Then Jack turned to face the long line of stepping-stones stretching out toward the colossal tower.
He took a deep breath.
Then he ran, out onto the first stepping-stone.
THE RUN
NO SOONER had his foot hit the first stepping-stone than things began moving all around the immense cavern.
First, a line of stalactites in the ceiling of the cavern—each the size of a man—began dropping from their places, raining down on the stepping-stones, inches behind the running figure of Jack West.
Jack bolted, arms and legs pumping, moving rapidly across the high stones, seven feet above the mercury lake as boom!-boom!-boom! the pointed missiles rained down behind him, some hitting the raised stepping-stones, others splashing into the lake around him. But he outran the rain of sharpened stones.
The flurry of stalactites was also highly distracting, designed to force an error from the intruder, but Jack kept concentrating as he ran, holding his nerve for the two-hundred-yard dash.
He hit the stairs at the base of the tower at a sprint, clambered up them two at a time, came to a high arched doorway…just as a miniwaterfall of amber-colored acid came splashing down across its threshold.
Jack dived under it, somersaulting into the tower a split second ahead of the skin-searing acid.
He turned to look behind him—and saw the long line of high stepping-stones all slowly begin to lower into the lake!
“Oh that’s just nasty…”
At their rate of descent, he reckoned he had about four minutes till they were completely submerged under the mercury lake, cutting off his only means of escape.
“Jack…!”Wizard called urgently.
“I see them!”
He looked upward and, by the light of his helmet flashlight, saw that the tower was completely hollow: a soaring cylindrical well shaft rising ominously into darkness above him, with ladderlike hand—and footholds cut into one side.
Breathing hard, he climbed the ladder-holds, noticing some small man-sized recesses along the way. Curiously, carved above each recess was the Chinese symbol for “sanctuary.”
A groaning noise made him look up.
The distinctive grinding sound of rolling rock, then a faint whistling…
Jack swung into the nearest recess just as—whoosh—a two-ton boulder came plummeting down the hollow shaft, filling it completely from wall to wall, whipping by Jack in his tiny recess, missing his nose by inches.
Once it was past him, Jack resumed climbing, and on two more occasions he dived into other “sanctuary” recesses just before more boulders rained past him, preceded only by the telltale groaning.
“Why do these guys have to be so protective of their treasures…” he muttered.
But then, after a minute of climbing, he came to the top of the tower, to the point where it merged with the ceiling of the supercavern, and found himself entering a space just above the cavern’s roof.
He rose up into a beautiful square chamber, not unlike the entry chamber back near the surface.
Intricately carved reliefs lined the walls: carvings of the Mystery of the Circles and the symbol that represented the Machine, and against one wall, above a low darkened alcove: an image of the Philosopher’s Stone.
There were other carvings, including one of four throned kings sitting shoulder to shoulder and flanked by five standing warriors, but Jack ignored them.
He crossed to the alcove and beheld within it a small stone altar on which stood one of the most beautiful, most exquisite, most magnificent artifacts he had ever seen in his life.
The Philosopher’s Stone.
It wasn’t very big, but the simple purity of its design commanded respect.
Its sides were perfectly lacquered in the ancient Chinese way—the shiny black flanks were of a deep, deep black and were lined with red. Flecks of gold peppered the red lining.
Made of two pieces, the Stone’s body section was trapezoidal in shape, with a rectangular void cut into the top surface. Its second piece, the lid, was smaller, a perfectly smooth square block, and—Jack noticed—exactly the same size as the base of the Firestone.
Peering into the alcove, Jack saw that its roof was hollow, like a chimney above a fireplace, so with a quick lunge, he reached in and snatched Laozi’s Stone and dived out of the alcove—
—a bare second before the alcove—but not the Stone’s altar—was drenched in a waterfall of pouring sulfuric acid that drained away through a grate in its floor.
Jack hurried away from the alcove, stuffing the venerable Stone into his rucksack, and began his breakneck return journey.
Down the hollow core of the tower, ducking into its recesses as more boulders rained down—more now than before; it was as if the trap system knew the Stone had been taken and was doing everything it could to stop the fleeing thief.
Jack clambered down the handholds in the wall, came to the bottom just as another boulder came shooting down the shaft.
