his grip around her bodily. He staggered up the remaining steps with her
sprawled out Of the mouth of the body in his arms and shaft on to the
slabs of the tunnel at Hansith's feet.
"What is is, effendi? What has happened to you and the lady?"
Nicholas had no breath to answer him. He laid Royan in the position for
mouth-tolmouth resuscitation, and slapped her cheeks.
"Come on!" he pleaded with her. "Speak! Talk to me!" There was no
response, so he knelt over her, covered her open mouth with his own and
blew down her throat, until from the corner of his eye he saw her chest
swelling and inflating.
He sat back for a count of three. "Please, my darling, please
breathe!'There was no colour in her yellow, corpselike face.
He bent over her and covered her mouth again, and as he filled her lungs
with his own breath he felt her stir under him.
"That's it, my darling," he told her. "Breathe! Breathe for me."
At the next breath she pushed him away and sat up groggily, staring
round at the circle of faces that hovered over her anxiously. She picked
out Nicholas's pale face amongst the black faces of the men.
"Nicky! What happened?"
"I am not sure - but whatever it was, it almost got both of us. How are
you feeling now?"
"It was as though an invisible hand had me by the throat, and was
strangling me. I couldn't breathe, and then I passed out."
"It must be some kind of gas filling the lower levels of the passage.
You were only out for less than two minutes," he reassured her. "It
takes four minutes of oxygen starvation to kill the brain."
"I have a terrible headache." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "I
heard your voice calling me back. You called me "my darling"." She
dropped her eyes.
"Just a little slip of the tongue." He lifted her to her feet and for a
moment she swayed against him, her breasts soft and warm against his
chest.
"Thank you once again, Nicky. I am so deeply in your debt already, I
will never be able to repay you."
am sure we will be able to work something out."
She was suddenly aware of the niens eyes watching her and drew away from
him. "What kind of gas? And how did it get there? Was it another of
Taita's tricks, do you think, Nicky?"
"One Of the gases of decay, most probably," was his the lower part of
the opinion. . "Because it is trapped in passage, it must be a
heavier-than-air type. I would guess that it is probably carbon dioxide,
although it could be something like methane. I think methane is heavier
than air, isn't it?"
"Did Taita do it deliberately?" The colour was returning to her cheeks,
and she was recovering swiftly.
I don't know, but those baskets and jars are suspicious.
er that question when we have had a I will be able to answ chance to
examine their contents." He touched her cheek tenderly. "How are you
feeling? How is your headacheT
"Better. What do we do now?"
he to
"Clear the gas from the chamber, Id her, "and as soon as possible."
He used a candle from his emergency pack to, test for-the gas level in
the shaft. With it burning in his right hand he went back down the
steps, holding it low'to the floor, descending a step at a time. The
candle flame burned brightly, dancing to the movement of air as he went
down. Then, abruptly on the sixth step above the floor level of the
chamber, the flame turned yellow and snuffed out.
wall in white chalk, and He marked the level on the shaft, "Well, at
called up to Royan at the head of the still here. Must be carbon least
it's not methane. I am dioxide."
"Pretty conclusive test," she laughed. if it goes boom, it's methane."
the blower fan," Nicholas Hansith, bring down shouted to the big monk
Holding his breath as though he were snorkelling under water, Nicholas
carried the fan down the lower steps and set it up on the floor of the
chamber. He set the fan speed at "High' and immediately retreated up the
shaft, drawing a huge breath as soon as he was above the chalk mark on
the wall.
"How long will it take to clear the gas?" asked anxiously, looking at
her wrist-watch. Royan
"I will test with the candle every fifteen minutes.
It was an hour before the gas had dispersed enough to enable him to
reach the floor of the chamber again, and breathe the air down there.
Then Nicholas ordered Hansith to bring down a bundle of firewood and
build a fire in the centre of the stone floor, to heat and circulate the
air more rapidly.
While he was doing this, Nicholas and Royan examined one of the baskets
that stood against the wall.
"The crafty old ruffian!" Nicholas Muttered half in exasperation and
half in admiration. "It looks like a mixture of manure and grass and
dead leaves, the same as a compost heap."
They crossed the chamber, turned one of the pottery jars on its side,
and studied the powder that spilled out of it. Nicholas took up a
handful and rubbed it between his fingers, then sniffed it warily.
"Crushed limestone!" he muttered. "Although it has of acid. Vinegar,
perhaps, or even Isoonakgedagitowdirtihedsoomuetfoarnmd lost any odour,
Taita probably urine would have done the trick. As it broke down the
limestone, it formed carbon dioxide."
"So it was another deliberate trap," Royan exclaimed.
"Even so many thousands of years ago, Taita must have understood the
processes of decay. He knew what gases those mixtures would produce.
Amongst all the other accomplishments he boasts of, he must also have
been a nifty chemist."
Furthermore, he must have known that without a draught or any movement
of air, these heavy inert gases amber indefiould hang here in the bottom
of the ch agreed. "I expect that this shaft is designed like nitely,"
she
' she pointed a ,trap. I bet that the passage rises again at the
mysterious doorway in the far wall, "in fact I can see the first steps
even from here."
"We will soon find out if you are right," he told her, because that's
exactly where we are heading right now up those stePS."
apper had placed caims of stones at the water's edge to monitor the
river level. He watched es his ticker them the way a stockbroker watch
tape.
It had been six hours since the last rain squall had passed. The clouds
over the valley had burned away in the Ithough they still hung densely
over hot, bright sunlight, a the northern horizon. Their great
dun'coloured thunderheads reared to the heavens, menacing and ominous,
fonning their own mighty ranges that dwarfed the mountains beneath them.
At any time the downpour might ed, begin up there in the highlands. Once
that happen Sapper wondered how long it would take the flood waters to
reach them here in the Abbay gorge.
He dismounted stiffly from the tractor, and went down the bank to
inspect his stone markers. The water level had fallen almost a foot in
the past hour. He forced himself not to let his optimism bubble over -
after all, it had taken only fifteen minutes for the river to -rise the
same amount.
would come.
The final outcome was inevitable. The rains rst. He looked The river
would spate. The dam would bu at the dam wall, and shook his head with