hours.
Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside
the pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild
cry reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a
hullabaloo of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working
in the upper levels of the tunnel.
'Hansith has found something,' Royan cried. 'Dammit, Nicky, I knew we
should have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her.
They came out on the landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded
with chattering, gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his
way through them with Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had
cleared the gallery as far as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood.
The roof above them was jagged and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish
on the ruined agate tiles of the floor Nicholas made out the remains of
the mechanism which Taita had placed in the roof, and which they had
brought crashing down when they had activated the device.
The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill
wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory
examination.
'When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with
the wheel,' he told Royan. 'Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this
must have been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the
levers, we toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once
it started rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked
above the ceiling of the gallery.' He glanced up at the shattered roof.
'Not now, Nicky!' Royan was hopping with impatience. 'Time for your
lectures later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He
has found something else. Come on!'
They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached
Hansith's tall figure.
'What is it?' Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. 'What have
you found, Hansith?'
'Here, effendi,' Hansith shouted back. 'Come quickly.'
They pushed their way to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the
end of the blocked gallery.
'There!' Hansith pointed proudly.
Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine.
Small pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock
wall. Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into
the space it had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin
to race. There was an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first
glance he realized that it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off
at right-angles from the long gallery. It had been concealed behind the
plaster-covered image of the great god.
As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her
warrii breath on his cheek. 'This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true
tomb of Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is
the veritable tomb.'
'Hansith!' Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with
