That his enemies had come so far…that they might already have gained access to a place that he now thought of as his own possession…shook his confidence in a way that was completely alien. He was a god; this ought not to have happened.
He was loath to bring his men to the fortress; he guarded its secrets jealously, for indeed the place did not discriminate who benefited from the ancient knowledge and tools in its repository. But his foes might already have added some of those weapons to their arsenal, and he dared not face them alone. That too, was why he decided to bring the girl along.
He stroked his hooded chin thoughtfully as the hostage was laid to one side. Even her life might not be enough of a bargaining chip against these men, not if they got a taste of the power he had already mastered. If that happened, he would have no choice but to destroy the cave and seal his enemies away forever.
Of all his recent awakenings, this one was the worst. The warm glow radiating from his heart and spreading to his extremities was not a welcome heat to banish a chill but rather seemed more like the fires of Hell, searing every nerve without consuming his flesh. An involuntary wail crossed his lips, and in that instant he realized that he could no longer hear the roar of the wind.
Father Hobbs removed his hand from Dodge’s chest and sank back wearily on his haunches. Dodge writhed in agony as the feeling returned to his still chilled limbs, but his torment was ameliorated but the realization that he was no longer freezing to death in the blizzard. When the pins and needles no longer felt like red-hot spikes in his skin, he raised his head.
Hurricane was sitting alongside him as well, opposite the Padre. The big man was shaking his head in disbelief. “Boy, you’ve the Devil’s own luck. What possessed you to turn off your force field?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Despite the relative warmth, Dodge’s teeth were still chattering uncontrollably. His eyes gradually focused on the area beyond the faces of his friends, and he saw that they were surrounded on all sides by blue-tinted ice. “Where are we?”
“We are exactly where these flying machines brought us. It turns out, there’s something here that pulls these exoskeletons in like a magnet. We got lost fighting against it. It wasn’t until we started looking for you that we realized what was happening.”
“You’re very lucky indeed,” added Hobbs. “You have a little frostbite on your nose and fingers, but you’ll mend. But if we hadn’t literally tripped over you when we did, you would have spent the rest of eternity in this frozen wasteland.”
Dodge got to his feet and gave the ice enclosure another look. It was more a tunnel than a recess, gently sloping downward into the heart of the ice. It appeared to run straight in both directions, and when he turned his head in the direction of the rise, he could faintly hear the Antarctic wind howling past the mouth of the passage. He turned to Hobbs. “This isn’t natural, is it?”
Hobbs shook his head. “There is something at work here that defies nature.”
“We’re not going to find those answers here,” intoned Hurricane. “I say we buckle up and see where this train takes us.”
He followed his own advice, and as soon as his belt was clasped, started sliding down the tunnel as if pushed by an invisible hand. Dodge’s chattering teeth flashed a smile, and a moment later he and the Padre were close behind.
It soon became apparent that the unseen force drawing them on was nothing as simple as magnetism. The exoskeletons were not being pulled in a straight line, but rather followed the contours of the tunnel, weaving through its undulations and even making a right-angle turn at an unexpected crossroads. They were deep beneath the surface now but the walls still glowed an eerie blue and their steady pace remained unchanged.
“Who do you suppose made this place?” Hurley said, breaking the ominous silence.
Dodge didn’t have to think about that one. “The same people that made these flying devices.”
“If they were people,” Hobbs added, cryptically.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Padre?”
Hobbs gave an odd smile. “Look around you. What do you think is the explanation for it all? These contraptions that give us the power of flight? An impossible tunnel into the ice that glows like daylight? There is uncanny power at work here.”
“Uncanny?” scoffed Hurley. “That’s not what Doc Newton said. He talked about Tesla and the earth’s magnetic field.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps that’s the only way a man of science can grasp something that he does not understand. Do you remember when I told you about the Hindu deity who had the power to fly through the air and throw lightning bolts like spears?”
Dodge raised an eyebrow; he had not been privy to that earlier conversation. “You think all of this is the work of ancient Hindu gods?”
Hurley shook his head and gave the clergyman a patronizing grin. “No. He thinks this is Atlantis.”
“Or something like it,” Hobbs added, unashamedly. “The Bible tells a different version of the story. In Genesis, it speaks of the sons of God leaving their heavenly abode to take the daughters of men as wives. Their sons were mighty giants — the Nephilim — and they filled the earth with such wickedness that God determined to wipe all creation away in a deluge of water.”
“Atlantis sinking beneath the sea.”
“Just so. We can only imagine what sort of marvelous works those fallen angels and their mutant offspring carried out, but in those ancient legends we get a glimpse. Legends such as the tales of Indra.”
“But why Antarctica?”
Hobbs shrugged. “Why anywhere? We can only surmise that when the heavens fell, the face of the planet was changed forever. Before the Flood, the great oceans were perhaps not so great. Afterward, the Ice Age would have locked away any physical remains of that wicked society, but perhaps here some vestige remains intact.”
Dodge pondered this version of events. It was no less plausible than any other explanation. Come to think of it, it’s the only explanation anyone’s offered.
The abrupt end of the journey offered nothing to support or refute Father Hobbs hypothesis. The tunnel passed into a vaulted chamber from which several similar roads radiated outward like spokes on a wheel, and they were drawn to the exact center of the cavern where they came to a sudden stop.
Dodge unbuckled the belt and moved toward the perimeter of the chamber. The walls were uniformly smooth, without any sort of ornamentation or distinctive architecture. He was developing a grudging affinity for the Padre’s explanation; no army of human workers could have hewed out such an imposing fastness in this austere place. This was the work of a god… or perhaps a devil. “Which way now?”
Hurley also began walking the outer circle, pausing at each tunnel mouth to inspect the icy floor. “There are faint footprints in the ice. I’ll wager they’ve been here since… since he found it.”
Dodge didn’t have to ask who the big man was talking about.
“He didn’t know what he was looking for so he wandered up and down…Hello. This one.”
“How can you tell?”
Hurricane flashed them a triumphant grin. “The tracks go in, but they don’t come out.”
Hobbs affected a sour frown. “Why don’t I find that encouraging?”
The invisible force that had drawn them to the central chamber had ceased at the moment of their arrival. They were now able to move unimpeded and used the exoskeletons to fly down the tunnel.
“You know,” Dodge observed. “As big as this place is, I don’t think it was Atlantis.”
“Why do you say that?” Curiously, it was Hurley that voiced the question, not the Padre.