population on the coast below.”
“We could get out through one of those windows,” Katya suggested.
“Not a chance,” Costas said. “They look like ventilation shafts, probably less than a metre wide. And we don’t have time to explore. Our map’s held true so far and I vote we follow it.”
Just then a vibration coursed through them, a blurring of the water that made Jack suddenly fear he was about to black out. It was followed by further vibrations and then a series of dull hammering noises, each one preceding a muffled sound like breaking glass a long distance off. There was no way of telling the direction the sound was coming from.
“The submarine!” Katya exclaimed.
“It’s too distinct, too contained,” Costas said. “Any explosion in the
“I’ve heard that sound before.” Jack was looking at Costas, his anger palpable even through the visor. “I think it’s the vibration of shells tearing through a hull. There’s a gun battle raging on the surface above us.”
“Whatever it is, we need to find a way out now,” Costas urged. “Come on.”
They finned towards the entrance that marked the right-hand turn indicated by the symbol. After passing the basins, Costas paused to check his compass bearing.
“Due south,” he announced. “All we do now is follow this route as far as it goes and then turn left.”
Katya was approaching the entranceway a few metres ahead of the other two. She suddenly halted.
“Look up,” she said excitedly.
Above the entranceway was a huge lintel carved out of the rock. The front was deeply scored with symbols, some occupying the full half-metre height of the slab. They were separated into two groups of four, each group surrounded by an incised boundary like a hieroglyphic cartouche.
There was no mistaking what they were.
“The sheaf of corn. The paddle. The half-moon. And those Mohican heads,” Katya said.
“It’s the final proof,” Jack murmured. “The Phaistos disc, the golden disc from the wreck. Both of them came from this place. We’re looking at the sacred script of Atlantis.”
“What does it mean?” Costas asked.
Katya was already consulting her palm computer. She and Dillen had programmed in a concordance which matched each of the Atlantis symbols with its syllabic equivalent in Linear A, providing a best-fit translation from the Minoan vocabulary so far deciphered.
“
She scrolled through alphabetically, Jack and Costas watching the flickering words as they appeared on the LCD display.
“They’re both in the Minoan lexicon,” she announced. “
They peered up at the inscription above their heads, the symbols standing out as crisp as if they had been carved only days before.
“That doesn’t sound too promising,” Costas said glumly.
Jack winced and the other two looked at him with renewed anxiety. He summoned up his remaining energy and powered ahead into the passageway.
“This should be the last leg. Follow me.”
Costas lingered for a moment to tie the final spool of tape to his backpack. All he could see of the other two was the turbulence in their wake; the passageway sloped up at a shallow angle. As he finned after them the reassuring glimmer of their headlamps appeared further up the tunnel.
“Keep your ascent rate below five seconds per metre,” he instructed. “Our time in that chamber counts as another decompression stop, and with this gradient we shouldn’t need to halt again before reaching the surface.”
The floor was rough as if deliberately left unfinished to provide a better grip. On either side were parallel grooves like the ruts in ancient cartways. Suddenly they were at the entrance to another chamber, the walls falling away into pitch darkness yet the ramp continuing upwards.
It was a cavernous space that dwarfed even the hall of the ancestors. All around them were undulating folds of rock that seemed to ripple as they panned their headlamps back and forth. The sides plummeted into a yawning chasm, the sheer drop broken only by gnarled contusions of lava that punctuated the walls like knots in old oak. Everywhere they looked were twisted rivers of lava, testament to the colossal forces that blasted through the chamber from the molten core of the earth.
“The core of the volcano must only be a couple of hundred metres south,” Costas said. “Magma and gas punched through the compacted ash of the cone to leave gaping holes and then solidify. The result is this giant honeycomb effect, an expanded hollow core intermeshed with a lattice of basalt formations.”
They peered through the crystal-clear water and the ramp revealed itself as a giant causeway, an immense spine of rock that spanned the space as far as they could see. To the left their headlamps played over another massive dyke, followed by another one an equal distance beyond, both projecting at right angles from the central spine and merging with the wall of the chamber.
It was Costas who pointed out the obvious, the reason why the geometry seemed so strangely familiar.
“The central spine is the upper wing on the symbol. The dykes are two of the projections to the left. We’re on the home stretch.”
“It must have seemed awesome to the first people who reached this chamber,” Jack said. “My guess is the other side of the core also has basalt intrusions radiating outwards where the magma followed fissures to the surface. If the pattern’s symmetrical it’s easy to see how it acquired magical qualities. It was the image of their sacred eagle god.”
Katya was transfixed by the spectacular cascades of rock around them. The causeway was like the final bridge to a subterranean stronghold, an ultimate test of nerve that would leave anyone brave enough to venture across it exposed above a moat of fire.
She could just make out entrances in the wall at the end of the two branching ramps. Directly ahead she could see the distant shimmer of a rock wall a hundred metres away, its dimensions concealed in the darkness. She shuddered as she remembered the grim epithet over the entrance into the chamber.
Costas began to swim determinedly along the causeway. “Jack’s only got a few minutes of air left. Time to find the surface.”
Jack and Katya swam on either side of Costas above the ruts which continued from the passageway. Just after they passed the junction with the first causeway to the left, another feature came into view, a depression midway along the central spine that had been invisible from the entrance.
As they neared the feature a remarkable scene unfolded before their eyes. The indentation extended the full five-metre width of the causeway and an equivalent distance across. It was about two metres deep and reached by steps on either side. Overlooking the canyon to the right was a bull’s horn sculpture with the characteristic vertical sides and sweeping interior curve. An identical carving rose up just to the left of centre, and perched between was a massive slab. The horns had been carved out of the rock, their tips almost reaching the level of the causeway, whereas the slab was a lustrous white marble similar to the stone they had seen worked into fantastic animal shapes beside the processional way outside.
As they sank down for a closer look they could see the slab was tilted out a metre over the void.
“Of course,” Jack cried. “That inscription. Not ‘the way of death’ but ‘the way of the dead.’ Ever since we first saw Atlantis I’ve been wondering where the cemeteries were. Now we know. That last room was a mortuary, a preparation chamber. And this is where they disposed of their dead.”
Even Costas was momentarily diverted from the urgency of their escape and swam over to peer down the chasm. He flicked on his high-intensity halogen beam for a few seconds, aware that only a brief burst could deplete his battery reserve.
“They chose the right spot,” he concurred. “The lava down there’s jagged, the quick-drying type, and fills the ravine as a solidified torrent. Seven thousand years ago that could well have been an active duct. Molten lava simmers away at 1,100 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt a car, so you’ve got a ready-made crematorium.”
