… the Olympians, the most powerful figures in the shared pantheon of the ancient Greeks and the Atlanteans. They faced outward to keep watch in all directions, their poses and expressions a stern warning against approaching the object they guarded.
The sky stone. The meteorite. The object that had brought life to earth, and now held the potential to change that life—not with the power of gods, but with the science of men.
Eddie made a face. “I don’t think we brought enough explosives.”
It was not the size of a couch, or a car, as he had hoped. It was the size of a house. In places threateningly jagged, in others smoothed off as if melted, the irregular hunk of rock was a good sixty feet along its longest axis, rising at its highest almost thirty feet above the floor. The whole thing was covered with a grimy layer of ash and sulfur, deposited over millennia by the fumes rising up from the bubbling lava below. The statues around it were similarly defiled.
Nina and Eddie moved closer. As they left the cover of the tunnel, the rush of wind from it lessened—and the stench and heat coming from the bottom of the volcanic conduit hit them for the first time. The enormous up-draft of hot gases rising past the ledge was sucking clean air from outside down the lava tube, keeping the natural bowl at least partially clear of the worst of the toxic vapors. “Christ, that stinks,” Eddie muttered, trying to hold in a cough. “So, this is what everyone’s been looking for?”
“This is it,” said Nina. She went up to the stone, about to touch it, but then drew back her hand.
“What’s wrong?”
“Considering what happened when Nantalas last touched the meteorite, it’s probably not a great idea for me to start messing with it.”
“You’ve got a point.” Eddie looked up at the statue of Poseidon, the god of the oceans holding a metal trident as if poised to hurl it at any intruder. “And he’s got three. This is the Temple of the Gods, then?”
Nina turned away from the meteorite—and froze in momentary shock as for the first time she took in the sheer wall that had been behind her. “No,” she said. “That is.”
A vast structure had been carved out of the cliff, extending almost the full width of the ledge and rising in tiers to more than a hundred feet above. The elaborate yet harsh architectural style was unmistakably Atlantean. The lava tube emerged from the wall at its base between a pair of large pillars; on either side were more statues. Each level of the grand temple above them was lined with more ancient figures.
“God!” exclaimed Eddie, awed. “Or gods, I mean. How many are there?”
“All of them, I think,” Nina replied. The Olympians were the big guns of the lost civilization’s mythology, but there were hundreds of lesser deities below them … and it seemed that every single one was in attendance. The rulers of Atlantis had apparently been unable to decide which of their gods they had angered by unleashing the power of the sky stone—so they’d tried to appease them all.
“That’s pretty bloody impressive. How the hell did they build all that in here?”
“Nantalas’s expedition must have been bigger than we thought. Atlantis was the greatest empire the world would see for another few thousand years, so if anyone had the resources, they did.” She raised her camera again and started taking pictures of the temple. Through the telephoto lens, she saw stairs linking the tiers behind the rows of statues.
“There isn’t time for that,” said Eddie, setting down the rucksack and removing the explosives and detonators. “We’ve found the thing, so let’s blow it up.”
“It’s the only time for it,” she countered. “You saw what the first charge did to the outer chamber—there was nothing left. When we blow up the meteorite, it’ll wreck the temple. Even if I can’t save it, I can’t let this place go unrecorded.”
Eddie reluctantly conceded. “Get your snaps, then.” He checked the remaining detonators, then circled the rock as Nina continued. When he returned, his expression was decidedly more downcast. “You know how I didn’t think we’d brought enough explosives?”
“Yes?”
“We definitely didn’t. Remember what that geologist, Bellfriar, told us about the statues before we went to South America? He said the meteorite they came from had a lot of metal in the rock—and that’ll make it really, really tough. There’s no way these charges’ll be enough to