“Oh.”
Jack pursed his lips, thinking.
As he did so, Zoe came up behind him and shone her flashlight past him. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
Then abruptly Jack said, “It’s too cold.”
“What?”
“It’s too early in the day for them, their blood’s still too cold to be a threat.”
“What are you talking about?” Zoe asked.
“Crocodiles are cold-blooded. For a croc, especially a big one, to perform any kind of athletic act, it needs its blood to be warmed up, usually by the Sun. These guys are scary, sure, but it’s too early in the morning for them, too cold, so they’re not gonna be capable of big aggressive movements. We can crawl past them.”
“Now you really are kidding.”
At that moment, Pooh Bear and Wizard arrived behind them.
“What’s the problem?” Pooh Bear asked.
“Them.” Zoe jerked her chin at the line of large crocodiles before them. “But don’t worry, Captain Courageous here thinks we can crawl by them.”
Pooh Bear’s face went instantly white. “Cr-crawl by them…?”
Wizard gazed at the crocs, nodding. “At this time of day, their blood will still be very cold. The only thing they could really do right now is bite.”
“Biting is what worries me,” Zoe said.
Jack checked his watch. It was 5:47 A.M.
“We’ve got no choice,” he said. “We’ve got twenty-five minutes to get to the Vertex, and that means getting past these guys. I’m going in.”
“Er, Huntsman,” Pooh Bear said. “You know…well…you know I’d follow you anywhere. But I’m…not good with crocs at the best of times and this is—”
Jack nodded. “It’s okay, Zahir. No one’s completely fearless, not even you. You sit this one out. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Thank you, Huntsman.”
“Zoe? Wizard?”
He could see that they were thinking similar thoughts.
Zoe eyed the tunnel determinedly. “You can’t do this alone. I’ll be right behind you.”
And Wizard said, “I’ve worked my whole life to see what lies beyond those crocs. I’ll be damned if they’ll stop me.”
“Then let’s do it,” Jack said.
Crawling through the darkness, he came to the first croc.
The great reptile made him look tiny, puny.
As Jack’s face came level with it, the croc opened its massive jaws, revealing every single one of its teeth, and emitted a harsh belching grunt in warning.
Jack paused, drew in a deep breath, and took the plunge, crawling past the thing’s jaws and shimmying around the side of the animal, sliding up against the curved wall of the tunnel.
His eyes came level with the croc’s—and Jack saw that those eyes, cold and hard, were watching him every inch of the way.
But the creature did not attack. It did nothing but shuffle on its claws.
Jack wriggled past it, his cargo pants brushing up against the bulging belly of the beast, and he could feel the flabby give of its abdomen, and then suddenly he was alongside its spiky tail, past it.
Jack let out the breath he’d been holding.
“I’m past the first one,” he said into his headset mike. “Zoe, Wizard. Come on through.”
THE STAIRS OF ATUM
IN THIS MANNER, Jack, Zoe, and Wizard slithered down the long tight tunnel, squeezing on their bellies past the five gigantic Nile crocodiles.
At the end of the tunnel, they emerged at the top of a square stone well equipped with a staircase that delved down into darkness.
The stairs bent back and forth as they dived down the well shaft. On the walls of each landing were thousands of hieroglyphs, including more large carvings of the Machine’s wheel-like symbol.
Jack descended the first flight of steps and came to the first landing……where the Machine symbol in the wall retreated inward by some unseen mechanism and revealed a wide gaping hole behind it, a hole that could contain any kind of deadly liquid…
…but then the Pillar in Jack’s hands glowed slightly and the hole instantly resealed itself.
Jack exchanged a look with Wizard.
