With a kid on the way, Boyd needed the job bad. But the idea of going underground at the Hobart Mine, down into the dark labyrinth of tunnels to get at the raw ore, left him with a brooding sense of unease. Maybe it was the fact that his father had died down in the mines or maybe it was something much worse. 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.