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 Marquezs 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 w
ord, 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 Marquezs 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.
"I wonder," she whispered softly, "what it's like to drown."
The minutes passed like years and the next two hours crawled like centuries as the water rose steadily higher until it surged through the hole in the chamber floor and pooled around their feet. Paralyzed with terror, Pat pressed her back and shoulders against the wall, trying vainly to gain an extra few seconds from the relentless onslaught of the water. She silently prayed that it would miraculously stop before it climbed over their shoulders.
The horror of dying a thousand feet under the earth, smothered in black gloom, was a nightmare too ghastly to accept. She recalled reading about the bodies of cave divers who had become lost in a maze of underwater caverns and been found with their fingers rubbed raw to the bone where they had tried to claw their way through solid rock.
The men stood quiet, their mood somber from the buried solitude. Marquez was unable to believe that some unknown party had tried to murder them. There was no rhyme or reason to such an act, no motive. His conscious thoughts languished on the grief that would soon overcome his family.
Pat thought of her daughter and felt a deep sense of desolation, knowing that she would not be there to see her only child grow to womanhood. It did not seem fair that she would die deep in the bowels of the earth within a bleak and barren chamber, her body never to be found. She wanted to cry, but tears refused to fall.
All conversation died when water reached their knees. It continued rising until it reached their hips. It was ice cold and stabbed their flesh like thousands of tiny nails. Pat began to shiver, and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Ambrose, recognizing the warning signs of hypothermia, waded over and put his arms around her. It was a kind and thoughtful act, and she felt grateful. She stared in rapt terror at the hideous black water that swirled beneath the yellow glow of Marquezs lamp, reflecting on the cold forbidding surface.
Then suddenly Pat thought she saw something, sensed it actually. "Turn off your light," she murmured to Marquez.
"What?"
"Turn off your light. I think something is down there."
The men were certain that fear had caused her to hallucinate, but Marquez nodded, reached up, and switched off the hard hat's little light. The chamber was immediately thrown into hellish blackness.
"What is it you think you see?" Ambrose asked softly.
"A glow," she murmured.
"I don't see anything," said Marquez.
"You must see it," she said excitedly. "A faint glow in the water."
Ambrose and Marquez peered into the rising water and saw nothing but stygian blackness.
"I saw it. I swear to God, I saw a light shining in the cleft below."
Ambrose held her tighter. "We're alone," he said tenderly. "There is no one else."
"There!" she gasped. "Don't you see?"
Marquez dipped his face under the surface and opened his eyes. And then he saw it, too, a very dim glow coming from the direction of the tunnel. As he held his breath in growing anticipation, it began to brighten as if it was coming closer. He raised his head free of the water and shouted, his voice tinged with horror. "Something is down there. The ghost. It can only be the ghost that is said to wander the mine shafts. No human could be moving through a flooded tunnel."
What strength they had left drained from their bodies. They stared transfixed as the light seemed to rise through the opening into the chamber. Marquez switched his lamp back on as they stood frozen, their eyes staring at the apparition that slowly rose above the surface of the water, wearing a black hood.
Then a hand lifted from the murk, removed a mouthpiece to an air regulator, and raised a diver's face mask over the forehead. A pair of vivid green opaline eyes were revealed under the miner's lamp as the lips spread into a wide smile that displayed an even set of white teeth.
"It would appear," a friendly voice said, "that I have arrived in the proverbial nick of time."
4
Pat could not help but wonder if her mind, numbed by fright and the torment to her body from the frigid water, was playing weird tricks. Ambrose and Marquez stared blankly, unable to speak. Shock was slowly replaced with an overpowering wave of relief at suddenly having company and knowing the stranger was in contact with the world above. Cold fear abruptly evaporated, to be replaced with inspired hope.
"Where in God's name did you come from?" Marquez blurted excitedly.
"The Buccaneer Mine next door," answered the stranger, shining his dive light around the walls of the chamber before focusing its beam on the obsidian skull. "What is this place, a mausoleum?"
"No," answered Pat, "an enigma."
"I recognize you," said Ambrose. "We talked earlier today. You're with the National Underwater and Marine Agency."
"Dr. Ambrose, isn't it? I wish I could say it was a pleasure meeting you again." The stranger looked at the miner. "You must be Luis Marquez, the owner of the mine. I promised your wife I'd get you home in time for dinner. He stared at Pat and grinned slyly. "And the gorgeous lady has to be Dr. O'Connell."
"You know my name?"
"Mrs. Marquez described you," he said simply.
"How in the world did you get here?" Pat asked, still dazed.
"After learning from your sheriff that your mine entrance was covered by an avalanche, my team of NUMA engineers decided to try and reach you through one of the tunnels leading from the Buccaneer Mine to the Paradise. We'd only covered a few hundred yards when an explosion shook the mountain. When we saw water rising in the shafts and flooding both mines, we knew the only way left to reach you was by a diver swimming through the tunnels."
"You swam here from the Buccaneer Mine?" asked Marquez incredulously. "That has to be nearly half a mile."
"Actually, I was able to walk much of the distance before I entered the water," explained the stranger. "Unfortunately, the surge was more than I expected. I was towing a waterproof pack containing food and medical supplies behind me on a line, but it was torn away and lost after a torrent of water swept me against an old drill rig."
"Were you injured?" asked Pat solicitously.
"Black and blue in places I care not to mention."
"It's a miracle you found your way through that maze of tunnels to our exact location," said Marquez.
The stranger held up a small m
onitor, whose screen glowed an unearthly green. "An underwater computer, programmed with every shaft, crosscut, and tunnel in the Telluride canyon. Because your tunnel was blocked by the cave-in, I had to detour to a lower level, circle around, and travel from the opposite direction. As I was swimming through the tunnel, I caught the dim glimmer of light from your miner's lamp. And here I am."
"Then no one aboveground knows that we were trapped by a cave-in," stated Marquez.
"They know," the diver answered him. "My NUMA team called the sheriff as soon as we realized what happened."
Ambrose's face showed an unhealthy pallor. He failed to display the enthusiasm of the others. "Is there another member of your dive team following you?" he asked slowly.
The diver gave a slight shake of his head. "I'm alone. We were down to our last two tanks of air. I felt it was too risky for more than one man to make the attempt to reach you."
"It seems a waste of time and effort for you to have made the trip. I see little that you can do to save us."
"I may surprise you," the diver said simply.
"There is no way your twin scuba tanks hold enough air to take all four of us back through a labyrinth of flooded tunnels to the world aboveground. And since we'll either drown or die of hypothermia in the next hour, you won't have time to go and bring back help."
"You've very astute, Doctor. Two people might make it back to the Buccaneer Mine, but only two."
"Then you must take the lady."
The diver smiled ironically. "That's very noble of you, my friend, but we're not loading lifeboats on the Titanic."
"Please," begged Marquez. "The water is still rising. Take Dr. O'Connell to safety."
"If it will make you happy," he said, with seeming insensibility. He took Pat by the hand. "Have you ever used scuba gear before?"
She shook her head.
He aimed his dive light at the men. "How about you two?"
"Does it really matter?" said Ambrose solemnly.
"It does to me."
"I'm a qualified diver."
"I guessed as much. And you?"
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