control back to ‘Safe’ and closed the trigger cover. ‘Looks like Alderley’s mate took good care of the explosives. That was a bigger bang than I expected.’ They waited for the dust to settle, then started back down the lava tube. ‘Feel that?’ he asked, after a few steps.
‘Yeah,’ said Nina. The breeze blowing down the shaft was now a gust, strong enough to ruffle their hair. The residual haze in the air was rapidly being cleared. ‘I think we definitely opened up the wall.’ They continued down the curving tunnel. Rubble littered the floor as they got closer to the chamber. The final bend, and they raised their torches to see what awaited them.
To Nina’s relief, the enormous hammer hadn’t fallen, but was still hanging ominously over the room. Below it, the floor was strewn with debris. The wall blocking the exit had been obliterated – as had almost everything else. The blast had stripped most of the plaster from the walls, wiping out for ever the last tale of the expedition from Atlantis . . . and also the remains of its members. The bodies in the burial nooks had been pulverised, ancient bones shattered to splinters. She regarded the devastation sadly. Photographs were little compensation for the loss of such a find.
‘Hey,’ said Eddie quietly, recognising her mood. ‘This was just the outer room, remember?’ He nodded towards the newly opened passage. ‘The Temple of the Gods is right through there.’
‘You’re right,’ she said, composing herself. Eddie headed for the exit; she gave a silent apology to what little remained of Nantalas and her acolytes before following.
Even with the stiff wind at their backs, the temperature beyond the chamber rose rapidly. And as they moved down the short tunnel, the light from their torches was joined by another source from ahead. Eddie at first thought it was daylight, but the colour was wrong: too orange.
Nina had noticed it too. ‘You know we thought the meteorite was in a volcano? I think it’s literally in a volcano.’
The tunnel opened out . . . and revealed that she was right.
They emerged on a large bowl-like ledge jutting from the inside of the volcano’s throat. High above was a circle of blue sky, but the orange light was coming from below. The volcano was still active, a lake of molten lava bubbling away deep underground.
For the moment, though, Nina’s attention was on the ledge itself. A dozen statues surrounded the centre of the bowl. All were mythological figures: gods. She recognised Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Athena, Hera and more . . . the Olympians, the most powerful figures in the shared pantheon of the ancient Greeks and the Atlanteans. They faced outwards 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 sulphur, 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 updraught 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 vapours. ‘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