Seven Ancient Wonders

scenes.'

'I can see why,' West said, not turning from the view of the sea. 'It's totally alien.'

Wizard came alongside West, handed him a printout. 'This is the only reference my database has for Hamilcar's Refuge. It's a hand-drawn sketch on papyrus found in a worker's hut in Alexandria, an Egyptian worker who must have worked on Imhotep VI's reconfiguration of Hamilcar's Refuge.'

The papyrus sheet bore a carefully-crafted diagram on it:

It was hard to tell exactly what the image depicted. Cut off at the top and bottom, it didn't seem to show the entire structure.

'Aqueducts and guard towers,' West said, 'and a filled-in excavation tunnel. Jesus, this place must be huge.' He scanned the landscape all around him, but saw nothing but barren desert and the harsh coast. 'But if it's so huge, where the hell is it?'

He checked his printout of the Euclidian clue:

Follow the Deadly Coast of the Phoenicians To the inlet of the two tridents, Where you will behold the easier entrance to The sixth Great Architect's masterwork. The Seventh has lain there ever since.

''The inlet of the two tridents',' he read aloud. 'We've found the two tridents, so there's supposed to be an inlet here. But I don't see one. It's all just one seamless coastline.'

It was true.

There was no bay or inlet in the coast anywhere nearby.

'Just hold on a moment . . .' Epper said.

He dug into his rucksack and extracted a tripod-mounted device.

'Sonic-resonance imager,' he said, erecting the tripod on the sand. He then aimed it downward and hit a switch. 'It'll show us the density of the earth beneath our feet.'

The sonic-resonance imager pinged slowly.

Piiiing-piiiing-piiiing.

'Solid sandstone. All the way to the imager's depth limit,' Wizard said. 'As you'd expect.'

Then he swivelled the imager on its tripod and aimed it at the ground a few yards to the west, the section of coastline directly in line with the two tridents—

Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping . . .

The imager's pinging went bananas.

West turned to Wizard. 'Explain?'

The old man looked at his display. It read:

TOTAL DEPTH: 8.0 m.

SUBSTANCE ANALYSIS: SILICON OVERLAY 5.5 m;

GRANITE UNDERLAY 2.5 m.

Wizard said, 'Depth here is eight metres. Mix of hard-packed sand and granite.'

'Eight metres?' Pooh Bear said. 'How can that be? We're 130 metres above sea level. That would mean there's 92 metres of empty air beneath that section of ground—'

'Oh, no way . . .' West said, understanding.

'Yes way . . .' Wizard said, also seeing it.

West looked back inland at the sandplain stretching to the nearest mountain a kilometre away. The sand appeared to be seamless. 'Amazing the things you can do with a workforce of 10,000 men,' he said.

'What? What?' Pooh Bear said, exasperated. 'Would you two

mind telling the rest of us mere mortals what in the blazes you're talking about?'

West smiled. 'Pooh. There was once an inlet here. I imagine it was a narrow crevice in the coastal cliffs that cut inland.'

'But it's not here now,' Pooh said. 'How does an entire inlet disappear?'

'Simple,' West said. 'It doesn't. It's still here. It's just been hidden. Concealed by the labour of 10,000 workers. The keepers of the Capstone put a roof over the inlet, bricked in the entrance and then covered it all over with sand.'

Five minutes later, Jack West Jr hung from the Land Rover's winch cable fifteen metres down the face of the coastal cliff, suspended high above the waves of the Mediterranean Sea.

He probably could have blasted through the eight metres of sand and granite with conventional explosives, but using explosives was risky when you did not know what lay beneath you—it could close off tunnels or passageways in the system below; it could even bring down the entire structure, and West's team didn't have the time or the manpower to sift through thousands of tons of rubble for months.

West now aimed Wizard's sonic-resonance imager at the vertical cliff-face in front of him.

Ping-ping-ping-pitig-ping-ping . . .

Once again the imager's pinging went wild.

The display read:

TOTAL THICKNESS: 4.1 m.

SUBSTANCE ANALYSIS: SANDSTONE OVERLAY 1.6 m;

GRANITE UNDERLAY 2.5 m.

West gazed at the cliff-face in wonder. It looked exactly like the rest of the coastline: same colour, same texture; rough and weatherworn.

But it was a hoax, a ruse, an entirely artificial cliff.

A false wall.

West smiled, called up. it's a false wall! Only four metres thick. Granite, with a sandstone outer layer.'

'So where is the entranced Zoe asked over his radio.

West gazed straight down the sheer cliff-face—at the waves crashing at its base.

'Imhotep VI reconfigured this one. Remember what I said before: he was known for his concealed underwater entrances. Haul me up and prep the scuba gear.'

Minutes later, West again hung suspended from the Land Rover's superlong winch cable, only now he had been lowered all the way down the false cliff-face. He dangled just a few metres above the waves crashing at its base.

He was wearing a wetsuit, full face-mask, and a lightweight scuba tank on his back. His caving gear— fireman's helmet, X-bars, flares, ropes, rockscrew drill and guns—hung from his belt.

'Okay! Lower me in, and do it fast!' he called into his throat-mike.

The others obeyed and released the cable's spooler, lowering West into the churning sea at the base of the cliff.

West plunged underwater—

—and he saw it immediately.

The vertical cliff continued under the surface, but about 6 metres below the surface it stopped at a distinctly man-made opening: an enormous square doorway. It was huge. With its bricked frame, the doorway looked like a great aeroplane hangar door carved into the submerged rockface.

And engraved in its upper lintel was a familiar symbol:

West spoke into his face-mask's radio. 'Folks. I've found an opening. I'm going in to see what's on the other side.'

Guided by his Princeton-Tec underwater flashlight, West swam through the doorway and into an underwater passage that was bounded by walls of granite bricks.

It was a short swim.

About ten metres in, he emerged into a much wider area—and instantly felt the tug of unusually strong tidal motion.

He surfaced in darkness.

While he couldn't see beyond the range of his flashlight, he sensed that he was at one end of a vast internal space.

He swam to the left, across the swirling tide, to a small stone ledge. Once he was out of the water and on