“Jack,” Astro said into his face-mask mike, “we’ve got carvings. Lots of them.”
Pooh Bear waved a portable GPR—ground-penetrating radar—device over the image-riddled wall. Kind of like an X-ray, it could detect hollows and voids behind the surface of the wall. “Here! Got a void behind this carving!”
Astro shone his flashlight onto the suspect section of wall, and found himself illuminating a carving he’d seen before:
The symbol for the Machine. “We should’ve known,” he said. “Found it.”
ASTRO AND POOH BEAR then quickly set about affixing a peculiar tentlike device over the point where the lake floor met the wall of the pyramid island, covering the carving of the Machine.
Shaped like a cube, the tentlike device was a portable variable-aperture United States Navy submarine docking door—a gift to West from the Sea Ranger.
Normally used to join submersibles to submarines, it was a rubber-walled docking unit that operated like an air lock: once you affixed it in place, sealing the edges, you filled it with air—inflating it like a balloon and expelling any water from it—thus providing a dry “docking environment” between two submerged points.
There were removable entry holes in each of the cube’s six sides, and at the moment one of these—on the upper side of the docking unit—was connected to the tube that snaked back up to the Zodiacs.
Once the unit was in place, its corner points bolted to the lake floor and to the pyramid island itself, Jack started an air pump, filling the tube and the docking unit with air.
The docking door inflated quickly and suddenly the way was clear to climb down its tube—perfectly dry—and access the wall of the ancient pyramid island.
Jack climbed down the rubber tube, gripping its inbuilt ladder holds, slowly descending into Lake Nasser.
He carried a full-face scuba mask but did not wear it. It was a precaution, just in case the docking door collapsed or otherwise unexpectedly filled with water. He also held the cleansed First Pillar in a chest pack. On his head he wore his trademark fireman’s helmet.
He came to the bottom of the entry tube and stood—thanks to the air-filled docking unit—on the floor of Lake Nasser. His boots stepped down into an inch of water, water that formed a suction layer against the bottom of the tentlike docking unit.
The exposed flank of the pyramid island stood before him, rocky and uneven and glistening wet.
Carved symbols covered it, a kaleidoscope of images in which the carving of the Machine was easily lost.
But there was no discernible door in the wall. Nothing but carving after carving after carving.
Jack gazed at the symbol for the Machine.
It was a fairly large carving, about the size of a manhole. And the six rectangles in it depicting the six Pillars seemed to be lifesized, the same size as the Pillar in Jack’s chest pack.
Unlike all the others, however, the uppermost rectangle in the carving was indented, recessed into the image.
“A keyhole,” Jack said aloud.
He removed the Pillar from his chest pack, held it against the recessed rectangle.
It was an exact match for size.
“You’ll never know if you don’t try…”
And so he reached forward with the Pillar and pressed it into the rectangle—
—and immediately the entire circular carving turned on its axis, rotating like a wheel, and retreated into the wall, revealing a dark round tunnel beyond it.
Jack stepped back in surprise, still gripping the Pillar.
“Jack? You OK down there?”Zoe’s voice asked in his ear.
“Am I ever,” he said. “Come on down. We’re in.”
THE TUNNEL OF SOBEK
THE TIGHT TUNNEL beyond the round entry hole was slick with wetness. A dripping noise echoed from somewhere within it.
Gripping an amber glowstick in his teeth and guided by the light on his fireman’s helmet, Jack belly-crawled for about five yards down the claustrophobic tunnel before he came to its first obstacle: a huge Nile crocodile, easily an eighteen-footer, blocking the way and grinning at him from a distance of three feet.
Jack froze.
The thing was enormous. A great fat prehistoric beast. Its fearsome teeth protruded from the edges of its snout. It snorted loudly.
Jack shone his helmet flashlight down the tunnel past the big croc, and saw others beyond it, maybe four more lined up in single file down the length of the tight little tunnel.
There must be some other entrance,Jack thought.A crevice somewhere above the waterline that the crocodiles have slithered in through.
“Hey, Jack?” Zoe said, arriving in the tunnel behind him. “What’s the holdup?”
“A large animal with a whole lot of teeth.”
