“As a matter of fact, I think it may have.”
“Really?”
“What do you do when you see exactly what you want?”
“You focus on it. You get tunnel vision, and that’s all you see.”
“That’s right.”
Sam then showed Tom the passage that described Poseidon’s temple.
In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple, they placed statutes of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot — a charioteer of six winged horses — and at such as size that he touched the roof of the building with his head…
It carried on for a while, but Sam stopped reading.
“Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“Poseidon wasn’t just a giant, with his head almost touching the room. Poseidon was looking at the true wealth of the room. It was stored above his head.”
“But there was nothing above his head.” Tom looked up at the ceiling. The rest of the entire room was covered in precious metals, ivory and gemstones, but directly above him was simply wrought iron.
“That’s it! It’s tunnel vision. Whether it was the Russians or our scientists who actually reached here first, they stripped the entire room of everything of value, but never once did they consider what was above that piece of iron!”
“Okay, so then what’s above that piece of iron?”
“I think there’s another room — with answers!”
“That’s great Sam.” Tom looked around. “In case you haven’t noticed, that ceiling’s about thirty feet high. And unless you’re seeing something that I don’t, I have no idea how you’re planning on reaching it.”
Sam stared at the water fountain and replied, “I might just have a solution.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
“The water won’t enter here because Poseidon’s temple is in the shape of a half dome,” Sam noted. “Therefore, when Atlantis flooded originally, everywhere became submerged except this point. But what if we break the dome?”
“How do you plan to do that from down here?”
“With this.” Sam lifted his right mechanical arm, and the head of a rocket appeared.
“Wow, what have you got there?”
“Given our previous problems, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to enter Atlantis without superior firepower. Consequently, I had an armorer friend of mine redesign an RPG 27 so that it could be retrofitted into our ADS machine.”
“Ah, Sam… have you really thought this through? If we blow apart the ceiling, what do you think the pressure difference is going to do to us?”
“I’d say we have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Maybe twenty-five to seventy-five. Why — have you got a better idea?”
Tom shrugged his massive mechanical shoulders. “Guess not.”
“Then that answers it,” Sam said and fired the RPG directly at the ceiling, above where Poseidon was supposed to stand.
The entire roof exploded, revealing the entrance to another temple.
Sam looked around, “I told you there was a room behind it!”
“That’s great, but I don’t see any water flooding in here?”
“No, neither do I. Let’s check out the cave-in again. Is it possible the boulders have blocked the water from coming in?”
“Yes, that could be it.”
“Do you want to go check it out while I work on plan B?”
“What’s plan B?”
“You don’t want to know yet…”
Tom returned ten minutes later. “Yep, the cave-in has blocked any water getting in here. So, unless you can jump about thirty feet, I have no idea how we’re going to get to the next level.”
“That’s where plan B is going to have to come in.”
“What’s plan B?”
“We’re going to flood this room using Poseidon’s own bath water.”
“The fountain of the Gods?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“That’s great, but it’s still draining at hundreds of cubic feet of water per minute.”
Sam grinned. “That’s why we’re going to have to block the drain.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Four red marble columns, each nearly ten feet tall, adorned the room. Resting on top of each, like a pedestal, was a ball made of blue green marble, all a different shade of light. Sam imagined each one served some type of symbolic references to the seasons of the year. If he’d had more time, Sam would have liked to examine them better, but the value of archeology always came second to those still living.
“Help me knock this thing over,” Sam said.
Sam rested the massive shoulder of his ADS machine against the solid column and pushed. Nothing happened. Tom then stepped in and locked their two ADS machines together so that their combined hydraulic power could push the column over.
“Okay, try now,” Tom said.
The column moved, but only slightly. Not enough to knock it over.
Sam gritted his teeth and said, “Let’s try pushing it back and forth until it moves.”
By the fifth go, the entire column tipped to the floor — sending the marbled earth rolling.
Built into the side of Poseidon’s temple, the fountain of the gods flowed miraculously as it had done for thousands of years. Still remarkably flowing into a drain which dispersed the water somewhere. It was like a flood of hot and cold water. But where did it come from, and where the hell was it going?
Sam lifted the large marble ball and placed it on the drain pipe, blocking it. Instantly the magical water began spilling out and covering the room. Within minutes they were standing knee deep. The two turned and swam back to the entrance fast.
The level rose rapidly until Sam and Tom were once more in the water their ADS machines were designed for. Capable of movement outside of water, the machines were built to perform highly sophisticated underwater tasks, and were capable of much higher speeds and maneuverability in it than out.
Despite being massive, Poseidon’s temple filled with water quickly. They decreased their buoyancy so that they rested on the temple’s floor instead of the ceiling, where powerful currents were forming as the water tried to squeeze through the little opening.
“We’ll give it another twenty minutes to fill the room above with water, and then we go!” Sam said.
“Sounds good to me.”
After waiting for the current to settle, a good indicator that the next room had filled with water, Sam moved toward the opening. Attached to Tom’s ADS machine via a tether, in case the current became dangerously strong, his quad propulsion unit whirred into life as he shot through the opening he’d made.
No more than a few feet inside the second room Sam said, “It’s safe to come up. And I think you’re going to want to see this!”
The room was relatively small compared to Poseidon’s temple and almost entirely barren, with the exception of a massive picture on one wall. Etched into a solid piece of glowing red orichalcum, fourteen feet tall and equally wide, was a depiction of an island, and its surrounding coastline.
“So that’s orichalcum?” Tom asked.
“It appears so.”
“I don’t understand. If all that wealth underneath us was merely a ruse to stop people finding this image, what the hell is so valuable on that island?”
“The code to Atlantis.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Sam stared at the painting as though he were mesmerized by it somehow. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Tom look around the rest of the room trying to see where the water had gone. If the water came into the room, that meant the air had gone out, and for that to happen, there had to be an exit. And he was going to find it.