Wary of traps, they made their way down the passage.
Something was troubling Nina, but she wasn’t quite sure what. It wasn’t just the adrenal aftershock of having narrowly escaped death. There was something else, a feeling, a
There was no time to think about it, though. Another chamber opened up ahead.
“Hold it,” said Chase, stopping at the entrance. He shone the light into the space beyond. “Smaller than the last one.”
Compared to the expansive pool chamber, this one was miniscule, only about fifteen feet across. As Chase moved the circle of light around, Nina saw that the walls were covered with markings-the same language as on the Atlantean sextant arm, and the entrance of the temple itself.
“Looks safe,” he announced, “but don’t quote me on that. Just be careful.” He stepped into the room, pausing as if expecting some hidden trap to be triggered, then signaled for Nina and Kari to follow. “Okay. So, Challenge of Mind. Go for it, Doc.”
“Right…” she said, taking the flashlight so she could examine the inscriptions on the walls. “Oh God! This could take days to translate!”
“We’ve only got thirty-three minutes to sunset. Think fast.”
“Nina, over here.” Kari had gone to the wall opposite the entrance. A stone block, unmarked by text, appeared to be a door, and next to it was what looked almost like…
“It’s a scale,” said Nina. “A weighing scale.” She aimed the beam beneath it. A trough was carved out of the stone, and inside it were a hundred or so lead balls, each the size of a cherry. “I guess we have to put the right number of balls into the scale. But how do we work out how many to use?” There was a lever by the scale’s copper pan; she reached for it, but Kari stopped her.
“I have a feeling that we only get one attempt,” she said, pointing up at the ceiling. Suspended above them was a large metal grid of foot-long spikes, ready to impale everyone in the room when it fell. Nina hurriedly pulled her hand away from the lever.
She flicked the light across the walls until she spotted large symbols carved over the closed door. They were arranged in three rows, one above the other, with groups of six different symbols in the uppermost one, five in the remaining two. Nina immediately recognized the first symbol. Groups of little marks like apostrophes…
“They’re numbers,” she announced. “It’s some kind of mathematical puzzle. Working out the answer tells you how many balls to put into the pan.”
“Is that all?” Chase sounded almost disappointed. “Christ, even I could do that. Let’s see… the top one, there’s three of those little dots, five upside-down Vs, seven bent-over Ls, two sideways arrows with a line under them, four backwards Ns and one backwards N with a line next to it. That’s 357,241. Doddle.”
“And you’d be wrong,” said Nina, managing a smile. “The numerical order is reversed from ours-the first symbol, the little dot, is actually the smallest number; each one of them is one unit. So the first number’s actually 142,753. It’s the same symbol from the river map on the sextant arm, and I know I’m right about it being a one, because otherwise we would never have found this place.”
“All right, smarty.” Chase grinned. “So the other numbers are… 87,527 and 34,164. So, what, we subtract them? That makes, uh…”
“Twenty-one thousand and sixty-two,” Nina and Kari said together, almost immediately.
Chase whistled, impressed. “Okay, so we don’t need a calculator. But there’s no way there’s twenty-one thousand balls in that trough.”
“What if it’s a combination of operators?” Kari suggested. “Subtract the second number from the first, then divide by the third?”
“Too complicated,” Nina said, staring at the numbers. “There’s no symbol suggesting that you need to perform different operations. Besides…” She frowned, working it out. “The result would be a fraction, and I don’t think putting one-point-six-two balls into the scale is likely to be the right answer.”
Chase winced. “Bloody hell. It hurts just
“The first number plus the third divided by the second is two-point-oh-two,” Kari suggested. “I doubt they would have calculated results down to one fiftieth accuracy. They may have rounded it to two…”
“It’s still too complicated!” Nina cried. “And it’s too
“Tick-tock, Doc,” said Chase, pointing at his watch. “Twenty-nine minutes.”
Nina knelt at one of the walls, scanning the light over the symbols. After a minute, she blew out her breath in frustration. “All of this is about the building of the city and the history of the people afterwards. I don’t see anything that relates to the puzzle at all.”
“There’s nothing about the people before they came here from Atlantis?” Kari asked.
“Not that I can see.” Nina hurried across the chamber to look at the text on the opposite wall. “This is more of the same. It’s almost like a ledger, a record of the tribe year by year. How many children were born, how many animals they had… There must be a couple of centuries of data here. But none of it has anything to do with the challenge!” She jerked an angry thumb at the symbols over the door.
“I just thought of something,” Chase said. “This thing’s a challenge of the
“What do you mean?” asked Kari.
“This is obviously a door, right?” Chase stepped up to it. “We didn’t even think about just opening it.”
“Give it a try!” Nina told him.
Chase reached out and pushed the door. It remained completely still. He tried one side, then the other. Nothing happened. Just to be thorough, he also attempted to lift it, then pull it outwards from the wall. Still nothing.
“Bollocks!” he exclaimed, stepping back. “I really thought that might work.”
“So did somebody else,” Nina said, joining him. “Look! I just realized, the door’s not quite the same color as the rest of the chamber. It’s been carved from different rock. And there are marks on the stones around it-chisel marks, and crowbars. But none on the door itself. This is a newer door; the Indians have replaced it! Somebody didn’t want to solve the puzzle, so they just smashed the door open.”
“The Nazis?” Kari wondered.
“Sounds like their kind of approach,” said Chase. “They must have been able to persuade the Indians to let them bring more than just a flashlight inside.”
Kari nodded. “Probably at gunpoint.”
“Right. Problem is, we don’t have any crowbars. So we’ve got to do it the hard way.”
Nina hurried back to the carvings on the side wall. “I think we still can. These numbers, there’s something odd about them. Look.” She ran her finger along the lines of symbols. “You see? They’re arranged in groups of
“You think they could have been working in base eight?” asked Kari.
“It’s possible. They wouldn’t be the only ancient civilization to use it.”
“What’ve you found? What’s all this eight stuff?” Chase asked.
“I think we’ve been projecting our own biases onto the people who built this temple,” Nina said, excitement glinting in her eyes. “We assumed they were using base ten math, like we do.” She caught Chase’s questioning look. “Our numerical system is based around multiples of ten. Tens, hundreds, thousands…”
“Because we’ve got ten fingers, right. I
“It’s a very common system,” Nina went on. “The ancient Greeks used it, the Romans, the Egyptians… It’s common because it’s literally right there in front of you.” She held up her fingers to demonstrate. “But it’s not the
“Sixty?” hooted Chase. “Who the hell would use that?”
Kari smiled. “You would. Every time you look at your watch. It’s the basis of our entire timekeeping system.”
“Oh, right.” Chase nodded sheepishly.
“There’ve been plenty of other bases used by ancient civilizations,” Nina continued. “The Mayans used base
