Indiana Jones and the Secretof the Sphinx

by Max McCoy

  Anxious to be out of the tomb by daylight, Indy pressed on.

  He almost did not feel the silken thread against his face or notice the crossbow, held in lifeless hands, that was pointed at him. But reflexes took over as he felt the thread part over the bridge of his nose, and finally noticed the gleaming head of the crossbow bolt aimed at his solar plexus.

  The bowstring twanged, but Indy was already doing a backward dive to the steps. The arrow flew over him, slicing the crown of his hat, then smashed into the stomach of a terra-cotta warrior on the other side of the corridor. The warrior, who was holding a battle-ax overhead, toppled.

  Indy rolled away as the heavy ax cut a groove in the step where his neck had been. The warrior disintegrated into a jumble of shattered clay and human bones.

  Indy sat up, brushed the brown dust from his clothes, and shook his head. "I'm getting too old for this—"

  The step beneath him dropped down a few inches, followed by the hiss of air being forced through bamboo tubes.

  "—stuff."

  A stone marble popped from the mouth of one of the warriors and bounced down three steps before Indy caught it. The marble was green, streaked with white, and Indy rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. It was substantial and smooth, the kind he would have called a shooter when he was a kid.

  "This is supposed to be scary?" Indy asked as he tossed the marble in the air and caught it palm-down. "Better try harder, Qin."

  Another marble bounced past him, this time a red one.

  Then he heard the sound of a hundred marbles hitting the floor above him, and rushing down the corridor. Indy stood and took a few more steps down the tunnel, and each step sank a little more. Soon a hailstorm of marbles were dribbling from the mouths of each of the soldiers, and the sound of the stone marbles pouring down the stairs grew thunderous.

  A river of red, blue, and green overtook him.

  Indy stood for a moment while the marbles swept past, then the surge become irresistible. It knocked Indy's feet out from under him and swept him along with the spherical tide, which crashed into walls and knocked over terra-cotta warriors as if they were bowling pins. Swords and knives fell from long-dead hands, and crossbow bolts whizzed in every direction. More marbles were added to the mix as they spilled from the broken clay figures.

  The noise was painful.

  The carpet of marbles made the tunnel as slippery as ice. Indy tried to slow his descent by grabbing hold of the soldiers, but clay arms and legs broke off in his hands. He winced as a fallen sword sliced through his leather jacket and nicked the flesh of his right shoulder.

  "Okay, this is scary," Indy said.

  He pulled his hat down over his ears with both hands and tucked his legs into his chest as the tide carried him swiftly down the spiraling passage.

  The corridor opened onto a funnel-like pit, where thousands of marbles swirled around the rim like water about to disappear down a drain. The weapons and the pieces of clay and bone, which did not roll, slid directly into the depths of the pit.

  Indy took the bullwhip from his belt and, as he swirled around the rim, lashed out blindly for the edge. Above, the whip found something to bite into, and Indy was soon dangling along the far side of the pit while the deluge of marbles washed over him.

  Indy peered into the darkness.

  "Whatever is down there," Indy said, "it can't be good."

  He twisted for a moment before he managed to get a decent grip, then he began to haul himself, hand over hand, up the length of the twelve-foot whip. When he looked overhead, the beam of his electric lamp was reflected by a dozen glittering points of light. At first he thought he was looking up at the night sky, because the points seemed to make up familiar constellations—but the lights faded when he turned his head.

  The slope of the pit began to lessen, and Indy soon had his legs beneath him as he scaled the last few feet. When he reached the top, he stood.

  He felt as if he had come up through a drain in the bottom of the world. The end of the whip had caught the wing of a stone dragon that straddled the funnel on its hind legs and tail and that held the moon in its jaws. Indy knelt down, unsnared the whip, and became entranced as his lamp revealed the seas and craters etched on the ivory moon. It was about the size of a cantaloupe. The harsh electric light bounced from its ivory surface and bathed the chamber in soft, artificial moonlight. Suddenly aware that thousands of things sparkled in his peripheral vision, Indy turned his head.

  Indy found himself in the middle of a jeweled sea, traversed by miniature sailing ships of silver and gold. Above, a canopy of diamonds shone in a midnight sky. The ceiling looked like an inverted bowl studded with jewels, and he could just touch the highest point with his fingertips. The floor of the chamber was flat and appeared to be about fifty feet in diameter. Continents were represented by patches of brown and green, but they were not arranged in the familiar pattern that Indy had become accustomed to since grade school. Instead, they were all a jumble, with Africa, India, and Asia encompassed by a single sea. The Americas and the poles were missing, and the world apparently ended just beyond southern Europe. The continents were studded with landmarks in precious metals.

  Indy was off the coast of a storybook China, where a Great (but miniature) Wall serpentined around foothills of jade. The Yangtze and its tributaries were flowing mercury. The center of the universe, Peking, was marked by a glittering temple.

  Indy was stunned. During a more rational moment, his senses might have reeled at the sheer volume of treasure in the room, in terms of monetary and historical value. But Indy was enchanted, caught in the spell of Qin's perfect world, half believing that he must be dreaming in his bed at the little house in Princeton, New Jersey. Gulliver-like, Indy stepped over the rim of the funnel and reached down to touch the bejeweled world.

  His weight activated some ancient leveling device. Behind him, the moon fell from the dragon's jaws and began to swirl down the funnel. He dove after it, managed to get his fingertips on it, but was suddenly jerked back. The strap of his satchel had caught on one of the claws of the dragon's feet, and he hung upside down beneath the stone monster while the moon circled the neck of the funnel, then disappeared.

  Indy closed his eyes and listened to the pale orb rattle down a system of pipes below him. Then there was a sharp mechanical sound, followed by the gurgle of water.

  This might be bad, Indy said to himself as he tried to untangle the strap. He was unsure whether he would be safer remaining in the treasure room or risking escape through the series of traps that he knew must lie beneath him.

  Already a fine mist was wetting his cheek. Indy sucked his lungs full of air and closed his mouth. In another moment the mist had become a trickle, and then a torrent. He grabbed his fedora just as it was swept from his head. Indy dangled from the strap like a leaf trapped in a storm drain. Even above the rush of the water he could hear a set of massive gears churning below him, and he imagined the brittle cracking of bones as they were crushed to splinters between stone teeth.

  Indy could feel the strap weakening against the weight of the water, and although he tried to pull himself up to grasp the stone appendages of the dragon, he could not. When his lungs could stand it no longer he gasped for air, and was punished by a mixture that left him sputtering.

  Then the water subsided.

  He heard the ivory moon land back in the jaws above him. The sound of rushing air slowed and then stopped. Indy allowed himself to relax for a moment, hanging like a wet sponge. He was glad he had been unable to undo the strap from the dragon's claw.

  "Finally." He sighed. "A break."

  Then the strap, which had been tested nearly to failure by the action of the water and the abrasion of the stone, broke. The movement jostled the stone dragon, and the moon fell once again from its jaws into the funnel.

  Indy slipped into darkness and disappeared down the shaft at the bottom of the funnel. The orb followed after. In a few yards the shaft curved, and from
the fleeting illumination provided by the electric light Indy saw a tiny trapdoor that was the right size for the miniature moon to pass through. He turned, seized the ivory ball, and clutched it to him like a quarterback facing an overwhelming offense. He knew the trapdoor would trigger the deluge once again and that this time, caught in the confines of the shaft, he would drown.

  He had almost stopped tumbling when the shaft curved downward again, and Indy found himself dumped on his hands and knees in a layer of mud and unidentifiable muck in a new chamber. This layer of soft but disgusting material lined the bottom and sides of a deep pit. Indy got to his knees and examined the palms of his hands. Mixed in with the slime were tiny shards of bone. He wiped his hands on his trousers, snatched the ivory moon up, and placed it in his satchel. He tied the broken strap of the satchel together and slipped it over his shoulder.

  Then he examined the rest of the chamber.

  On either side of him were massive stone cylinders, obviously meant to press together under the force of the water and crush the offender. Above the pit, on a jade throne positioned to oversee such gruesome justice, was Qin. The emperor wore an armored breastplate and ornate helmet. Bits of leatherlike flesh still clung to the skull, as well as some wisps of black hair. At his feet were a half dozen skeletal concubines.

  The ceiling was domed, and in the center was an eight-sided aperture. There was a symbol on each side of the aperture, and Indy recognized them as the eight symbols used in the I Ching, the Book of Changes.

  Indy climbed up over the killing wheels and into the chamber proper, where he paused before Qin and tipped his hat. "What an ego," Indy said. "You must have left yourself an escape route, just in case your corpse came back to life. After all, you were a god."

  Indy searched carefully, then found what he was looking for. On the right side of the throne, within reach of Qin's dead fingers, were five bronze levers. Indy kneeled, then carefully inspected them. Odds were that only one of them would reveal a passage out; the other four were sure to be deadly traps. Even if an intruder reached Qin's throne, there was still an 80 percent chance of not getting out alive.

  Indy stood and gazed into Qin's vacant eye sockets.

  "What were you thinking?" Indy asked.

  Numbers three and five, which Qin and his contemporaries probably considered divine, were the best choices, Indy decided. But which to choose?

  Indy looked at his watch. The crystal was broken and the hands were frozen just shy of four o'clock. Time was running out when the watch had stopped, and Indy wasn't sure of how long ago that had been.

  Indy reached for lever five, then hesitated.

  "You wouldn't have made it this easy," Indy said finally. "Maybe it doesn't matter if you choose three or five. Perhaps it's more a matter of where you're standing—or sitting."

  There were five broad flagstones surrounding the throne—two in front, two on the sides, and one in back.

  "Move over, Qin."

  Indy climbed up onto the jade throne and sat as gently as he could in the emperor's lap. Still, a cloud of dust rose from the corpse. Indy winced. Then he reached down, grasped lever number one firmly in his right hand, and tugged.

  The flagstones in front of the throne fell open with an explosive sound that reminded Indy of a trap being sprung on a gallows. At the same time, the aperture in the center of the domed chamber opened. A rumbling shook the throne room as tons of fine sand poured from the aperture and into the shaft that had been revealed.

  Then, as the sand stopped, the throne began to rise.

  Above, Indy could see a glimmer of starlight in a pinkish sky. Below, he could see the shaft beneath the throne as it rose from the floor. Indy fought an urge to jump down. Whatever happened, the safest place in the entire tomb was probably sitting with Qin.

  The throne was rising at an angle of several degrees off center, so that even though the sand fell into the shaft in front of it, the throne would rise up through the same aperture.

  As it rose, it gained speed.

  The throne passed through the aperture in the ceiling, twenty feet above the floor, and continued up at the same slanting angle. Indy could smell the fresh night air, and he could see a wider circle of fading stars at the end of the shaft.

  The throne was going even faster now, and traversed the last hundred feet of shaft in a few seconds. Suddenly it was thrust from the side of the mountain and stopped, in a cloud of corpse dust, with a jerk. Qin's skull rolled from his shoulders, bounced once on the arm of the jade throne, then disappeared down the mountainside.

  Indy was thrown from Qin's lap, but managed to grasp lever number five on his way over. It was the wrong one. He felt the mechanical click, then the throne began to recede back into the side of the mountain.

  Below him, Indy heard a gasp.

  "Ai!"

  A squad of Japanese soldiers, who had been holding Lo at bayonet-point, were looking up in slack-jawed wonder at the spectacle of the jade throne, what was left of the emperor, and Indiana Jones hanging in the morning sky. Lo made use of the moment to flee, and none of the soldiers turned to chase him.

  Given the choice between the certain death of being crushed against the side of the mountain and probable death at the hands of these Japanese raiders, Indy choose the latter. He released his grip on the lever and dropped to the feet of the Japanese soldiers.

  The mountain rumbled, and the shaft seemed to disappear. Then, the round door where he had entered—which Lo had replaced before the soldiers arrived—gave a shudder and was sucked inward as the tomb regained its original pressure differential.

  Indy greeted the soldiers with a wry smile and a salutation in Japanese:

  "Ohio gozaimash'ta."

  One of the soldiers made a move toward Indy with his bayonet, but the squad leader knocked it aside.

  "Not to tell us good morning!" the squad leader screamed at Indy in English. "Not to say anything! What is your name?"

  Indy was silent.

  "What is your name?"

  "You told me not to say anything."

  "Silence!"

  The squad leader drove the toe of his boot into Indy's ribs.

  "You didn't have to do that," Indy said, doubling over in pain.

  "What is your name?"

  "Babe Ruth," Indy said.

  "Stand up."

  Indy stood.

  The squad leader took the Webley from Indy's holster and stuck it into his own belt. Then he took the satchel and removed the ivory moon from it. He held it up for the others to see.

  "Hey," Indy said. "This is still China, and that belongs to the Chinese."

  "Property now of Imperial Japanese Army," the squad leader said. "You have strayed into Manchukuo, you stupid American. Now we take you into custody to help you get back safely."

  2

  Master Sokai

  The prison cell was dark, damp, lonely. Since his capture at Mount Hua, Indy had seen nothing but the back of an Imperial Army truck and the interior of the prison, which he had entered in the dead of night. They had taken everything from him, including his clothes and papers, and had given him nothing in return except a uniform that was little more than rags.

  What light and fresh air that visited the cell came from a small barred window high above Indy's head. The prison had no electricity. When the sun went down and the light from the window died, the cell was plunged into darkness until the next morning. The cell was cold at night, and when it rained the water splattered down from the open window and dampened the pile of straw that served as a bed.

  The latrine was a bowl that was emptied once a day.

  Indy had no idea of his location, or what the Japanese intended to do with him. He saw no other prisoners. The guards brought a bowl of cold rice and a metal can of fetid water twice a day, and Indy was thankful they had thought to feed him at all. He suspected they were keeping him alive to learn more about the interior of the treasure tomb; otherwise, they would have killed him on the spot.

/>   On the fifth day of his imprisonment, a pair of soldiers dragged him out of the cell. The soldiers differed from the slovenly, dim-witted provincial guards that brought the cold bowl of rice every day; these were well-groomed and sharp-eyed career soldiers. The younger was clean-shaven and had exceptionally fine features and jet-black hair, and even so it took Indy a moment to recognize that this soldier was a woman. She wore a heavy canvas flight suit over a tan service uniform, and at her collar Indy spied the yellow-and-red ribbon of a second lieutenant. The other soldier was heavier, a few years older, and powerfully built. He was bald, his jaw was heavy, and his eyes seemed to be furrowed in a perpetual scowl. He wore the dark brown coveralls of a warrant officer, and over his left arm was a white armband emblazoned with the rising sun. Both wore peaked caps with a gold star on the crown.

  As these new soldiers dragged him down the corridor, the regular guards stepped oafishly out of their way and saluted, but refused to make eye contact with them.

  That's a bad sign, Indy thought.

  They threw Indy into a room that was bare except for a pair of straight-backed chairs and a wooden bench. There were no windows, and light was provided by a kerosene lamp that hung from the ceiling. The lamp's wick needed trimming badly, and the flame was ragged and belched carbon up the smoky globe and onto the ceiling.

  The soldiers placed Indy roughly in one of the chairs, then stood at attention behind him.

  On the bench were Indy's clothes, his satchel, his papers, the whip, holster, and revolver, even the ivory moon. The clothes had been cleaned and pressed.

  Standing on the other side of the room was a man in a knee-length black trench coat. He was young—perhaps twenty-five—of average height, slightly built, with brown eyes and shortly cropped black hair. His cheeks were smudged, and even from across the room Indy could smell the odor of petrol and exhaust fumes. Around his neck hung a pair of aviator goggles, and beneath them were a white silk scarf. He was smoking a cigarette with such practiced nonchalance that he reminded Indy of a leading man in a Hollywood film.