additional bonuses in silver dollars that they had earned.
'Are we going down?' Royan asked. 'I know we should be careful and check
it for traps, but we are- running out Of time, Nicky.'
'You are right, as always. The time has come when we have to press on
regardless.'
hand, 'Caution thrown to the winds.' She took his laughing. 'Let's go
down together.'
tious step at a They descended side by side, one cau time, with the lamp
held head high and the shadows retreating before them.
'There is a chamber at the bottom,'Royan exclaimed.
'Looks like a store room - what are all those objects stacked along the
walls? There must be hundreds of them.
Are they coffins, sarcophaguses?' The dark shapes were almost human,
standing shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank, around the walls of the
square chamber.
'No, I think those are corn baskets on one side,' she said, recognizing
them. 'Those on the other side look like wine amphorae. Probably some
sort of offering to the dead.'
'If this is one of the funeral store rooms,' said Nicholas in a voice
tight with excitement, 'then we are getting very close to the tomb now.'
'Yes!' she cried. 'Look - there is another doorway on the far side of
this store room. Shine the light over there.'
The beam picked out the square opening facing them across this lower
chamber. It was inviting, beckoning them almost seductively. They almost
ran down the last few steps in . to . the chamber lined with the reed
baskets and pottery wine jars. But as they reached the leveffloor of the
store room they ran into an invisible barrier that stopped both of them
dead and sent them reeling backwards.
'God!' Nicholas clutched at his throat, his voice a strangled choke.
'Get back. Got to get back.'
Royan was inking to her knees, also gasping and hunting for breath.
'Nicky!' she tried to scream, but her breath was trapped in her lungs.
She felt that a steel noose had encircled her chest and, as it
tightened, the breath was being forced out of her.
'Nicky! Help me!' She was strangling, like a fish thrown up on the bank.
The strength drained from her limbs, and her vision began to break up
and fade. She did not have the strength to stand.
He stooped over her and tried to lift her, but he was almost as weak. He
felt his own legs buckling, no longer able to support even his own
weight.
erately as he suffocated.
'Four minutes,' he thought desp i to brain death I 'That's all we have
got. Four minutes and oblivion. We have to get airer her armpits From
behind her, he slipped his arms und locked his hands together over her
breasts. Again he and ied to lift her, but his strength was gone. He
began to tr ds the stairs down which they had walk backwards towar run
so lightly, and every pace required a huge effort. She was already
unconscious, lying inert in the circle of his arms. Her limp legs
trailed across the stone floor as he dragged her back.
The lowest step caught his heels and he almost toppled his balance over
