“You’re named after a house ?” Lily asked incredulously.
Iolanthe clenched her jaw. “The handsome captain is indeed correct.” Then in a lower voice: “He is also clearly loyal to his people”—a nod at Zoe. “Once again, your reputation precedes you, Captain.”
Jack nodded. The subtle battle for control of this room was over.
And so he turned to the rest of the gathered crowd: “OK people. Let’s do this. Let’s all open our treasure chests.”
The base had several examination labs, two of which—Labs 1 and 2—were sterile rooms, with two-way observation windows in their walls.
In Lab 1, Wizard had set up the Philosopher’s Stone on a workbench.
In Lab 2, the second clean room, the Killing Stone of the Maya was also placed on a bench. Chunky and solid, with a triangular void on its uppermost side—a void that had once perfectly matched a triangular head-chopping blade—and with rather frightening Mayan inscriptions of human sacrifice all over it, it resonated with menace.
Last of all, in Lab 3, the twins had set up several data projectors ready to roll their startling footage from Stonehenge.
Taking the Firestone from Zoe, West said, “Before we cleanse any Pillars, we need to know where and when they have to be placed. We start in Lab 3. Lachlan, Julius. You’re on.”
THE LIGHTS went out in Lab 3, and as the assembled audience watched in silent awe, Julius and Lachlan played back the video footage of their spectacular ritual at Stonehenge.
Purple light played over Jack’s face as he saw the Firestone burst to life in the midst of the dark circle of ancient stones.
Julius commented: “Note the shapes on the stones, formed by the indentations, the lichens, and the Firestone’s light. We’ll look at those shapes in more detail later, but for now—”
At that moment, the Firestone let loose its six shafts of purple light, sending the laserlike beams into some of the uprights of the henge, one after the other.
And then it was over—Stonehenge was plunged back into darkness—and Julius stopped the playback and projected some digital snapshots onto the screen.
“OK,” he began. “Now let’s go through it all a little more methodically. This is how one of the trilithons looked before the light show…”
He flashed up a digital still:
“During the ritual, however, as the light-beams from the Firestone hit it and the lichens came to life, it appeared like this:
“Note the right-hand upright,” Lachlan said. “And see how the outline of the African continent can be clearly discerned. You can even seen the Mediterranean Sea at the top. The Red Sea, which only flooded in recent geological times, is not yet in existence.”
Lachlan quickly outlined the twins’ theory that the shapes on the stones represented the continents and oceans as they existed millions of years ago, before the melting of the ice caps and the worldwide rising of sea levels had produced the present coastlines.
“What about the outline on the left-hand upright?” Paul Robertson asked from the darkness.
Julius said, “That one’s more difficult. As you can see, it only depicts a sliver of land on the right and at the top, so we’re guessing that it depicts a section of ocean, but we haven’t figured which one yet.”
Lachlan went on. “You will further see on the right-hand upright, three luminous little starlike objects. These are the points at which the shafts of light struck the upright. We have numbered them 1, 2, and 4—while No. 6, as you’ll see, is on the left-hand upright. This is the order in which the light shafts hit the stones of the henge.”
“The order in which the Pillars must be placed,” Wizard said.
“Yes,” Julius said. “That’s right. That’s what we think.”
“I’m glad my years of studying this matter meet with your approval, Julius,” Wizard said with a half smile.
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Julius said. “Here’s the other trilithon that was hit by light shafts 3 and 5:
“Again, we are still working on the exact locations of these points. As you can see, the coastlines are exceedingly old—representing the Earth as it was hundreds of millions of years ago—and so don’t match any existing coastlines. So, like the previous example, we do not yet have a match for these locations.”
Lachlan took over. “In any case, according to Professor Epper’s research, each of these sparkling points represents a vertex, or corner, of a giant six-pointed Machine—”
Julius said: “—Think of two pyramids sitting base to base, forming a diamond within the Earth’s spherical shape.”
Wizard interrupted. “Point of clarification, boys. They represent no less than the locations of six great temple-shrines, underground structures of a magnificence that we cannot even begin to contemplate. It is at each of these temple-shrines that a cleansed Pillar must be placed.”
Julius nodded. “Yes, sorry, good point that.”
“So where are they?” Paul Robertson asked gruffly. “The first one looks like it’s somewhere in Egypt…”
“That’s not a bad guess,” Lachlan said. “The African ones are the easiest to figure out, thanks to the relative stability of the continent’s shape over the millennia. GPS-imaging and satellite photography have proved to be very helpful.”
“Not to mention Google Earth,” Julius added.
