“I’m guessing the same way we got in here,” Jack said, pointing to the floor at his feet.
Zoe looked down—and saw the symbol for the Machine engraved into the marble floor beneath Jack’s boots. Again, the rectangles in it were life-sized.
Jack placed the cleansed Pillar into the rectangular slot nearest to the abyss.
No sooner had it slotted into place than a deep rumbling could be heard.
Jack snapped left, then right, but couldn’t see any obvious source of the sound. Wizard and Zoe did the same.
And then Jack saw it.
Saw a great narrow bridge emerging from the wall of the abyssdirectly below him. It folded upward as it emerged from the wall, like a drawbridge that folds up into place not down, a long railless stone bridge.
Accompanied by the great rumbling, it rose up and up until with a loud boom it stopped perfectly in front of West, a great leaping tongue of stone that formed a half bridge stretching out over the abyss from his feet all the way to…the inverted summit of the pyramid.
“Nice…” Jack said.
Gripping his cleansed Pillar, Jack West Jr. stepped out onto the bridge, absolutely tiny against the vastness of the hall, the abyss and the colossal pyramid.
The sheer rock-walled abyss below him seemed almost bottomless, disappearing into infinite black.
Jack tried not to think about it and kept his eyes fixed forward as he approached the gigantic bronze pyramid.
Wizard and Zoe watched him every step of the way.
Then Jack came to the end of the bridge, to the summit of the upside-down pyramid…
…just as the clock struck 6:11 A.M.
UP ON THE SURFACE of the lake, the first rays of dawn were creeping over the horizon.
Alby had set up his telescope on the surface of the pyramid-shaped island, just above the two bobbing Zodiacs.
He was bent over the eyepiece when he called, “Saturn has just risen over Jupiter! The gap is coming… now!”
Jack’s watch ticked over to 6:12.
After all the grandeur of the hall and its staircase and the great pyramid and the vast abyss, Jack found it odd that the peak of the massive structure could be so small when seen up close—
Suddenly the pyramid began to hum.
It was a low thrumm —a deep and powerful vibration that resonated throughout the entire cavern.
Jack’s eyes went wide.
“Captain West,”came Alby’s voice on the radio.“The Titanic Rising has just begun. You now have approximately one minute to lay the Pillar.”
“Thanks,” Jack replied. “Somehow I had the feeling it’d begun.”
Standing at the very end of the elongated bridge, high above an abyss of indeterminate depth, he examined the summit of the thrumming bronze pyramid.
As he’d noted from the balcony, the massive pyramid did not end at a sharp triangular point. Rather, it was flat. The great structure ended in a very small square-shaped flat section barely a handspan wide, as if its tiny capstone had once upon a time been sliced off.
Set into this square summit was an equally square hole—one that, Jack saw immediately, matched the size of his Pillar.
“Wizard?” he said into his radio. “Any final thoughts? There’s no ceremonial thing I have to do?”
“Not that I know of,”Wizard replied.“Just insert the Pillar into the pyramid.”
“OK then…”
Jack took a final glance at his watch. It was still 6:12 A.M.
Then, gripping his Pillar with both hands, standing high above a bottomless abyss far beneath the surface of the world, he inserted the cleansed Pillar into the matching hole in the pyramid.
THE PILLAR slotted into the pyramid…
…and instantly lodged inside it, half-in, half-out of the pyramid, firmly locked in place.
The ominous thrumming ceased instantly.
Silence hung in the air.
Jack held his breath.
Then—bam!—the clear diamond Pillar, now lodged in the peak of the pyramid,blazed to life, glowing with intense white light.
Jack reeled away, shielding his eyes.
The blinding white light illuminated the entire cavernous space around him, showing Jack for the first time just how deep the abyss below him was. It was unimaginably huge, its sheer walls plunging down beyond even the
