Jase pushed against his thighs and clambered to his feet. His calves cramped, protested the unaccustomed exercise. “We should go back, tell my dad, and let him decide what to do.”
But Pahl was shaking his head. “I think I can get us through this. There’s a magnetic field here all right, just like at the entrance. But the field has a periodicity, like a pulsar.”
“So?”
“So,”said Pahl, fiddling with his tricorder, “that far in school I did get. Maybe if I match the ambient resonance frequency of the magnetic field but reverseit, I can open this.”
“And then what? How do we know you can get us back out? We don’t even know what’s on the other side. Could just be another tunnel that’ll go on for kilometers.”
“Or it might not,” said Pahl, turning his head until his ice-blue eyes and pale brown face stared down at Jase. “You and I both know there’s something here, something that wants to be found. Why else put up a wall? Why lock other people out?”
He knew Pahl was right. The setup was too elaborate: the magnetic distortion field topside, the panel and its lock. “The lock could be to keep whatever it is inside.”
“Maybe,” said Pahl, turning aside and staring at the readings on his tricorder.
Jase watched in silence as Pahl’s tricorder searched for a match, found it, and then began to emit a reverse polarity pulse. The tricorder pulsed red…red…red…green.
“Jase,” Pahl began.
The metal panel slid to one side. There was no sound, though Jase imagined that there must be the whine of some mechanism scrolling the panel to one side. But Jase heard Pahl gasp and, instinctively, both boys took a step back. On cue, they glanced at one another and exhaled a peal of embarrassed laughter.
Jase shone his torch into the blackness. Almost immediately, he felt a twist of disappointment. The panel opened into a tiny, arched room that reminded Jase of the well chamber he’d been expecting. Only the walls curved and there was no shaft to catch water. The floor was smooth and level with that of the tunnel in which they stood. Opposite the panel was another door.
“Same metal,” said Pahl, consulting his tricorder. “But there’s no magnetic field.”
“So it’s not locked.” Jase chewed on his lower lip. “An invitation? Like it wants us to come on in.”
Pahl nodded. “There are old-fashioned laser sensors. Here and here,” he gestured with his tricorder to either side of the chamber. “All along the walls. Can’t see the beams, though.”
“Are they weapons?”
“No, the beams aren’t strong enough to burn anything. I think they’re meant to trigger some sort of mechanism.”
“Wait.” Jase bent, scooped up a small quantity of fine-grained dirt from the tunnel floor, and tossed the dirt into the chamber. The dirt was so fine that it formed a swirling cloud, like curls of smoke. Then, so ephemeral they were like the threads of a spider’s web, a network of thin, pulsing red lines appeared, crisscrossing the chamber.
“Sensors, all right. Displacement detectors, I’ll bet.” Jase looked over at Pahl. “And you want to go in there.”
Pahl nodded. “Don’t you? Can’t you feel it?”
“No,” Jase lied.
“Well, I do. It’s almost like a voice, only not words so much. Just a feeling. It’s not going to hurt us.”
“Then what? What is it? And why is it talking to us? Why not my dad?”
“I don’t know. Maybe your dad isn’t the right person.”
Jase took a step back. “I don’t understand that, and I think that until you understand something…until somebody tells us it’s okay, we ought to go back.”
“Well, I’m not,” said Pahl calmly. He snapped his tricorder shut and slung the carrying strap over his shoulder. “I’m going on, Jase. This is where I’m meant to be. You can go back. You know the way. Go get your dad, if that’s what you want. But I’m going.”
For a brief moment, Jase was tempted to do just that: to leave. The way he felt, staring at Pahl and then into the chamber, was just what he’d experienced aboard Chen-Mai’s ship. There was a terrible darkness in Pahl, a void scoured out of Pahl’s soul by grief and loss. This void was bottomless; Pahl’s need knew no end. Once before, the Naxeran had reached out without knowing what he was doing and grabbed hold of Jase, trying to pull him down into this black whirlpool, and Jase was afraid this would happen again. Only this time, Jase was being asked to walk, willingly, into the abyss.
Yet Jase knew this was something he had to do. Something was beyond that door, calling him, tugging at his mind. It had brought him this far. Maybe it would be satisfied with Pahl. Probably would. But then Jase would have abandoned his friend.
Jase shouldered his tricorder. “Let’s go.”
Together they crossed the threshold and stepped into the chamber.
Chapter 30
At first, nothing happened. Then Jase heard what he thought was a faint but audible click. Impossible. He frowned. They were in vacuum. Probably all he’d heard was the pop of static that sometimes played as background on an open comm channel. Then he became aware of something else: a rushing noise, like water.
He turned to Pahl. “Do you hear that?”
“Yes.” Pahl gave a slow, puzzled nod. “But how…?”
Groaning, the panel before them slid right: metal scraping rock.
Sound. Jase let out his breath in a surprised exhalation. There were sounds, and if there were sounds…Quickly, he whipped his tricorder around, activated it. “Pahl, it’s air. There’s air! And it’s getting warmer,” Jase watched as the ambient air temperature rose: now zero degrees, ten degrees. “It’s an airlock and…Pahl, do you see that?”
Pahl’s tricorder burbled. “Yes. I read a power source, about three kilometers ahead, almost straight down. Looks nuclear. Probably a generator of some kind, only down deep where it’s been shielded.”
“Or maybe our tripping the airlock turned it on. Except,” Jase aimed his flashlight, its beam stabbing the darkness, into the tunnel, “there’s nothing. Just more tunnel.”
He was disappointed because he’d expected something spectacular: a room heaped with piles of gold or jewels. Something. Why else an airlock? A metal door? The sensors, and shielding? Then he noticed something. Fanning his light over the tunnel walls, he caught a glimpse of color. Squinted. “I think there’s something here. Written on the walls. Paintings, maybe.” He consulted his tricorder again. “I’m reading more tunnels, but they don’t branch off here. There’s…” He did a double take of his readings, and his disappointment evaporated. “This is really strange. There’s another larger tunnel about a kilometer to the west, and then more…wow, at least tenmore tunnels branching off that. But, dead ahead, there are rooms.”
“How many?”
“Four.” Eyes bright with excitement, Jase looked over at his friend. “You know what? I think this isa tomb. I think the tunnel we found was some sort of secret entrance, that the bigger tunnel I’m reading to the west is the main entrance that was probably sealed off.”
“But why?”
“Grave robbers, maybe. They did that in Egypt. Sealed up the main tunnel after they moved the sarcophagus down and then left a different way, so no one would know how to get in. I’ll bet that if we walked down that main tunnel, there’d be the stuff you’d find in Earth tombs: booby-traps, pits, stuff like that. But I’ll bet that when we step out of here, that panel’s going to slide shut, just like any airlock.”