Death Trap- Determination

The AnomalyFor more than three hundred feet down, the sandstone was mostly solid, a million years old, deep under the Sahara Desert. Younger sandstone layers had formed up around this particular spot, but oddly, not over it. So, mostly solid. Operative word, there, mostly.Above that sandstone lay billions upon billions of tons of sand, from as little as a few feet deep to giant ergs exceeding nine hundred feet high, always on the move.But, in the narrower end of that depth and the surface, under the foot of a dune, there opened a minor crack, barely a fissure. Loose sand, regardless of the depth, is like water, and it is difficult to contain. And now, like the proverbial hourglass, the loose sand of this erg, which is the local's name for a sand sea of the Sahara Desert, was slowly seeping into space below. And exposing secrets best left hidden. There is, however, a hell of a lot of sand out there. It would be a long while before anyone at all noticed.Eventually, at the surface, at a point not easily found among the dunes by scorpions, the occasional camel and the scarab beetles, a tiny inverted cone opened, just at the foot of a three hundred and fifty foot high dune. Not much bigger than a child's small doodle-bug trap, but growing, ever so slowly.No one was there to see it. No one felt the slight shimmy in the sand. The Sahara slowly marched its dunes in a never ending cascade of ridges, back and forth to prevailing winds, and any motion, no matter the strength, was lost.By the third day, the cone was a hand's breadth across, nearly the same in depth, a well laid trap for the unwary creature small enough to fall in. From that unhappy occurrence, those traps are impossible to climb out. And most of us know what waits at the bottom for unwary prey. But we could be wrong…The Sahara is the start for these young professionals, who learn to adapt, to grow up quickly, and who will face danger in several venues around the world... including right there in the USA... A fascinating tale of the four H's: Headache, Heartache, Hope and Happiness... not necessarily in that order, or in only one round. By #TheStoryteller (1995), G. Weldon Tucker