No, she realized, not just that one.
Each of the stelae throughout the ball court suddenly sprouted arms — or more precisely, a pair of wooden war clubs, lined with razor sharp obsidian blades. None of them were close enough to pose a threat to Jade or Professor, even when, after more eruptions of dust and noise, they all began spinning in place, their arms whirling like lawn mower blades.
Jade caught a glimpse of sudden movement at the back end of the court. Spikes now protruded up through the holes in floor, row after row of three-foot long sharpened stakes, which had shot up in an instant, and then just as quickly disappeared back into the holes.
“Watch the floor!” Jade shouted, heeding her own advice, quickly sliding her feet away from the holes.
There was a loud snap as the entire left flank of the ball court — where both Jade and Professor were standing — bristled with sharpened stakes. Jade felt the air moving around her, felt one of the spikes strike the side of her shoe as it stabbed the air. Then the deadly spears drew back into their holes.
“Jade!”
“I’m okay,” she replied. “You?”
More spikes shot up from the right flank.
“Not a scratch.”
The spears on the left side shot up again, confounding Jade’s expectation of a pattern. Fortunately, neither she nor Professor had moved an inch and they were once again spared.
“The center looks safe,” she called, and as soon as the spikes disappeared back into the floor, she made the short dash to the trough. She wasn’t ready to risk stepping into the well where the ball now rested, so she straddled it. Professor reached the trough a millisecond before the spikes popped up again.
“They’re coming up totally at random” she panted.
Professor shook his head. “There’s a pattern. It’s a mechanical system; there has to be a pattern. It only seems random.”
“Mechanical?”
“Sure. They must have tapped the hydropower.” He jerked a thumb at the dais where water poured from the hands of the Great Goddess. Jade also saw Dorion there, frozen in place and looking utterly helpless.
“Paul! Stay there!” She turned her attention back to Professor. “You figure the pattern out yet?”
“I think so.” He did not sound very confident. “If we stay close to the corners, we can jump back and forth. The timing will be tricky.”
Too tricky, thought Jade. She and Professor might be able to make it, but she doubted that Dorion had the instincts or the coordination to beat the trap. But it isn’t a trap; it’s a test.
“We’re supposed to beat the game,” she said, thinking out loud. “That’s why they built it this way.”
Professor’s eyebrows drew together in a frown, but then he nodded slowly. “How do we win?”
Jade looked around the ball court, trying to put herself in the role of an ancient supplicant seeking entrance to the Underworld domain of the Great Goddess. The priests would have launched the ball out into the court, and the players would have done their best to keep the ball from reaching the center well and activating the trap, but even if that happened, the game would not be over. Maybe it was supposed to happen; maybe the game didn’t start until the stelae started whirling around with their deadly war-clubs and the spikes began popping up out of the floor. But where was the goal?
“We need to get the ball back up there,” she said, pointing to the pedestal.
“Paul! Think fast!” Professor bent down and scooped up the ball in both hands and hurled it toward the dais.
In ancient times, this would have been an unthinkable violation of the rules; fortunately there were no priests around to assess a penalty. Here, the only liability was Dorion’s athletic ability. The physicist opened his arms to make the catch but was promptly bowled over by the mass of the solid rubber sphere. The ball bounced away and rolled across the dais, splashing into one of the water channels where it was instantly seized by the current and swept along the outer perimeter of the ball court.
Jade bit back a curse and launched into motion. She hadn’t quite nailed down the pattern that governed the rise and fall of the spikes, but reasoned that if she kept clear of the holes in the floor, she would be safe.
“Look out!”
Professor’s shouted warning didn’t include information about what exactly she should be looking out for, but it was enough to make her raise her eyes just in time to see that her she was about to blunder into the reach of one of the stelae. There was no way to stop, so she did the next best thing. She ducked.
Twin bladed war clubs whooshed through the air above her head, and then suddenly a wall of spikes appeared in front of her, just beyond the radius guarded by the spinning column. She tried her best to duck and dodge simultaneously, but instead crashed into the extended stakes, which snapped apart like pretzels. The rest retracted into the floor, resetting for another upward thrust. Jade sprinted up the sloping flank of the court, keeping her eye on the ball as it rolled toward the far end, while trying to remember how long she had before the spikes would pop up again.
“Five seconds!” shouted Professor, as if tuning into her thoughts. “Four… three…”
I can make it. When she heard him say: “one” she launched herself forward, up and over the low wall that bordered the court. She felt the snick of spikes stabbing up at her, glancing harmlessly off her hiking boots, and then she was hit by a shocking blast of cold.
The channel was shallow, only a few inches deep, and while the water was moving fast, there wasn’t enough of it to sweep her away. Instead, it splashed up around her in a froth that soaked her to the skin and chilled her to the bone.
Her muscles had clenched with the frigid baptism, but she forced herself into motion, splashing after the ball as it continued toward the end of the channel. The disruption of the water flow had actually slowed its progress, but it was still rolling toward the unknown. Still on all fours, Jade splashed after it, half-crawling, and launched herself out of a crouch just as the ball started to go over the edge. She slid the rest of the way forward, wrapping her arms around the black orb and hugging it to her chest, even as it rolled off the end of the channel.
Beyond the drop-off, there was a lot of nothing. Even though it wasn’t powerful enough to sweep her over, Jade was conspicuously aware of the water splashing over her and cascading out into a chasm that went deeper than the light of her headlamp could reach.
She wriggled backward, away from the precipice, and sat up, tightly clutching her prize. Professor was still stranded, but safe at the center of the ball court. Jade rolled over the edge of the channel and dropped down onto the first tier of the seating area and ran down the length of the court toward the dais. The water was deeper close to the statue of the goddess and she wasn’t willing to risk wading into it.
She spotted Dorion, now standing on the far side of the channel, staring at her expectantly. “Paul! I’m going to throw the ball to you. Put it on the pedestal. That should shut everything down. Okay?”
He nodded, still looking a little chagrined at his earlier fumble. Jade thought about offering words of encouragement, but decided that the only salve for his bruised ego was a successful catch. She bent over, the ball in both hands between her knees in a classic basketball granny-shot pose, and gently lobbed it over the six-foot wide waterway. Dorion caught it easily.
“Watch your step,” she cautioned as he turned away. “There must be some kind of trigger mechanism on the floor. We don’t want to have to do this all over again.”
He nodded without looking back and moved directly to the pedestal where he held the ball out and, with perhaps more caution than was warranted, gingerly set it in place. Jade was a little worried that she’d gotten it wrong, and that the ball would once again drop through the center of the pedestal and shoot back into play, but for once everything went exactly according to plan. With another ground-shaking thump, the automated defenses on the ball court shut down. The floor spikes retracted. The stelae stopped spinning and, with one or two exceptions, their war club arms folded back into niches in their carved exteriors.