“Thank you.” She sighed. “It wasn’t my project. I was there to offer my clinical analysis of their uranium-thorium dating process. Even so, I was proud to be part of the team. That was why I was so keen to see this site first hand. I believed this might have been the crucial evidence we needed to confirm our theory about the original migration of Homo erectus into the Americas, long before Homo sapiens reached the continent.”
Sam nodded. “It will be interesting to find the truth. I have my own theories about how that mask arrived here, but we’ll discuss those once we get out of here and you’ve had a chance to study the artifact.”
She frowned. “The mask was lost in the obsidian chamber.”
“I’ll need more air,” Sam said. “But we can always go back and retrieve the mask.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jesse said, ruefully, as he revealed the mask from a small carry pouch.
“You dragged that all the way through the submerged tunnel system?” Sam asked, incredulous.
“Sure did. I figure anything someone just tried to kill me to hide, needs to be exposed so the whole damned world can see! That’s my way of dealing with people like that.”
Sam picked up the rest of his dive gear, packed it in his backpack, and slid it onto his back as he slid his arms through the shoulder straps. “Sounds good. Let’s start heading back to the surface before we freeze to death. We’re still another hour from the surface.”
“Great idea. I’d feel happier once we’re above ground,” Sandi said.
“We both do,” Jesse said, standing up.
“You’re welcome. It was just good luck I got here in time more than anything.”
Jesse’s face contorted with confusion, like he just remembered something peculiar. “How did you find us?”
Sam finished drying his face. “I called your home phone to tell you that I’d been in a car accident. When your wife answered, she informed me that another Mr. Reilly had already gone off with her husband and two archeologists. She was the one to pick it up first, and asked if there could have been two Reillys.”
“That’s Betty for you. Impossible to pull the wool over her eyes about anything.”
“So, she took me up to the entrance to the Queen Maggie Mine, where we immediately discovered the cave in. When I asked her if there was another way in, she replied that there wasn’t, unless I wanted to swim through about two hundred feet of flooded mine shafts. That’s when I decided to make the dive while she went to the sheriff for help.”
Jesse squinted his eyes. “But where on earth did you find scuba gear in the mountains?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s my gear. I was actually on my way to Colorado Springs to go diving, searching for some old aircraft wrecks in the lakes there, when I heard about your discovery. It was just good luck I had all my equipment in the car when I arrived.”
Sandi raised her eyebrow. “Another historical expedition?”
“Not really. Just a good friend and I catching up on a much-needed vacation.”
“You search for lost aircraft in icy lakes to relax?”
Sam nodded, sheepishly. “It’s what I do.”
They continued walking in silence for several minutes until they reached a fork in the tunnel. Sam shined his flashlight down in both directions, before glancing at his compass to confirm the route that led to the surface.
He turned to the right, following the standard US narrow-gauge 3-foot 6-inch minecart track as it snaked up the tunnel toward the surface. As he flashed his light to the left, he noticed with rising confidence that there was no railway track, which suggested the tunnel terminated nearby.
After following the new tunnel for a few hundred feet they reached another tunnel. This one intersected with theirs at a perpendicular angle. This time he felt more confident as he turned right again. The new tunnel was much steeper, with one side heading decidedly deeper into the mountain, while the other one climbed.
Parallel tracks ran along both tunnels. A single iron harp stand lever — so named because the mechanism looked like a harp — nearly five feet high was mounted on two long sleepers. These maneuvered the accompanying linkages to change the direction of the long since disused minecarts.
The new tracks on this tunnel appeared more worn from use and he guessed that this was the main run into the deeper, once highly profitable lower levels of the Queen Charlotte gold mine. Strangely, it was also narrower and the height was low enough that Sam had to keep ducking to stop from hitting his head. Presumably, there was no gold to be found in this section and it was only ever used as a means of bringing the men down into the gold rich depths, and the ore back out again.
Sam’s back ached as he carried his equipment hunched over in the shallow tunnel and his mind wandered aimlessly.
Until Sandi interrupted his thoughts.
“Will you continue to head to Colorado Springs?” she asked.
“Not now.” Sam shook his head. “This has changed everything. I’ll head to Salt Lake City to get a flight to Washington, where my team can get a better understanding of what’s going on. You want to join me?”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “Of course, I want a chance to examine it.”
“Good. You can provide an alternative theory to the one I have.”
“You’ve seen it before?” Sandi asked.
“Yeah.” Sam closed his eyes, as though remembering a recent image from a photograph. “The image I’ve seen was taken inside a hidden cave, submerged in the South Pacific, and depicted seven similar masks.”
“All humanoid?”
“Yes. But only one Homo sapiens.”
“What were the others of?”
“Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo habilis, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo naledi, Homo neanderthalensis.”
“How bizarre.” She paused, remembering the finer details of the mask they’d found inside the obsidian chamber. “If I had to guess, I’d say the mask here comes from a Homo erectus — but I might just be guessing that because it would confirm my theory about early migration by Homo erectus into North America.”
“We’ll get out of here and back to Washington where we can run some tests and get a better idea. Also, I’m hoping you might be able to make sense of its connection to the other masks on the pictograph in the ancient cave,” Sam said.
“Where did you say the picture was taken?”
“In a submerged cave in the South Pacific.”
“Who took the photo?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
The edge of her lips curled in a wry grin. “Your reputation precedes you, Sam. You’re a magician who trades in discoveries of the unbelievable. Try me.”
Sam grinned. “Amelia Earhart.”
Chapter Twelve
It took Sam several minutes to fill Sandi and Jesse in on their discovery of the strange, now submerged island, in the South Pacific, and the discovery of Amelia Earhart’s jacket and camera, but no sign of her or her navigator’s body.
At the end of the discussion, Sam explained how the photos, presumably from 1937, were developed by historical specialists and that they revealed one particularly strange image of the inside of a large cave, in which a series of seven pictographs showed what appeared to be the last remaining seven sub-species of the family Hominidae.
They passed a couple of old iron mine carts, still on the track, with their brakes in the locked position. A faint light formed at the tunnel’s opening.
Sandi opened her mouth, as though she was going to discuss something important about the strange mask, and then asked, “What’s that noise?”