‘It’s a kink, not a perversion,’ he said. ‘And yeah, I’ll definitely take you up on it. But have a gander at this first.’ He went to the door and knelt to peer at the crack beneath it, then took out a penknife and opened its longest blade. ‘Shine your light in there.’
Nina illuminated the narrow gap — and was startled to discover that it was not what it seemed. ‘It’s a fake!’
Eddie probed it with the penknife. The blade only went an inch deep before its tip found solid stone. ‘I thought there was something weird about the room,’ he said. ‘It must have been part of the lava tube before the Atlanteans dug it out — but if they built these doors to block the tunnel, why don’t they actually line up with it?’
It was true; the doorway was offset from the entrance opposite by quite an angle. ‘The lava tube twists about, though,’ Nina said.
‘Not by that much.’ He returned to the entrance and faced into the chamber, pointing directly across it at a patch of plastered wall over six feet from the doorway’s edge. ‘Even if it were twisting, the tube should have come in somewhere over there.’
‘What are you saying — that there’s another door?’
‘No — they didn’t want anyone to get in, so it’s probably blocked off. But I bet the tunnel carries on behind that wall.’ He crossed the room again and stood before the inscriptions. ‘This is a closed room, but I can still feel a breeze blowing through. Where’s it going?’
Nina directed her light higher up the wall. At the top of the plastered section were several holes, each a few inches in diameter. ‘Through those, maybe.’ She gathered a handful of dust and tossed it at the small openings. The motes swirled in the torch beams — then were sucked into a vortex and vanished through the vents. ‘There’s definitely something back there. How are we going to get to it?’ Eddie drew his gun. ‘Oh, I see. You’re going to shoot it open.’
‘Not exactly.’ He turned the gun round in his hand — and bashed its grip against the wall, cracking the plaster.
‘Aah!’ Nina cried, appalled. She rushed to him as he chipped away at the ancient inscriptions, larger chunks breaking loose. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sorry, but if we want to get through here, this wall’s going to have to come down.’
‘Well, yes,’ she said, flustered, ‘but at least let me photograph it first!’ She hurriedly rummaged through the bag for her camera.
Eddie sighed, but moved back so she could take several pictures. ‘All right, you done?’
‘Yes, okay.’ She hung the camera’s strap round her neck and grimaced. ‘I really wish we didn’t have to do this, but… go ahead.’
He returned to the wall and continued his attack. After a few minutes, enough plaster had been smashed away to expose a section of what was hidden behind it.
A wall. But not solid volcanic rock. This was built from stone blocks — another barricade, sealing the entrance to the Temple of the Gods.
Eddie used his penknife again to explore the cracks between the stones. Unlike his examination of the fake door, this time the blade went all the way in without obstruction. He also noticed something else. ‘It’s warm.’
Nina put her hand against the exposed wall. It was noticeably hotter than the chamber’s ambient temperature. ‘Well, we are in a volcano…’
‘Yeah, but if it’s warm on this side, God knows what it’ll be like on the other. We don’t know how thick this wall is. Only one way to find out, though.’ He looked at the bag of explosives.
Nina’s shoulders slumped in dejection. ‘Guess I’d better take photos of the rest of the room…’
‘Ready?’ Eddie asked.
Nina cringed, covering her ears. ‘Yeah. Do it.’
He switched the channel selector to ‘1’, flicked up the protective cover over the detonation control… and pushed the red button.
Even though they were back outside the lava tube, the explosion from the underground chamber was still as loud as a shotgun blast. A gush of dust and smoke rushed out of the tunnel, loose stones clattering down the slope.
Eddie turned the detonator control back to ‘Safe’ and closed the trigger cover. ‘Looks like Alderley’s mate took good care of the explosives. That was a bigger bang than I expected.’ They waited for the dust to settle, then started back down the lava tube. ‘Feel that?’ he asked, after a few steps.
‘Yeah,’ said Nina. The breeze blowing down the shaft was now a gust, strong enough to ruffle their hair. The residual haze in the air was rapidly being cleared. ‘I think we definitely opened up the wall.’ They continued down the curving tunnel. Rubble littered the floor as they got closer to the chamber. The final bend, and they raised their torches to see what awaited them.
To Nina’s relief, the enormous hammer hadn’t fallen, but was still hanging ominously over the room. Below it, the floor was strewn with debris. The wall blocking the exit had been obliterated — as had almost everything else. The blast had stripped most of the plaster from the walls, wiping out for ever the last tale of the expedition from Atlantis… and also the remains of its members. The bodies in the burial nooks had been pulverised, ancient bones shattered to splinters. She regarded the devastation sadly. Photographs were little compensation for the loss of such a find.
‘Hey,’ said Eddie quietly, recognising her mood. ‘This was just the outer room, remember?’ He nodded towards the newly opened passage. ‘The Temple of the Gods is right through there.’
‘You’re right,’ she said, composing herself. Eddie headed for the exit; she gave a silent apology to what little remained of Nantalas and her acolytes before following.
Even with the stiff wind at their backs, the temperature beyond the chamber rose rapidly. And as they moved down the short tunnel, the light from their torches was joined by another source from ahead. Eddie at first thought it was daylight, but the colour was wrong: too orange.
Nina had noticed it too. ‘You know we thought the meteorite was in a volcano? I think it’s literally in a volcano.’
The tunnel opened out… and revealed that she was right.
They emerged on a large bowl-like ledge jutting from the inside of the volcano’s throat. High above was a circle of blue sky, but the orange light was coming from below. The volcano was still active, a lake of molten lava bubbling away deep underground.
For the moment, though, Nina’s attention was on the ledge itself. A dozen statues surrounded the centre of the bowl. All were mythological figures: gods. She recognised Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Athena, Hera and more… the Olympians, the most powerful figures in the shared pantheon of the ancient Greeks and the Atlanteans. They faced outwards to keep watch in all directions, their poses and expressions a stern warning against approaching the object they guarded.
The sky stone. The meteorite. The object that had brought life to earth, and now held the potential to change that life — not with the power of gods, but with the science of men.
Eddie made a face. ‘I don’t think we brought enough explosives.’
It was not the size of a couch, or a car, as he had hoped. It was the size of a house. In places threateningly jagged, in others smoothed off as if melted, the irregular hunk of rock was a good sixty feet along its longest axis, rising at its highest almost thirty feet above the floor. The whole thing was covered with a grimy layer of ash and sulphur, deposited over millennia by the fumes rising up from the bubbling lava below. The statues around it were similarly defiled.
Nina and Eddie moved closer. As they left the cover of the tunnel, the rush of wind from it lessened — and the stench and heat coming from the bottom of the volcanic conduit hit them for the first time. The enormous updraught of hot gases rising past the ledge was sucking clean air from outside down the lava tube, keeping the natural bowl at least partially clear of the worst of the toxic vapours. ‘Christ, that stinks,’ Eddie muttered, trying to hold in a cough. ‘So, this is what everyone’s been looking for?’