Return to Atlantis: A Novel (54 page)

Eddie did not share her confidence. “And if you’re wrong, it’s hammer time and I have to mop you off the floor.”

“I don’t think I’m wrong. But just in case, you should go back over to the entrance. Take this with you.” She gave him the bag of supplies.

He didn’t move. “We can blow the thing open.”

“We don’t know how thick the doors are. And what if doing that drops the hammer? It’s huge—we’d never clear it without using all the other charges, and if we do that we won’t be able to destroy the meteorite. Eddie, I know what I’m doing. It’s the only way to get into the temple.”

Reluctantly, he backed up. Nina gave him a look of reassurance, then turned to the metal plate. She raised her hand and let it hover over the indentation as she spread her fingers to match the print.

Slowly, she moved it closer, about to press her palm against the stone—

“Stop!”
Eddie yelled. She froze. “Don’t touch the fucking thing!” He ran to her and bodily hauled her away from the door.

“Jesus Christ, Eddie!” she cried. “What is it?”

“The hammer’s not the trap.
That’s
the trap!” He pointed at the plate.

“What do you mean?”

“The whole point of building this place was to make sure nobody could ever use the meteorite’s power again, right?”

“Yes …,” she said hesitantly, unsure where he was leading.

“So why would they make a door that only opens for the exact people who can do that? It’d be like building a bank vault that can only be opened if you’re wearing a stripy jumper and carrying a bag with
SWAG
written on it! The last person they’d want to let in would be someone
who can actually channel earth energy. Someone like you!”

She was silent for a long moment. Then: “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m an idiot.”

He grinned. “I didn’t want to say it myself, but …”

“No, seriously. I. Am. A. Moron! How the hell did I not figure that out? Oh my God!” She clapped both hands to her forehead. “I fell right for it. I’d be a quarter inch thick right now if it weren’t for you.”

“Well, you’d have been able to slide right under the door.” That triggered a thought, and he looked back toward the lava tube before regarding the doors quizzically.

“You just saved my life, Eddie,” Nina went on. “Again. Thank you. You know, I don’t appreciate you enough. When we get home, you can do that thing that I don’t normally …” He was still looking at the doors. “Hello, hi,” she said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Wife, right here, offering free perversions.”

“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 more than 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 chamber 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 flashlight 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 around 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 around 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 flashlights 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 forever the last tale of the expedition from Atlantis … and also the remains of its members. The bodies in the burial nooks had been pulverized, 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, recognizing her mood. “This was just the outer room, remember?” He nodded toward 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 color was wrong: too orange.

Nina had noticed it too. “You know how 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 center of the
bowl. All were mythological figures: gods. She recognized 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 outward 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 sulfur, 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 up-draft 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 vapors. “Christ, that stinks,” Eddie muttered, trying to hold in a cough. “So, this is what everyone’s been looking for?”

“This is it,” said Nina. She went up to the stone, about to touch it, but then drew back her hand.

“What’s wrong?”

“Considering what happened when Nantalas last touched the meteorite, it’s probably not a great idea for me to start messing with it.”

“You’ve got a point.” Eddie looked up at the statue of
Poseidon, the god of the oceans holding a metal trident as if poised to hurl it at any intruder. “And he’s got three. This is the Temple of the Gods, then?”

Nina turned away from the meteorite—and froze in momentary shock as for the first time she took in the sheer wall that had been behind her. “No,” she said. “
That
is.”

A vast structure had been carved out of the cliff, extending almost the full width of the ledge and rising in tiers to more than a hundred feet above. The elaborate yet harsh architectural style was unmistakably Atlantean. The lava tube emerged from the wall at its base between a pair of large pillars; on either side were more statues. Each level of the grand temple above them was lined with more ancient figures.

“God!” exclaimed Eddie, awed. “Or gods, I mean. How many are there?”

“All of them, I think,” Nina replied. The Olympians were the big guns of the lost civilization’s mythology, but there were hundreds of lesser deities below them … and it seemed that every single one was in attendance. The rulers of Atlantis had apparently been unable to decide which of their gods they had angered by unleashing the power of the sky stone—so they’d tried to appease them all.

“That’s pretty bloody impressive. How the hell did they build all that in here?”

“Nantalas’s expedition must have been bigger than we thought. Atlantis was the greatest empire the world would see for another few thousand years, so if anyone had the resources, they did.” She raised her camera again and started taking pictures of the temple. Through the telephoto lens, she saw stairs linking the tiers behind the rows of statues.

“There isn’t time for that,” said Eddie, setting down the rucksack and removing the explosives and detonators. “We’ve found the thing, so let’s blow it up.”

“It’s the
only
time for it,” she countered. “You saw what the first charge did to the outer chamber—there
was nothing left. When we blow up the meteorite, it’ll wreck the temple. Even if I can’t save it, I can’t let this place go unrecorded.”

Eddie reluctantly conceded. “Get your snaps, then.” He checked the remaining detonators, then circled the rock as Nina continued. When he returned, his expression was decidedly more downcast. “You know how I didn’t think we’d brought enough explosives?”