Treasure of Khan

"Does anything correlate with your cryptic cheetah skin?" Summer asked.

"It is impossible to date, but the voyage depicted shows some interesting similarities," Pitt replied. "The lead vessel is a mammoth four-masted junk, which seems to match the size of your wreck, based on the rudder uncovered by Dirk and Jack. Unfortunately, there was no narrative accompanying the images.

Only a few decipherable words appear on the skin, which translates as 'A lasting voyage to paradise.' "

Pitt sat down and studied the two-dimensional artistry on the animal skin again. The series of drawings clearly showed a four-masted junk at sail with two smaller support ships. Several panels depicted a long ocean voyage until the ships arrived at a cluster of islands. Though crudely marked, the islands lay in the same relative position as the largest of Hawaii's eight islands. The large junk was shown landing on the biggest island, anchoring near a cave at the base of a high cliff. The final panel was what most intrigued Pitt. It showed the moored ship near some crates at the base of the cliff. Fire and smoke enveloped the ship and the surrounding landside. Pitt studied a flag burning on the ship's mast with particular interest.

"The volcanic eruption fits like a glove," he said. "The flames in the drawing look like a brush fire, but that's the secret. It wasn't a fire at all but a volcanic eruption."

"Those crates," Summer said. "They must contain some sort of treasure or valuables. Tong, or Borjin, as you've said his real name is, knew something about the ship's cargo. That's why they were trying to open up the lava field with a directed earthquake."

"I guess the laugh is on them," Dirk said. "The treasure, or whatever it is, wasn't even on the ship. If the drawing is correct, then the cargo was taken ashore and destroyed by the lava flows."

"Was it destroyed?" Pitt asked with a wily grin.

"How could it have survived the lava flows?" Summer asked. She picked up the magnifying glass and studied the last panel. Her eyebrows arched just a trace as she studied the crates surrounded by black stone. The image showed no flames on or about the crates.

"They are not on fire in the picture. Do you really think they could have survived?"

"I'd say it is worth a look. Let's go get wet and find out for sure."

"But would it have to be buried in lava?" Dirk protested.

"Have a little faith in the old man," Pitt smiled, then headed off the bridge.

With a high degree of skepticism, Dirk and Summer followed their father to the rear of the ship and assembled three sets of dive gear. Loaded into a Zodiac, they were lowered over the side of the ship by Jack Dahlgren.

"I'll have a tequila waiting for the first person who finds a Ming vase," he joked as he cast off the rubber boat.

"Don't forget the salt and lime," Summer shouted back.

Pitt steered the Zodiac toward the shore, angling to one side of the cove before killing the motor a few yards from the surf line. Dirk tossed an anchor over the side to secure their position, then the threesome slid into their dive gear.

"We'll run parallel to shore as close to the surf line as we can get," Pitt instructed. "Just watch out for the breakers."

"And what exactly are we looking for?" Dirk asked.

"A stairway to heaven." His father smiled cryptically, then pulled his mask down over his face. Sitting on the edge of the boat, he leaned over backward and dropped into the water, disappearing under a small wave. Dirk and Summer quickly adjusted their masks and regulators, then followed him over the side.

They converged on the bottom, less than twenty feet below, in water that was dark and turbid. The crashing surf roiled the water with foam and silt, reducing the visibility to just a few feet. Summer saw her father nod at her then turn and head into the murk. She quickly followed behind, knowing her brother would take up the rear.

The bottom surface was a bed of craggy black lava that rose up sharply to her left. Even underwater, she was pushed strongly from the side by the incoming waves and she frequently turned seaward and kicked hard with her fins to avoid being body-slammed into a rising mount of lava.

She followed her father's fins and trail of bubbles for twenty minutes before he finally disappeared for good into the dark waters ahead of her. She figured they were roughly halfway across the cove's landfall shore. She would swim another ten minutes, she decided, then surface and find out exactly where she was.

Following the surf line, she felt herself being carried close to a lava rise by a large wave. Turning to kick away, she was surprised by a second, more powerful wave, which pushed her forcefully toward shore.

The wave quickly overpowered her, and she slammed backward into the lava wall, her steel air tank grinding against the rock.

Unhurt by the collision, she remained pi

Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that this was what her father was searching for. She braced herself by the opening as another large wave passed by, then reached around and banged the flashlight against her dive tank. A metallic clanging echoed through the water.

Almost immediately Dirk appeared, looking at Summer quizzically, then eyeing the opening with surprise as she pointed the way. A minute later her father swam up, playfully patting Summer on the head after spotting the tu

Pitt immediately recognized the opening as a lava tube. Its cylindrical-shaped walls were almost perfectly formed, rounded and smoothed as if made by a machine. But the passage was actually the result of a steady flow of hot lava cooling on the surface and creating an outer crust. The liquid center ultimately flowed out, leaving a hollow tube. Lava tubes have been found that stretch fifty feet wide, while a few run several miles long. Summer's tube was relatively small, stretching about six feet in diameter.

Pitt followed the tube for thirty feet, noticing a gradual ascent on his depth gauge. The tube suddenly flared wide, and he noticed a reflection from his flashlight just before his head broke the surface of a calm pool of water. Bobbing on the surface, he turned the light around him. Steep black walls of lava fell vertically to the water on three sides. The fourth side, however, opened to a wide, rocky clearing. Pitt kicked lazily toward the landing as the underwater lights of Summer and Dirk surfaced near him. They all swam to the rocks and climbed out of the water before anyone spat out their regulators and spoke.

"It's amazing," Summer said. "An underground cavern fed from a flooded lava tube. Though it could use a little air-conditioning." The air in the cave was dank and musty, and Summer contemplated keeping her tank and regulator on.

"It was likely a much deeper cave at one time, but became sealed off by the lava flows gushing down the mountainside," Pitt said. "It's a fluke that a lava tube happened to form at its entrance."

Dirk dropped his tank and weight belt, then flashed his light around the clearing. Something caught his eye in the rocks.