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 over 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 room 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 torch 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 round in his hand – and bashed its grip against the wall, cracking the plaster.
‘Aah!’ Nina cried, appalled. She rushed to him as he chipped away at the ancient inscriptions, larger chunks breaking loose. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sorry, but if we want to get through here, this wall’s going to have to come down.’
‘Well, yes,’ she said, flustered, ‘but at least let me photograph it first!’ She hurriedly rummaged through the bag for her camera.
Eddie sighed, but moved back so she could take several pictures. ‘All right, you done?’
‘Yes, okay.’ She hung the camera’s strap round her neck and grimaced. ‘I really wish we didn’t have to do this, but . . . go ahead.’
He returned to the wall and continued his attack. After a few minutes, enough plaster had been smashed away to expose a section of what was hidden behind it.
A wall. But not solid volcanic rock. This was built from stone blocks – another barricade, sealing the entrance to the Temple of the Gods.
Eddie used his penknife again to explore the cracks between the stones. Unlike his examination of the fake door, this time the blade went all the way in without obstruction. He also noticed something else. ‘It’s warm.’
Nina put her hand against the exposed wall. It was noticeably hotter than the chamber’s ambient temperature. ‘Well, we are in a volcano . . .’
‘Yeah, but if it’s warm on this side, God knows what it’ll be like on the other. We don’t know how thick this wall is. Only one way to find out, though.’ He looked at the bag of explosives.
Nina’s shoulders slumped in dejection. ‘Guess I’d better take photos of the rest of the room . . .’
‘Ready?’ Eddie asked.
Nina cringed, covering her ears. ‘Yeah. Do it.’
He switched the channel selector to ‘1’, flicked up the protective cover over the detonation control . . . and pushed the red button.
Even though they were back outside the lava tube, the explosion from the underground chamber was still as loud as a shotgun blast. A gush of dust and smoke rushed out of the tunnel, loose stones clattering down the slope.
Eddie turned the detonator