavern floor, his hand was pulling at his hair, his face somewhat pale in the early morning light. “Of course I had it. We used it to get down here.”
“Could you have left it up at the bluff?” Amy asked.
Vince shrugged before scrubbing his hand over his face. “No. I mean . . . maybe. I have never left any gear behind. Ever. I’m fastidious. It is ingrained in me, like breathing.” He picked up his ropes, clearly looking for something.
Oh, dear.
“What have we misplaced?” I asked, slowly putting my backpack down. I was fairly certain I didn’t want to know . . .
Jack gave me a tight smile. “A descender?” he said, sounding unsure about it himself.
Vince let an exasperated sound. “It’s a fall arrester. Safety gear. It’s a buckle, of sorts, that acts as a brake if you need one. There are two of them, buckled together.”
Oh.
“Oh.”
“I had it,” he said again. “They’ve got to be here somewhere.”
“Can you rig up something instead?” Connor suggested. “I’ve heard you talk about rigging gear up all the time.”
Vince deflated. “I guess. I can make a carabiner brake. It’s not my preferred kind, but it’s better than nothing.” He reached out and picked up a few carabiners, which were a metal buckles that climbers used all the time. Vince had quite a few of them. Then he took one neat bundle of ropes and mumbled to himself, “I’ll just need to work out some load bearing and force, rope tensions . . .”
Amy, somewhat stricken, looked at Connor. Connor was staring at Vince. Vince was staring at the ropes in his hand. Jack smiled at me.
“Um, maybe I could help with that,” I suggested.
The three of them then stared at me. “Well, it’s just physics. When Jack first insisted I go abseiling with him, I was . . . well, horrified. But once I applied physics and worked out a few equations, it’s really rather simple.”
“Simple?” Connor blinked at me.
“Well, yes.” I cleared my throat. “Given we’ll need to allow for variances in height and therefore centre of gravity and the angle of the climber’s legs in relation to the cliff face, for the sake of this exercise, we can apply the equation to Jack. Factor in his weight of, say eighty-five kilograms and his height of 1.9 metres, and we can assume he has a centre of gravity approximately 1.1 metres from his feet. It would be fair to assume he rappels down the cliff with his body raised thirty degrees above the horizontal. Give or take. If he held the rope approximately 1.4 metres from his feet—” I indicated this position and height using my hands. “—which is fair, given his height, it would make a twenty-degree angle with the cliff face. Give or take. And then we want to find the minimum static coefficient of friction that his feet on the cliff need to have, which will produce the least amount of tension on the rope. We know the force of gravity is vertical, the force of the legs being at thirty degrees multiplied by cosine—”
“Ah, Vince,” Amy said, interrupting me mid-explanation. She was holding up a large metal buckle with several lever-type parts. “Is this what you were looking for?”
“Oh my god, yes!” He scrambled to his feet and rushed over to her. “Where was it?”
“Under your tent bag.”
“Holy shit.” He took the device and held it to his chest. “Thank you.”
“Do you think you should maybe not have clipped them together?” Connor asked. “So you could lose one and not both?”
“I didn’t think.” Vince shook his head, clearly mad at himself. “I just packed everything up together to save space. It was stupid.”
“So I can finish explaining the equation if you’d like?” I offered.
Vince grimaced. “Another time, perhaps.”
“The answer is approximately 280 newtons,” I finished. “Just so you know. Your makeshift braking device would have been more than adequate.”
Vince smiled eventually. Connor blinked at me again as though I’d spoken a different language. Amy gave me an approving nod, and Jack . . . well, Jack grinned right at me. “Genius is, genius does.”
I ignored the heat in my cheeks. “So, we’re ready to leave then?”
Vince was busy sorting out his ropes and harnesses. “Am now.”
Chapter Seven
Jack
The climb down the mountain wasn’t as harrowing as I thought it might be. There were two more decent ledges on the way down, each equipped with rigging bolts for abseiling. It was slow, but it was safe. Vince and Connor were very good at it and put safety over everything.
Lawson, on the other hand, was more worried about his samples and equipment.
I wasn’t sure what to make of his announcement to me that he was considering passing this find off to someone else. I was surprised, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Hearing him say he wanted to be home with us more made my heart so damn happy, but I knew his decision to stand down as lead lepidopterist might change.
If he thought for one second the person he’d hand it to wasn’t capable, he simply wouldn’t hand it over.
If he did decide to stay on board with it, I knew it was going to take up a lot of Lawson’s time and focus. And I knew in all likelihood we’d be making this trip a lot in the next few months and possibly exploring other caves in the region. And it was going to be ruling our lives for some time to come.
But I couldn’t even be mad about it.
Lawson was rightly excited about this new butterfly, but you know what? I was too.
This was his life’s work, and I was a part of his life—butterflies had become such a central part of our lives together—so it was only natural for me to be almost excited as him.
Once we made it down to ground level, with no injuries or damage to any of Lawson’s research samples, after we all took a few minutes to use the rainforest “bathroom” in private, we made the hike back to Connor’s four-wheel drive and made the rough and bumpy trip through the forest back to where we’d left our SUV.
As great as the trip had been, and as grateful as I was to Connor, Vince, and Amy, I was very relieved to see our car. We unloaded all our gear out of Connor’s vehicle into ours, said our rounds of thanks and goodbyes and promises to be in touch—we’d no doubt be seeing them again real soon—and we were on our way home.
It was going to be about a four-hour drive home, and we’d only been in the car for about twenty seconds before Lawson turned in his seat to face me. “Oh my god, Jack,” he blurted out like he was suddenly overwhelmed. “There is so much work to do!”
And he talked and talked and talked non-stop about every detail. The butterfly, the remarkable differences, the similarities, the diet, the relationship to the dark, to the lichen, to the bats. He was certain the bats played some part. As did the temperature, the air pressure, the elevation. Maybe other caves in the area had some too. We’d have to explore all of them. There were so many questions.
“I have one question,” I asked. He’d taken a much-needed breath, his palm pressed to his forehead. I thought it might be my only chance to get a word in.