The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,72

set them over and over again, almost like programming them, by recalibrating the astrolabe to each location you go.”

“How?”

She found the last symbol and seated the final pin. “Like this. Depending on where and how many pins you use to lock it down, you can reset it.”

To unlock the one true course.

She took the astrolabe and seated it back into its cradle. She swallowed and glanced to Joe, passing on a silent questioning look.

Do we try this?

He nodded.

She reached to the side of the box.

“Stand back,” she warned and flipped the lever.

11:34 A.M.

Here we go . . .

Kowalski held his breath and retreated two steps with Elena. He worried that the entire contraption might blow up in their faces. He found himself holding Elena’s hand. He felt her tremble—but was it from fear or anticipation?

Ahead of them, the map box hummed, and the astrolabe turned in its cradle, spinning one way, then another. Its inscribed arms swung over its surface in a complicated dance.

“Look at the silver ship,” Elena exhaled in wonder. “I think it’s working.”

The tiny boat glided over the shiny blue gemstone. It sped across the Aegean Sea, briefly pausing at various tiny islands, then onward again.

“I wager those are ports that Hunayn believed Odysseus stopped at. Maybe that last one was the island of the Cyclops, or perhaps the sorceress Circe’s home. . . .”

Kowalski watched as the ship left the Aegean and sailed around the southern tip of Greece. It then spun wildly as it crossed the Ionian Sea.

Elena pointed. “I think that represents when Odysseus’s crew opened a bag of winds given to them by King Aeolus, thinking there was gold inside. The released winds drove the ship away from Odysseus’s homeland in Greece.”

Finally, the silver ship stabilized as it rounded the end of Italy’s boot and passed the island of Sicily. From there it crossed over to a row of tiny golden islands topped by tiny rubies.

Volcanos.

They both glanced out the yacht’s windows to the sunlit calderas of Vulcano. Kowalski almost expected to see a great silver ship glide past the yacht and head to that island.

“Looks like they definitely came here,” Kowalski said and returned his attention to the map.

After the tiny ship reached the chain of volcanic islands, it stopped again.

Elena squeezed his hand.

They both held their breath.

Where will it go next?

But the silver ship remained alongside those islands—and stayed there.

Kowalski finally exhaled in defeat, no longer able to hold his breath. “Maybe it’s broken.”

She shook her head, apparently refusing to believe it.

“Then maybe you have to put in new coordinates. Move those rods around to—”

The map box quaked on the table, making them both jump back. The humming intensified to the whistle of a kettle—then the entire gemlike surface of the Mediterranean broke apart, shattering outward from the volcanic islands into a spiderweb of cracks. The fragmented seams released a sulfurous steam.

Kowalski drew Elena back by the hand. “It’s gonna blow.”

“No.” She freed herself and stepped closer to the map. Her gaze visibly ran along the maze of steaming lines, crisscrossing and bisecting each other across the sea. “It’s like Hunayn wrote. The map’s many false paths.”

Curious, Kowalski risked joining her.

As they watched, all the cracks sealed back up, erasing those false paths, so perfectly that the lapis lazuli looked as pristine as before, like one big piece of the gem.

Except one seam remained—and widened.

Steam from that crack hissed away, replaced with golden fire, the flames rising from the fuel inside the map. They formed a fiery river flowing west from the shores of Vulcano, across the Tyrrhenian Sea to the southern tip of Sardinia, then due south until it reached and traced the northern coast of Africa, heading west.

Elena leaned even closer, risking the heat, the radiation. “All this drama almost looks like some fiery representation of plate tectonics. Look at how—”

“Ship’s moving again,” Kowalski warned her, drawing her straighter again.

Back at the ruby-tipped representation of Vulcano, the tiny ship finally set sail again, diving into that golden river of fire. The flames masked most of its path, but the silver ship flashed out of the gold fire as it paused at Sardinia, then turned and headed south toward Africa.

Kowalski followed that fiery stream along the continent’s coast until it passed through the Strait of Gibraltar.

Where is it—?

A loud voice rose from beyond the lounge’s double doors.

Uh-oh.

Kowalski rushed to the map, while checking the wall clock.

She’s early.

He flipped the switch on the side of the bronze box and closed its