It was information not widely known, but Nabinger had read reports from earlier expeditions that had used cosmic ray bombardment to search for hidden chambers and passages in the Great Pyramid and their reports had been similar: there was some sort of residual radiation inside the pyramid that blocked such attempts. The information had not been widely disseminated because there was no explanation for it, and scientists didn’t write journal articles about things they couldn’t explain. Nabinger often wondered how many unexplained phenomena went unreported because those who discovered them didn’t want to risk ridicule since there was no rational explanation for their findings.
Nabinger had hoped to have better luck with the MRI because it worked on a different bandwidth from the cosmic-ray emitters. The exact nature of the radiation had never been detailed, so he had not been able to determine if the MRI would be blocked also.
“Have you tried the entire spectrum on the machine?” he asked. They’d been down here for four hours already, Nabinger allowing Welcher to handle the machine, which was his specialty. Nabinger had spent the time painstakingly photographing the walls of the chamber, the bottom of the three in the Great Pyramid. Although extensively documented, some of the hieroglyphics on the wall had never been deciphered.
The notebook in his lap was covered with his scribblings, and he had been centered totally on his work, excited by the possibility that there might be some linguistic connection between some of the panels of hieroglyphics here and newly found panels in Mexico. Nabinger did not concern himself with how such a connection could be, he just wanted to decipher what he had. And so far, a very strange message was being revealed to him, word by laborious word. The importance of the MRI was diminishing with every minute he studied the writings.
A year ago Nabinger had made some startling discoveries that he had kept to himself. It had always been accepted that there were certain panels or tablets of markings at Egyptian sites that were not classical hieroglyphics but appeared to be some earlier picture language called “high runes.” While such sites were few — too few to provide a database sufficient to allow a scientific attempt at translation — enough had been found to cause some interest.
What Nabinger had stumbled across were pictures of similar high runes from a site in South America. After a year of very hard work over the few samples available — combining them with those from Egypt — he believed he had manage to decode a couple of dozen words and symbols. He needed more samples, though, in order to feel comfortable that the little he had achieved was valid. For all he knew, his translation could be totally false and he had been working with gibberish.
Kaji snapped some commands in Arabic and the laborers rose to their feet and disappeared back up the corridor.
Nabinger cursed and put his notebook down. “Listen here, Kaji, I’ve paid—” “It is all right, Professor,” Kaji said, holding up a hand roughened by a lifetime of manual labor. He spoke almost perfect English with a slight British accent — a surprise to Nabinger, who was often exasperated by the Egyptian tactic of retreating behind a pretended ignorance of English to avoid work. “I have given them a break outside. They will be back in an hour.” He looked at the MRI machine and smiled, a gold tooth gleaming in the front of his mouth. “We are not having much luck, yes?”
“No, we’re not,” Nabinger said, used to the strange syntax.
“Professor Hammond did not have much luck with his machines, either, in 1976,” Kaji noted.
“You were with Hammond?” Nabinger asked. He had read Hammond’s report in the archives of the Royal Museum in London. It had not been published due to the failure to discover anything. Of course, Nabinger had noted at the time, Hammond had discovered something.
He had discovered that there was residual radiation inside the pyramids that shouldn’t be there.
“I have been here many times,” Kaji said. “In all the pyramids. Also many times in the Valley of the Kings. I spent years in the desert to the south before the waters from the dam covered it. I have led many parties of laborers and watched many strange things at sites.”
“Did Hammond have any guesses why his machine didn’t work?” Nabinger asked.
“Alas, no.” Kaji sighed dramatically and ran his hand lightly over the control panel of the MRI, getting Welcher’s attention. “Such a machine is expensive, is it not?”
“Yes, it—” Welcher halted as Nabinger shook his head, now partially seeing where this was leading.
Kaji smiled. “Ah, Hammond, he had no readings. His man on the machine, he, too, said radiation. Hammond did not believe it. But the machine, it would not lie, would it?”
He looked at Welcher. “Your machine, it would not lie, would it?” Welcher remained quiet.
“If the machine does not lie,” Nabinger said, “then something must be causing the readings.”
“Or something was once here that still causes the readings,” Kaji said. He turned and headed back toward the other side of the chamber, where a large stone sarcophagus rested.
“The sarcophagus was intact but empty when they broke the seals,” Nabinger said sharply, referring to the first expedition into this chamber in 1951. There had been great excitement over the discovery of the chamber and particularly of the sarcophagus found inside with its lid still intact and sealed. The mystery of the pyramids was about to be solved, it was thought at the time. One could imagine the dismay when the seals were broken and the lid was opened, and there was nothing in the stone box.
The interior of the Great Pyramid contained three chambers. One entered the pyramid either through the designed polar entrance on the north side, or one blasted just below that by a caliph in later centuries. Both linked up with a tunnel that descended through the masonry and into the rock beneath the pyramid. That tunnel ended in an intersection hewn out of the rock where two tunnels branched off. One headed up to the middle chamber and the Grand Gallery, which led to the upper chamber. The other, more recently discovered tunnel headed down into the bedrock to the lower chamber. It was the lower chamber that Nabinger and his crew were presently working in.
“I was here in 1951,” Kaji said. “Yes, the sarcophagus was empty then.” “Then?” Nabinger repeated. He’d worked with Kaji before at other sites and the man had always been honest.
When he’d first hired the old man years ago, Nabinger had checked with several others in the field and Kaji had come highly recommended.
“Hammond, he thought me an old fool, and I was young then,” Kaji said. “I am older now. I tried to talk to him, but he did not wish to talk.” Kaji rubbed the fingers of one hand lightly in the palm of the other.
Nabinger knew what that meant. Kaji wanted to be paid for his information, as Nabinger had suspected, but that was only natural. The professor thought furiously. He had rented the portable MRI. The contract was billed by day of use, and he had enough funds from the museum for eight days of use. If he air-shipped it back tomorrow, he would save five days of billing. That was a substantial amount of money, at least from an Egyptian standpoint. The only problem was explaining his receipts and billing forms to the accountant back at the university. But there was no sense in continuing to use a machine in a place where it yielded no information. He also considered the runes he was deciphering in this chamber. Those alone would make the expedition worthwhile. The MRI had been a long shot anyway.
Nabinger looked at Welcher. “Take a break.”