Atlantis Found

The two were obviously of higher rank and importance than the others. The skeleton on the left was larger than the one on the right. Though all the mummies had worn their hair long in life, it was a matter of simple deduction to tell the males from the females. Males have more prominent mandibles and ridges above the eyes than do females. Interestingly, their headbands or crowns were the same size, as if they had equal power. All the males sat to the right hand of the central figure in a row at an angle. All were dressed similarly, but the weaving of their garments was not as elegant. The turquoise and black opal were not as prevalent. The same configuration was represented by the females who sat to the left of the more richly adorned mummy.

A line of beautifully polished spears with obsidian heads was stacked against one wall. At the feet of each skeleton were copper bowls with drinking cups and matching spoons. Both bowls and spoons had holes with leather thongs, as if they could be slung around the neck or shoulder, indicating that these people had always carried their individual and personalized di

Gu

"Somebody had to be alive to prop them up in the chairs," observed Giordino.

"That's true." Gu

"You're going theatrical on me," Giordino muttered.

"Don't you feel like Howard Carter when he first looked inside King Tut's tomb?"

"Howard was lucky. He found something we didn't."

"What's that?"

"Look around you. No gold. No silver. If these people were related to Tut, they must have been his poor relations. It looks as if copper was their prized metal."

"I wonder when they took eternal refuge here," Gu

"Better you should ask why," stated Giordino. "I'll get the camera out of my backpack so we can record this place and go home. Fooling around in sepulchral crypts upsets my delicate stomach."

For the next five hours, while Giordino recorded every square inch of the chamber with his camera, Gu

When they finished, it was late afternoon. After crawling back through the opening at the cave-in and entering the room with the bones of the castaway, Gu

"What are you doing that for?" he asked.

Giordino paused to stare at him, sweat-streaked with dust ru

The two men made surprisingly good time on the return trip to the aircraft. Although the rain and wind had eased considerably and most of the trip was downhill, only the final fifty yards dictated a climb. They were only a short distance from the tilt-rotor, negotiating a narrow ledge, when suddenly an orange column of flame blossomed and streaked up into the damp air. There was no great thunderclap or earsplitting crack. The sound of the explosion sounded more like a firecracker exploding inside a tin can. Then, as quickly as it burst, the ball of flame blinked out, leaving a pillar of smoke spiraling toward the dark clouds.

Giordino and Gu

The tearing grind of metal being shredded against rocks died away, and the two men stood rooted, neither talking for nearly a minute. Gu

"Impossible," Gu

"The bomb was placed inside the plane before we took off from Cape Town," said Giordino, his tone like ice. "Set and timed to detonate on our return trip."

Gu

"Saved our lives. Whoever the killers are, they didn't count on us finding anything of great interest or spending more than an hour or two looking around, so they set their detonator four hours early."

"I can't believe anyone else has seen the chamber since the castaway."

"Certainly not our friends from Telluride, or they'd have destroyed the first chamber. Somebody leaked our flight to St. Paul Island, and we showed them the way. Now it's only a matter of time before they arrive to study the inscriptions in the first chamber."

Gu

"Do it in code," Giordino suggested. "These guys are good. Ten to one they have a facility for listening in on satellite conversations. It's best that we let them think we're being eaten by fish on the bottom of the Indian Ocean."

Gu

"Then we'd better practice throwing rocks, because that's the only defense we have."

Almost forlornly, Gu

16

The Polar Storm with her scientists and ship's crew had worked its way around the Antarctic Peninsula and across the Weddell Sea when Sandecker's message came in, ordering Captain Gillespie to shelve the expedition temporarily. He was to leave the ice pack immediately and sail at full speed to the Prince Olav Coast. There he was to heave to and wait off the Syowa Japanese research station until further orders. Gillespie called on his chief engineer and the engineer room crew to push the big icebreaker research ship to her maximum. They nearly achieved the impossible by gaining twenty knots out of her. Quite impressive, when Gillespie recalled that her top speed as specified by her builders twenty-two years before was eighteen knots.