Ambrose continued through the town of Telluride, busy with the invasion of skiers, and drove into the box canyon to where the paved road ended at Pandora. Pat stared in wonder at the steep cliffs surrounding the old mining town, taking in the beauty of Bridal Veil Falls, which was beginning to cascade with the runoff from the melting snow brought on by the prelude of a warm spring.
They came to a side road that led to the ruins of several old buildings. A van and a Jeep painted a bright turquoise were parked outside. A pair of men were wearing wet suits and unloading what looked to Pat like diving equipment. “What can divers possibly be doing in the middle of the mountains of Colorado?” she asked vaguely.
“I stopped and talked to them yesterday,” answered Ambrose. “They’re a team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency.”
“A long way from the sea, aren’t they?”
“I was told they’re exploring a complex system of ancient waterways that once drained the western flank of the San Juan Mountains. There is a maze of caverns that connect to the old mine tunnels.”
Half a mile up the road, Ambrose passed a huge abandoned ore mill, where a large semitruck and trailer were parked beside the San Miguel River below the mouth of another old abandoned mine. Tents had been set up around the vehicles, and several men could be seen wandering about the camp. The sides of the big trailers were painted with words advertising the Geo Subterranean Science Corporation with home offices in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Another bunch of scientists,” Ambrose volunteered without being asked. “A geophysical outfit, searching through the old mine shafts with fancy ground-penetrating equipment that is supposed to detect any veins of gold overlooked by the old miners.”
“Think they’ll find anything?” asked Pat.
Anbrose shrugged. “I doubt it. These mountains have been dug pretty deep.”
A short distance later, Ambrose pulled to a stop in front of a picturesque little house and parked next to an old Chevy pickup truck. Marquez and his wife, Lisa, alerted to their coming, came out and greeted them, as Ambrose introduced them to Pat.
“I envy you,” said Pat, “living amid such gorgeous scenery.”
“Sad to say,” said Lisa, “that after a year you don’t notice it anymore.”
“I don’t think I could ever become immune to it.”
“Can I get you folks anything? A cup of coffee? A beer?”
“I’m fine,” answered Pat. “I would like to see your discovery as soon as it’s convenient.”
“No problem,” said Marquez. “We still have five hours of daylight left. More than enough time for you to see the chamber and get back before dark.”
“I’ll have dinner waiting,” said Lisa. “I thought you might like barbecued elk.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Pat said, already feeling the pangs of hunger.
Marquez nodded his head at the old truck. “You folks will have a more comfortable ride up to the mine if we take your Jeep, Doc.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in the ore cart, making the descent from the portal into the old Paradise Mine. It was a new experience for Pat. She had never entered a mine shaft.
“It feels warmer,” she observed, “the deeper we go.”
“As a rule of thumb,” explained Marquez, “the temperature increases by five degrees every hundred feet you descend into the earth. In the lower levels of the mine that are now flooded, the heat used to be over a hundred degrees.”
The ore cart came to a stop. Marquez climbed out and dug into a large wooden toolbox. He handed Pat and Ambrose each a hard hat.
“For falling rock?” asked Pat.
Marquez laughed. “Mostly to keep your scalp from knocking against low timbers.”
The dim yellow lights attached to the overhead timbers flickered overhead as they made their way through the damp tunnel with Marquez in the lead. When one of them spoke, the voice sounded hollow against the surrounding rock walls of the tunnel. Pat stumbled more than once on the ties holding the old rusting ore cart rails, but caught herself before falling. She hadn’t realized when she’d dressed earlier in the morning, before flying to Telluride, what a wise decision it was to wear a pair of comfortable hiking shoes. After what seemed an hour but was actually only ten minutes, they reached the cleft leading to the chamber and followed Marquez through the narrow passage.
He stopped at the ladder and motioned upward to where a bright light spilled through the opening in the rock ceiling. “I strung lights inside since you visited yesterday, Dr. Ambrose. The sheer walls act as reflectors, so you shouldn’t have a problem studying the writing.” Then he stood aside and helped Pat up the ladder.
Not having been told what to expect, she was stunned. She felt like Howard Carter when he first viewed King Tut’s tomb. Her eyes immediately locked on the black skull, and she reverently approached its pedestal and stared at the smooth surface gleaming under the lights.
“It’s exquisite,” she murmured admiringly, as Ambrose squeezed through the opening and stood beside her.
“A masterwork,” he agreed. “Carved out of obsidian.”
“I’ve seen the Mayan crystal skull that was found in Belize. This one is far more inspiring. The other is crude in comparison.”
“They say the crystal skull emits an aura of light, and strange sounds are heard to come from it.”
“It must have been lethargic the time I studied it,” said Pat, smiling. “It only sat there and stared.”
“I can’t imagine how many years—generations most likely, without modern tools—it took to polish such an object of beauty from a mineral so brittle. One tap of a hammer and it would shatter into a thousand pieces.”
“The surface is so smooth, it’s flawless,” Pat said softly.
Ambrose swept one hand around the chamber. “This entire chamber is a wonder. The inscriptions on the walls and ceiling must easily have taken five men a lifetime to engrave in the rock, but not before an immense effort was spent polishing the interior surfaces. This chamber alone had to have taken years to carve out of solid granite at this depth. I’ve measured the dimensions. The four walls, floor, and ceiling enclose a perfect cube. If the interior surfaces are out of alignment or plumb, it’s less than one millimeter. Like the classic old mystery novel, we have a drama that took place in a room with no windows or doors.”
“The opening in the floor?” Pat asked.
“Blasted by Luis Marquez while excavating for gemstones,” replied Ambrose.
“Then how was this chamber created without an entrance and exit?”
Ambrose pointed to the ceiling. “The only hint I could find of an infinitesimal crack around the borders was in the ceiling. I can only assume that whoever constructed this cubicle burrowed down from above and placed a precisely carved slab atop the cubicle.”
“For what purpose?”
Ambrose grinned. “The reason why you’re here, to find answers.”
Pat removed a notepad, a small paintbrush and a magnifying glass from a pack she carried on her belt. She moved close to one wall, gently swept away the dust of centuries from the rock, and peered at the script through the glass. She intently studied the markings for several moments before looking up and staring at the ceiling. Then she looked at Ambrose with a blank expression in her face. “The ceiling appears to be a celestial map of the stars. The symbols are . . .” She hesitated and stared at Ambrose with a blank expression. “This must be some sort of hoax perpetrated by the miners who dug the tunnel.”
“What brought you to that conclusion?” inquired Ambrose.
“The symbols don’t bear the slightest resemblance to any ancient writings I’ve ever studied.”
“Can you decipher any of them?”
“All I can tell you is that they are not pictographic like hieroglyphics, or logographic signs that express individual words. Nor do the symbols suggest words or oral syllables. It appears to be alphabetic.”
“Then they’re a combination of
single sounds,” offered Ambrose.
Pat nodded in agreement. “This is either some sort of written code or an ingenious system of writing.”
Ambrose looked at her intently. “Why do you think this is all a hoax?”
“The inscriptions do not fit any known pattern set down by man throughout recorded history,” Pat said in a quiet, authoritative voice.
“You did say ingenious.”
Pat handed Ambrose her magnifying glass. “See for yourself. The symbols have a remarkable simplicity. The use of geometric images in combination with single lines is a very efficient system of written communication. That’s why I can’t believe any of this comes from an ancient culture.”
“Can the symbols be deciphered?”
“I’ll know after I make tracings and run them through the computer lab at the university. Most ancient inscriptions are not nearly as definite and distinct as these. The symbols appear to have a well-defined structure. The main problem is that we have no other matching epigraphs anywhere else in the world to act as a guide. I’m treading in unknown waters until the computer can make a breakthrough.”
“How you doin’ up there?” Marquez shouted from the cleft below.
“All done for now,” Pat answered. “Do you have a stationer’s store in town?”
“Two of them.”
“Good. I’ll need to buy a ream of tracing paper and some transparent tape to make long sheets I can roll—” She fell silent as a faint rumble issued from the tunnel and the floor of the cubicle trembled beneath their feet.
“An earthquake?” Pat called down to Marquez.
“No,” he replied through the hole. “My guess is an avalanche somewhere on the mountain. You and Dr. Ambrose go on about your business. I’ll run topside and check it out.”
Another tremor shook the chamber with a stronger intensity than the last one.
“Maybe we should go with you,” Pat said apprehensively.
“The tunnel support timbers are old, and many are rotten,” warned Marquez. “Excessive movement of the rock could cause them to collapse, produce a cave-in. It’s safer if you two wait here.”
“Don’t be long,” said Pat. “I feel a touch of claustrophobia coming on.”
“Back in ten minutes,” Marquez assured her.
As soon as Marquez’s footsteps faded from the cleft below, Pat turned to Ambrose. “You didn’t tell me your appraisal of the skull. Do you think it ancient or modern?”
Ambrose stared at the skull, a vague look in his eyes. “It would take a laboratory to determine if it was cut and polished by hand or with modern tools. The only fact we know for certain is that this room was not excavated and created by miners. There would have to be an account somewhere of such an extensive project. Marquez assures me that old Paradise Mine records and tunnel maps show nothing indicating a vertical shaft leading to an underground chamber in this particular location. So it must have been excavated prior to 1850.”
“Or much later.”
Ambrose shrugged his shoulders. “All mining operations were shut down in 1931. A major operation such as this could not have gone unnoticed since then. I’m reluctant to lay my reputation on the line, but I’ll state without equivocation that I firmly believe this chamber and the skull are more than a thousand years old, probably much older.”
“Perhaps early Indians were responsible,” Pat persisted.
Ambrose shook his head. “Not possible. The early Americans built a number of complex stone structures, but an enterprise of this precise magnitude was beyond them. And then you have the inscriptions. Hardly the work of people without a written language.”
“This does appear to have the hallmark of a high intelligence,” she said softly, her fingertips lightly tracing the symbols in the granite.
With Ambrose at her side, Pat began copying the unusual symbols in a small notebook until she could account for a total of forty-two. Then she measured the depth of the engravings and the distance between the lines and the symbols. The more she examined the apparent wording, the more perplexed she became. There was a mysterious logic about the inscriptions that only a meticulous translation could solve. She was busily taking flash photos of the inscriptions and star symbols in the ceiling when Marquez climbed through the hole in the floor.
“Looks like we’re going to be here for a while, folks,” he announced. “An avalanche has covered the mine entrance.”
“Oh, dear God,” muttered Pat.
“Not to fret,” Marquez said with a tight grin. “My wife has gone through this before. She’ll be aware of our predicament and will have called for help. A rescue unit from town will soon be on its way with heavy equipment to dig us out.”
“How long will we be trapped here?” asked Ambrose.
“Hard to say without knowing how much snow is blocking the shaft opening. Could be only a few hours. Might take as long as a day. But they’ll work around the clock until they clear away the snow. You can bet on it.”
A sense of relief settled over Pat. “Well, then, as long as your lights are still working, I suppose Dr. Ambrose and I can spend the time recording the inscriptions.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when a tremendous rumble rose from somewhere deep beneath the chamber. Then the grinding sound of crashing timbers, followed by the deep growl of falling rock, reverberated from the tunnel. A violent rush of air roared through the cleft and into the chamber as they were all pitched headlong onto the rock floor.
Then the lights blinked out.
3
THE RUMBLE DEEP WITHIN the mountain echoed ominously from the hidden reaches of the tunnel and slowly faded away into a smothering silence, while unseen in the pitch blackness, dust disturbed by the concussion rolled through the tunnel, into the cleft, and up through the opening of the chamber like an invisible hand. Then came the sounds of coughing as the dust clogged noses and mouths, the grit quickly clinging to their teeth and tongues.
Ambrose was the first to gasp out coherent words. “What in God’s name happened?”
“A cave-in,” rasped Marquez. “The roof of the tunnel must have collapsed.”
“Pat!” Ambrose shouted, feeling around in the darkness. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she managed between fits of coughing. “The breath was knocked out of me, but I’m all right.”
He found her hand and helped her to her feet. “Here, take my handkerchief and hold it to your face.”
Pat stood quite still as she fought to get a clean breath. “It felt as if the earth exploded beneath my feet.”
“Why did the rock suddenly give way?” Ambrose asked Marquez, unable to see him.
“I don’t know, but it sounded like a dynamite blast to me.”
“Couldn’t the aftershock of the avalanche have caused the tunnel to collapse?” asked Ambrose.
“I swear to God, it was dynamite,” said Marquez. “I ought to know. I’ve used enough of it over the years to recognize the sound. I always use low particle-velocity dynamite to minimize ground shock. Someone set off a charge with concentrated powder in one of the tunnels beneath this one. A big one, judging from the shock.”
“I thought the mine was abandoned.”
“It was. Except for my wife and myself, no one has set foot in here for years.”
“But how—”
“Not how, but why?” Marquez brushed by the anthropologist’s legs as he crawled on all fours searching for his hard hat.
“Are you saying that someone purposely set off explosives to seal the mine?” Pat asked, bewildered.
“I’ll damn well find out if we get out of here.” Marquez found his hat, set it over his dust-coated hair, and switched on the little light. “There, that’s better.”
The little light gave but token illumination inside the chamber. The settling dust had the eerie and forbidding look of a waterfront fog. They all looked like statues under the dust, their faces and clothing the color of the surrounding gray granite.
“I don’t care for the way you said ‘if.’ ”
“Depends on which side of the cleft the tunnel collapsed. Farther into the mine, we’ll be clear. But if the roof fell somewhere between here and the exit shaft, we have a problem. I’ll go and take a look.”
Before Pat could say another word, the miner had slipped through the hole and the chamber was thrown back into absolute darkness. Ambrose and Pat stood silent in a sea of suffocating blackness, the initial traces of terror and panic seeping into their minds. Less than five minutes had passed before Marquez returned. They could not see his face because of the beam from his hard hat light in their eyes, but they sensed that he was a man who had seen and touched doom.
“I’m afraid the news is all bad,” he said slowly. “The cave-in is only a short distance down the tunnel toward the shaft. I estimate that the fall extends a good thirty yards or more. It’ll take days, maybe weeks for rescuers to clear the rubble, timbering as they go.”
Ambrose stared closely at the miner, searching for any expression of hope. Seeing none, he said, “But they will get us out before we starve?”
“Starving isn’t our problem,” Marquez said, unable to hide the tone of despair that had crept into his voice. “Water is rising in the tunnel. It’s already flooded up to three feet.”
It was then Pat saw that Marquez’s pants up to his knees were soaking wet. “Then we’re trapped in this hellhole with no way out?”
“I didn’t say that!” the miner snapped back. “There’s a good chance the water will run off into a crosscut tunnel before reaching the chamber.”
“But you can’t be sure,” said Ambrose.
“We’ll know in the next few hours,” Marquez hedged.
Pat’s face was pale and her breath was coming slowly through lips tainted with the dust. She became gripped with cold fear as she heard the first sounds of the water swirling outside the chamber. At first the volume had not been great, but it was increasing rapidly. Her eyes met Ambrose’s gaze. He could not hide the dread that was written in his face.
Atlantis Found (A Dirk Pitt Novel) Page 5