There was a silence. A long silence.
“Mahmoud!”
“Oh, sorry, effendi. I was taking my lazy tea.”
“I’m scared down here, man!”
“And I know it, and I’m trying to make some fun for you.”
He was a great guy and a fabulous scientist, but there was a cultural gulf between a Moslem who had grown up when this was still Turkish territory, and now had to deal with the Brits. “Remember, I’m an American,” he said. This was not the time for practical jokes with the radio.
He took a deep breath, then another. Then he opened his equipment bag and pulled out the radar. It could penetrate limestone to a depth of ten feet, and return detailed imagery of what was there. It could, in other words, locate the joins in masonry construction.
His plan was to send his tiny drill in about an eighth of an inch behind a join, then collect stone right off the join itself.
He did not shine his light around. He knew what was there, and he didn’t want to see just how close the walls were. The ceiling was ten feet, though, so he was no longer being forced to hunch as he had when he was in the passage itself.
Back problems were the archaeologist’s curse. You couldn’t work without hunching and bending, often for hours, often in confined spaces, and the older you got, the more you became aware of this. At thirty-four, he wasn’t feeling it much, not with swimming, squash, tennis and—well, Lindy. No, he worked his back plenty, and had two children to show for it at home. He also had a wife who was working to get one of the most extraordinary jobs in the world. Since 2010, when NASA had announced that some UFOs were indeed intelligently guided craft, perhaps extraterrestrial or perhaps from a parallel universe, the International Advanced Propulsion Physics Seminar had been working overtime to understand how they worked.
She was deeply involved in the politics of science, because she wanted to be on that seminar.
How that might be done by a professor from a college so low on the U.S. News list that it was at the bottom of a fold-down page he couldn’t imagine. She was driven, though, obsessed with getting us off the planet in a very major way.
For his part, Martin worked deep within the archaeological establishment, which was why the revolution he was, in his own small way, creating was so fiercely opposed. But, in fact, the numbers were clear: human history had to be revised, for the simple reason that all of the most mysterious ancient structures so far tested were far older than had been assumed.
He watched as the radar’s computer finally found itself and the tiny screen began to return a sensible image. “I’ve got picture,” he said into the radio.
“Right. You’re good on time.”
The Imperial Department of Antiquities had given them an hour, from four to five in the morning, when the Pyramids at Dawn tours started. They did not want activity in this area of the pyramid during the time it was open to tourists. Inevitably, somebody would buy their way down, and that would mean big trouble for the poor archaeologist in here trying to work, not to say danger for the rubes with the bakshish coming down here to chant or whatever.
He glanced at his watch. It was exactly four-thirty. It would take a little more time to penetrate the drill, secure the sample and withdraw it. He was not good on time, he was okay on time.
Only a practiced eye could understand the readout that presented itself on the tiny screen of the scanner. He was pressed up against the confined second stage of the pit, attempting to avoid the twenty-foot-deep hole that had been dug in the nineteenth century by Caviglia and after him the English explorer—or was that plunderer?— Howard-Vyse. The green readout shimmered, growing lighter where the stone was more dense, darker where the density was less.
Then he found what he was looking for—a dark, straight line. This was undoubtedly a join of some kind. He couldn’t tell, looking at the surface of the wall. For years, it had been assumed that it was carved out of the virgin limestone. Not until radar imagery from above had revealed that there were structured walls down here had it been realized that this particular pit facing was made of quarried stone.
“Commencing drilling.”
“Roger that.”
He took out the long, thin bit and fixed it into the drill itself. The bit was worth thirty thousand dollars, being diamond tipped and made of the hardest tool steel there was, with a Knoop hardness rating of 920. It was only about the diameter of three pins, so it had to be hard in order to penetrate.
As he worked with it, he wondered how in the world the Egyptians had hollowed out diorite jars with drills that must have been not much thicker than this. This drill would not stand up against diorite. In fact, it was being challenged by this granite, and he stopped to let it cool. Although he carried three of the bits, he certainly didn’t want to chew budget by using them up. He had plans for digs all over the world. Lindy might be taking us to the stars, but he was revising history, and that was important, too.
It was then that he noticed the vibration. The sensation was coming up through his shoes.
“Ahmad?”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s something…happening. I feel a vibration.”
“The drill set up a harmonic?”
“Possibly, but it’s off now.”
As he stood there, the vibration became a pulsation. It was quick, regular, machinelike. If he did not know it to be an impossibility, he would have said that a compressor of some sort had turned on somewhere beneath this chamber.
What he must be feeling was some factory in Cairo starting its motors for the day. The entire limestone plateau might be set to vibrating by something like that. “I got it, it’s a city sound. Some factory.”
“A new machine tool plant is a kilometer from here.”
“That would be it.” Vibration, a new variety of pollution. He predicted that it was going to be playing hell with the archaeological district. He returned to his work.
Now, with the bit cooled down, he made better progress by just touching it to the surface, rather than pressing. Farther in, also, the stone was softer. He had been working for some time before he realized that there was dust coming down from above. Once again, he stopped the drill. He shone his light around, following the dust to its source, which proved to be the ceiling.
He was astonished to see that the finished ceiling of the chamber was spitting little geysers of dust, as if it was being compressed, or pressed from above.
“Ahmad?”
“Yes.”
“Anything going on topside?”
“Interestingly enough, I saw a jackal. I thought Cairo had run them all out by now.”
He returned to his work. He was bare millimeters away from getting his sample—and the drill was moving— and there! Now to withdraw and go in with the collecting tool, a tiny claw made of the same hardened steel.
He took the silver tool out of his case and plugged it into the zinc-air generator he was using for power, then inserted it into the narrow hole made by the drill. Or rather, tried. The pulsations made it harder than threading a needle.
“Do we know if that machine shop ever shuts down?”
“Come out, Martin.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m starting to feel it up here, and that should not be.”
Bits of stone were now dropping from the ceiling, and he knew that this was no ordinary event. The reason he knew was that the floor was clean and the room intact. Therefore, this was something new and Ahmad was right, he needed to get out of here right now.
He was millimeters from finishing, though. He watched the now vibrating screen, manipulated the instrument.
“Martin, are you coming up?”
