“We don’t know how thick the doors are. And what if doing that drops the hammer? It’s huge—we’d never clear it without using all the other charges, and if we do that we won’t be able to destroy the meteorite. Eddie, I know what I’m doing. It’s the only way to get into the temple.”
Reluctantly, he backed up. Nina gave him a look of reassurance, then turned to the metal plate. She raised her hand and let it hover over the indentation as she spread her fingers to match the print.
Slowly, she moved it closer, about to press her palm against the stone—
“Stop!” Eddie yelled. She froze. “Don’t touch the fucking thing!” He ran to her and bodily hauled her away from the door.
“Jesus Christ, Eddie!” she cried. “What is it?”
“The hammer’s not the trap. That’s the trap!” He pointed at the plate.
“What do you mean?”
“The whole point of building this place was to make sure nobody could ever use the meteorite’s power again, right?”
“Yes …,” she said hesitantly, unsure where he was leading.
“So why would they make a door that only opens for the exact people who can do that? It’d be like building a bank vault that can only be opened if you’re wearing a stripy jumper and carrying a bag with SWAG written on it! The last person they’d want to let in would be someone who can actually channel earth energy. Someone like you!”
She was silent for a long moment. Then: “Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m an idiot.”
He grinned. “I didn’t want to say it myself, but …”
“No, seriously. I. Am. A. Moron! How the hell did I not figure that out? Oh my God!” She clapped both hands to her forehead. “I fell right for it. I’d be a quarter inch thick right now if it weren’t for you.”
“Well, you’d have been able to slide right under the door.” That triggered a thought, and he looked back toward the lava tube before regarding the doors quizzically.
“You just saved my life, Eddie,” Nina went on. “Again. Thank you. You know, I don’t appreciate you enough. When we get home, you can do that thing that I don’t normally …” He was still looking at the doors. “Hello, hi,” she said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Wife, right here, offering free perversions.”
“It’s a kink, not a perversion,” he said. “And yeah, I’ll definitely take you up on it. But have a gander at this first.” He went to the door and knelt to peer at the crack beneath it, then took out a penknife and opened its longest blade. “Shine your light in there.”
Nina illuminated the narrow gap—and was startled to discover that it was not what it seemed. “It’s a fake!”
Eddie probed it with the penknife. The blade only went an inch deep before its tip found solid stone. “I thought there was something weird about the room,” he said. “It must have been part of the lava tube before the Atlanteans dug it out—but if they built these doors to block the tunnel, why don’t they actually line up with it?”
It was true; the doorway was offset from the entrance opposite by quite an angle. “The lava tube twists about, though,” Nina said.
“Not by that much.” He returned to the entrance and faced into the chamber, pointing directly across it at a patch of plastered wall more than six feet from the doorway’s edge. “Even if it were twisting, the tube should have come in somewhere over there.”
“What are you saying—that there’s another door?”
“No—they didn’t want anyone to get in, so it’s probably blocked off. But I bet the tunnel carries on behind that wall.” He crossed the chamber again and stood before the inscriptions. “This is a closed room, but I can still feel a breeze blowing through. Where’s it going?”
Nina directed her light higher up the wall. At the top of the plastered section were several holes, each a few inches in diameter. “Through those, maybe.” She gathered a handful of dust and tossed it at the small openings. The motes swirled in the flashlight beams—then were sucked into a vortex and vanished through the vents. “There’s definitely something back there. How are we going to get to it?” Eddie drew his gun. “Oh, I see. You’re going to shoot it open.”
“Not exactly.” He turned the gun around in his hand—and bashed its grip against the wall, cracking the plaster.