Raiders Of the Lost Ark

Peruvian didn't move. He stared at Indy in amaze­ment, a mixture of confusion and pain and hatred, loathing the fact that he'd been outsmarted, humili­ated. And then, as the whip around his wrist slackened, Barranca turned and ran, racing after the Indians into the jungle.

Indy turned to Satipo. The man raised his hands in the air.

'Senor, please,' he said, 'I knew nothing, nothing of his plan. He was crazy. A crazy man. Please, Senor. Believe me.'

Indy watched him a moment, then nodded and picked up the pieces of the map.

'You can drop your hands, Satipo.'

The Peruvian looked relieved and lowered his arms stiffly.

'We've got the floor plan,' Indy said. 'So what are we waiting for?'

And he turned toward the Temple entrance.

The smell was the scent of centuries, the trapped odors of years of silence and darkness, of the damp flowing in from the jungle, the festering of plants. Water dripped from the ceiling, slithered through the mosses that had grown there. The passageway whispered with the scampering of rodent claws. And the air-the air was unexpectedly cold, untouched by sunlight, forever shaded. Indy walked ahead of Satipo, listening to the echoes of their footsteps. Alien sounds, he thought. A disturbance of the dead-and for a moment he was touched by the feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like a plunderer, a looter, someone in­tent on damaging things that have lain too long in peace.

He knew the feeling well, a sense of wrongdoing. It wasn't the sort of emotion he enjoyed entertaining be­ cause it was like having a boring guest at an otherwise decent dinner party He watched his shadow move in the light of the torch Satipo carried.

The passageway twisted and turned as it bored deeper into the interior of the Temple. Every now and then Indy would stop and look at the map, by the light of the torch, trying to remember the details of the lay­out. He wanted to drink, his throat was dry, his tongue parched-but he didn't want to stop. He could hear a clock tick inside his skull, and every tick was telling him, You don't have time, you don't have time...

The two men passed ledges carved out of the walls. Here and there Indy would stop and examine the arti­ facts that were located on the ledges. He would sift through them, discarding some expertly, placing others in his pockets. Small coins, tiny medallions, pieces of pottery small enough to carry on his person. He knew what was valuable and what wasn't. But they were nothing in comparison to what he'd really come for- the Idol.

He moved more quickly now, the Peruvian rushing behind him, panting as he hurried to keep up. And then Indy stopped suddenly, joltingly.

'Why have we stopped?' Satipo asked, his voice sounding as if his lungs were on fire.

Indy said nothing, remained frozen, barely breath­ing. Satipo, confused, took one step toward Indy, went to touch him on the arm, but he too stopped and let his hand freeze in midair.

A huge black tarantula crawled up Indy's back, maddeningly slowly. Indy could feel its legs as they inched toward the bare skin of his neck. He waited, waited for what seemed like forever, until he felt the horrible creature settle on his shoulder. He could feel Satipo'spanic, could sense the man's desire to scream and jump. He knew he had to move quickly, yet casually so Satipo would not run. Indy, in one smooth mo­tion, flicked his hand over his shoulder and knocked the creature away into the shadows. Relieved, he began to move forward but then he heard Satipo's gasp, and turned to see two more spiders drop onto the Pe­ruvian's arm. Instinctively, Indy's whip lashed out from the shadows, throwing the creatures onto the ground. Quickly, Indy stepped on the scuttling spiders, stomping them beneath his boot.

Satipo paled, seemed about to faint. Indy grabbed him, held him by the arm until he was steady. And then the archaelogist pointed down the hallway at a small chamber ahead, a chamber which was lit by a single shaft of sunlight from a hole in the ceiling. The tarantulas were forgotten; Indy knew other dangers lay ahead.

'Enough, Senor,' Satipo breathed. 'Let us go back.'

But Indy said nothing. He continued to gaze toward the chamber, his mind already working, figuring, his imagination helping him to think his way inside the minds of the people who had built this place so long ago. They would want to protect the treasure of the Temple, he thought. They would want to erect barri­cades, traps, to make sure no stranger ever reached the heart of the Temple.

He moved closer to the entrance now, moving with the instinctive caution of the hunter who smells danger on the downwind, who feels peril before he can see signs of it. He bent down, felt around on the floor, found a thick stalk of a weed, hauled it out-then reached forward and tossed the stalk into the chamber.

For a split second nothing happened. And then there was a faint whirring noise, a creaking sound, and the walls of the chamber seemed to break open as giant metal spikes, like the jaws of some impossible shark, slammed together in the center of the chamber. Indi­ana Jones smiled, appreciating the labors of the Tem­ple designers, the cunning of this horrible trap. The Peruvian swore under his breath, crossed himself. Indy was about to say something when he noticed an object impaled on the great spikes. It took only a moment for him to realize the nature of the thing that had been sliced through by the sharp metal.

'Forrestal.'

Half skeleton. Half flesh. The face grotesquely pre­served by the temperature of the chamber, the pained surprise still apparent, as if it had been left unchanged as a warning to anybody else who might want to enter the room. Forrestal, impaled through chest and groin, blackened blood visible on his jungle khakis, death stains. Jesus, Indy thought. Nobody deserved to go like this. Nobody. He experienced a second of sadness.

You just blundered into it, pal. You were out of your league. You should have stayed in the classroom. Indy shut his eyes briefly, then stepped inside the chamber and dragged the remains of the man from the tips of the spikes, laying the corpse on the floor.

'You knew this person?' Satipo asked.

'Yeah, I knew him.'

The Peruvian made the sign of the cross again. 'I think, Senor, we should perhaps go no further.'

'You wouldn't let a little thing like this discourage you, would you, Satipo?' Then Indy didn't speak for a time. He watched the metal spikes begin to retract slowly, sliding back toward the walls from which they'd emerged. He marveled at the simple mechanics of the arrangement-simple and deadly.

Indy smiled at the Peruvian, momentarily touching him on the shoulder. The man was sweating profusely, trembling. Indy stepped inside the chamber, wary of the spikes, seeing their ugly tips set into the walls. After a time the Peruvian, grunting, whispering to him­self, followed. They passed through the chamber and emerged into a straight hallway some fifty feet long. At the end of the passageway there was a door, bright with sunlight streaming from above.

'We're close,' Indy said, 'so close.'

He studied the map again before folding it, the de­tails memorized. But he didn't move immediately. His eyes scanned the place for more traps, more pitfalls.

'It looks safe,' Satipo said.

'That's what scares me, friend.'

'It's safe,' the Peruvian said again. 'Let's go.' Satipo, suddenly eager, stepped forward. And then he stopped as his right foot slipped through the surface of the floor. He flew forward, screaming. Indy moved quickly, grabbed the Peruvian by his belt and hauled him up to safety. Satipo fell to the ground exhausted. Indy looked down at the floor through which the Peruvian had stepped. Cobwebs, an elaborate ex­panse of ancient cobwebs, over which lay a film of dust, creating the illusion of a floor. He bent down, picked up a stone and dropped it through the surface of webs. Nothing, no sound, no echo came back. 'A long way down,' Indy muttered. Satipo, breathless, said nothing. Indy stared across the surface of webs toward the sunlit door. How to cross the space, the pit, when the floor doesn't exist?

Staiposaid, 'I think now we go back, Senor. No?'

'No,' Indy said. 'I think we go forward.'

'How? With wings? Is that what you think?'

'You don't need wings in order to fly, friend.' He took out his whip and stared up at the ceiling. There were various beams set into the roof. They might be rotted through, he thought. On the other hand, they might be strong enough to hold his weight. It was worth a try, anyhow. If it didn't work, he'd have to kiss the idol good-bye. He swung the whip upward, seeing it coil around a beam, then he tugged on the whip and tested it for strength.

Satipo shook his head. 'No. You're crazy.'