Part 24 (2/2)
”Them.” Zoe jerked her chin at the line of large crocodiles before them. ”But don't worry, Captain Courageous here thinks we can crawl by them.”
Pooh Bear's face went instantly white. ”Crcrawl by them...?”
Wizard gazed at the crocs, nodding. ”At this time of day, their blood will still be very cold. The only thing they could really do right now is bite.”
”Biting is what worries me,” Zoe said.
Jack checked his watch. It was 5:47A.M.
”We've got no choice,” he said. ”We've got twentyfive minutes to get to the Vertex, and that means getting past these guys. I'm going in.”
”Er, Huntsman,” Pooh Bear said. ”You know...well...you know I'd follow you anywhere. But I'm...not good with crocs at the best of times and this is-”
Jack nodded. ”It's okay, Zahir. No one's completely fearless, not even you. You sit this one out. I won't tell anyone.”
”Thank you, Huntsman.”
”Zoe? Wizard?”
He could see that they were thinking similar thoughts.
Zoe eyed the tunnel determinedly. ”You can't do this alone. I'll be right behind you.”
And Wizard said, ”I've worked my whole life to see what lies beyond those crocs. I'll be d.a.m.ned if they'll stop me.”
”Then let's do it,” Jack said.
Crawling through the darkness, he came to the first croc.
The great reptile made him look tiny, puny.
As Jack's face came level with it, the croc opened its ma.s.sive jaws, revealing every single one of its teeth, and emitted a harsh belching grunt in warning.
Jack paused, drew in a deep breath, and took the plunge, crawling past the thing's jaws and s.h.i.+mmying around the side of the animal, sliding up against the curved wall of the tunnel.
His eyes came level with the croc's-and Jack saw that those eyes, cold and hard, were watching him every inch of the way.
But the creature did not attack. It did nothing but shuffle on its claws.
Jack wriggled past it, his cargo pants brus.h.i.+ng up against the bulging belly of the beast, and he could feel the flabby give of its abdomen, and then suddenly he was alongside its spiky tail, past it.
Jack let out the breath he'd been holding.
”I'm past the first one,” he said into his headset mike. ”Zoe, Wizard. Come on through.”
THE STAIRS OF ATUM.
IN THIS MANNER, Jack, Zoe, and Wizard slithered down the long tight tunnel, squeezing on their bellies past the five gigantic Nile crocodiles.
At the end of the tunnel, they emerged at the top of a square stone well equipped with a staircase that delved down into darkness.
The stairs bent back and forth as they dived down the well shaft. On the walls of each landing were thousands of hieroglyphs, including more large carvings of the Machine's wheellike symbol.
Jack descended the first flight of steps and came to the first landing......where the Machine symbol in the wall retreated inward by some unseen mechanism and revealed a wide gaping hole behind it, a hole that could contain any kind of deadly liquid...
...but then the Pillar in Jack's hands glowed slightly and the hole instantly resealed itself.
Jack exchanged a look with Wizard.
”Doesn't look like you get past these traps without the Pillar in your possession.”
”Not without great difficulty,” Wizard agreed.
Down the stairs they climbed, winding back and forth.
At every landing, the wheellike symbol for the Machine opened but then closed again when it sensed the Pillar in West's hand.
Down and down.
Wizard counted the stairs as they went, until at last they came to the bottom, where the stairs stopped at a great stone archway-tall and imposing, twenty feet high. It opened onto dense blackness.
Wizard finished his count-”267.”
Jack stepped into the archway, staring out into the blackness beyond it. A light breeze struck his face, cool and crisp.
He sensed a large s.p.a.ce before him, so he pulled out his flare gun and fired it into the black.
Fifteen flares later, he just stood there in the archway, his mouth open in wonderment.
”Now that's a sight you'll remember for a long time,” he breathed.
THE HALL OF THE MACHINE.
The twenty foot high archway in which Jack stood looked microscopic compared to the s.p.a.ce that opened up below it.
The archway stood at the summit of an immense mountain of stone steps-five hundred of them, maybe more-steps that descended to a flatfloored hall that was easily four hundred feet tall and five hundred wide. The colossal collection of stairs stretched for the entire width of the hall, from wall to wall, an enormous mountainside of perfectly square cut steps.
The ceiling of this mighty subterranean hall was upheld by a forest of glorious columns, all of which were carved in the colorful Egyptian fas.h.i.+on, with brilliant redblueand green lotus leaves at their tops. There must have been forty such pillars, all in regular rows.
”Just like the temple of Rameses II at Karnak...” Wizard breathed.
”Maybe the temple of Rameses was a replica built in honor of this,” Zoe said.
Standing at the top of the great flight of stairs, Jack felt like he was standing in the topmost row of a modern football stadium, gazing down upon the field far below.
And there was one other thing.
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