A short taxi ride brought them to Cumae, an ancient village that, Fiona informed them, had originally been settled by Greek colonists in 750 BC. Cumae had been the site of one of famed oracles of Apollo — the Sibyl of Cumae — who had seen visions of the future from her cave on the edge of the Avernus Crater and written her prophecies on oak leaves. The Sibyl had led Aeneas into the Underworld, evidently following a similar route as that taken by Odysseus… if, of course, the legends were to be believed.
What was known to be factual was that the crater did mark the site of a long dormant volcano, part of which was now filled with water to form the lake known locally as Lago d’Averno, and that the surrounding area was riddled with volcanic caves. Fiona expressed confidence in the Polybius account, which gave explicit directions through the underground labyrinth, using the Sybil’s cave as a starting point. In the time of Polybius, it would have been necessary to trek over the surrounding hills, but in the first century BC, a Roman architect named Lucius Cocceius Auctus had burrowed a half-mile long tunnel through Monte Grillo to connect Cumae with the lake. The tunnel, Grotta di Cocceio, was entirely man-made and elaborately decorated with statuary and colonnades, but as far as Dodge was concerned it marked the beginning of their voyage into Tartarus.
They were an odd-looking bunch of explorers. Fiona led the way, her translation of the Polybius account in hand, with Newcombe close behind, chattering about geology and possible scientific explanations for some of the phenomena associated with the place. Von Heissel—Barron, Dodge corrected himself — was right behind them, occasionally commenting on the scientist’s observations, but mostly keeping to himself. Vaughn stayed a few steps behind Barron, as if trying to maintain a buffer between the industrialist and Hurricane. Nora walked with Dodge and Hurricane, stopping frequently to write observations in her notebook, and Barron’s crewman brought up the rear. All in the party carried rucksacks containing supplies they might need for spelunking, but Hurricane carried an extra burden: the disassembled parts of the resonance wave generator. It was a bulky machine, but on the big man’s back it looked merely like just another backpack.
When they emerged from the tunnel, Fiona steered them toward the oracle’s grotto as if it was a journey she had made dozens of times before. Once there however, she began to pay more attention to the details of the environment, and walked with carefully measured steps, like someone counting the paces to find a pirate’s buried treasure.
Exactly like that, Dodge realized.
After trekking about a quarter of a mile along the lakeshore, she turned to the hillside formed by the edge of the crater and pointed. “It should be here.”
The rock face to which she pointed was indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape. If there was a cave leading into the hillside, countless centuries of erosion and drift had covered it and smoothed over the patch.
“You know,” Hurricane said nonchalantly, “if your stride is off by as much as an inch, we could be twenty… thirty yards from where we ought to be, and never realize it.”
“That’s why you’re carrying that thing on your back.” She turned to Newcombe. “Time to work your magic, Findlay.”
Hurricane eased the pack with the wave projector to the ground, and the scientist went to work reassembling it. Dodge drifted over to where Nora was, as ever, busy scratching notes in her journal.
“Quite a ways from the Big Apple,” he remarked.
She looked up, and he saw by her smile that his intrusion was not unwelcome. “Until this week, the farthest I’d been from home was Atlantic City.”
“I was a little surprised that you wanted to come along. I mean, we found Rodney, safe and sound. Mission accomplished?”
“Do you really have to ask? This is so much more fun that just sitting at the typewriter. Or do you think adventure is just a game for boys?”
“I’d much rather be back in my office, with no one trying to kill me, than out here in the middle of… where are we again?”
Nora wasn’t buying it. “You’d rather just write adventure stories than live them? I find that hard to believe.”
Dodge’s gaze drifted to where Newcombe was deploying seismographs in order to locate possible void spaces in the hillside that would indicate the location of the cave entrance, an entrance which, if the legends they were following were true, led to Hell itself. And if they found it, it might very well put a massively destructive weapon in the hands of a man with extraordinary resources and unpredictable loyalties. Viewed in that light, Nora’s question seemed patently foolish. He managed to keep his smile as he answered: “Someone once told me that adventure is the result of poor advanced planning. I’m all for a little world travel and sightseeing. I can do without the rest of it.”
A few moments later, Fiona gave a little cheer as Newcombe reported an empty space no more than a few feet into the hillside. Her estimate had been spot on. Newcombe made a quick adjustment to the machine and turned it on again.
Loose earth began to shower down as invisible waves pummeled the face of the crater, but the effect was most pronounced in the area directly in front of the device. The soil poured away, as if turned to water, revealing a ragged vertical slit. Even after the scientist switched it off, dirt continued to pour down from above the uncovered hole.
Dodge turned back to Nora. “I guess it’s time for the next adventure.”
Although he was aware of the rich history of Cumae and the surrounding area, it was only as he stepped into the cramped confines of the passage that it occurred to Dodge that he might be treading the same ground as the legendary heroes Odysseus and Aeneas, or at the very least, the ancients who had inspired them.
He realized that he hadn’t been entirely honest with Nora. No sane man enjoyed putting himself in danger, but there was an undeniable thrill in exploring the earth’s wild places, unlocking mysteries of the ancient past, and facing and overcoming hardship. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that, in the past at least, his actions had served a greater good. Perhaps that was why this affair was so troubling; he couldn’t shake the feeling that, even if Barron was not the villain Dodge feared him to be, a successful outcome would only result in the creation of a terrible weapon.
They moved single-file into the cave, with Hurricane, hunched over and dragging the bulky wave projector, barely scraping through some of the tighter spots. The passage wound erratically back and forth but Dodge felt certain they were descending. The air was stale and stank of old sulfur, evidence of its volcanic past, and although everyone carried an electric lantern, he felt the funereal gloom even more acutely than he had in the river-carved passages beneath Alamut.
The cavern opened up with unexpected abruptness. Dodge had just struggled through yet another of the tunnel’s needle-eyes, and suddenly found himself at an intersecting tunnel that was wider even than the train tunnel he’d explored back in Pennsylvania. The floor of the new tunnel sloped away from the junction in a series of terraces that looked at first glance like they had been cut deliberately by human artifice. At their base flowed a slow moving stream about fifty feet across. The still air smelled of rotten eggs and carried a sharp tang that stung his eyes and nose, and as he ventured out into the new passage, joining the group, his flashlight beam illuminated swirling vapors, which were rising from the narrow waterway.