'Take the right one again,' she counselled, and they followed- it. But
when they came to the next T junction Nicholas stopped and faced her.
'You know what is happening here, don't your he demanded. 'This is
another one of Taita's tricks. He has led us into a maze. If it were not
for the cable, we would be lost already.'
With a bemused expression she looked back the way they had come, and
then down the unexplored passages to their right and left.
'When he built this, Taita could not have anticipated the age of
electricity. He expected any grave robber to be -quipped the same way he
was. Imagine being caught in here without the electric cable to follow
back the way we have come,' Nicholas said softly. 'Imagine having only
an oil lamp for light. Imagine what would happen to you when the oil
burnt out and you were lost in here in the utter darkness.'
Royan shivered and gripped his arm.
whispered. 'It's scaring!' she 'Taita is beginning to play rough,'
Nicholas said softly.
'I was developing rather a soft spot for the old boy. But now I am
beginning to change my mind.'
She shuddered again. 'Let's go back,' she whispered, 'We should never
have rushed in here like this. We must go back and work it out
carefully. We are unprepared. I have the feeling that we are in danger -
I mean real danger, the same as we were in the long gallery.'
As they started back through the twists and turns, picking up the
electric cable as they retreated down the stone passageways, the
temptation to break into a run became stronger with each step. Royan
hung tightly to Nicholas's arm. It seemed to both of them that some
intelligent and malignant presence lurked behind them in the darkness,
following them, watching them. and biding its time.
The army truck carrying Tessay drove back through the village of Debra
Maryam, and then turned off on to the track that followed the Dandera
river downstream towards the escarpment of the Abbay gorge.
'This is not the way to army headquarters, Tessay told Lieutenant
Hammed, and he shifted awkwardly on the seat beside her.
'Colonel Nogo is not at his headquarters. I have orders to take you to
another location.'
'There is only one other place in this direction,' she said. 'The base
camp of the foreign prospecting company, Pegasus.'
'Colonel Nogo is using that as a forward base in his campaign against
the shufta in the valley,' he explained. 'I have orders to take you to
him there.'
Neither of them spoke again during the long, bumpy ride over the rough
track. It was almost noon when at last they reached the edge of the
escarpment and turned off on to the fork that brought them at last to
the Pegasus campThe camouflage'clad guards at the gate saluted when they
arrived. The truck drove through the gates, recognized and parked in
front of one of the long Quonset huts within the compound.
'Please wait here.' Hammed got down and went into the hut, but was gone
for only a few minutes.
'Please come with me, Lady Sun.' He looked 'awkward and embarrassed, and
