David Golemon - Ancients

"Jack, Sarah knows what she's doing. Unless she's been swallowed up by the desert, there's no way she'll fail us."

The eeriness of the sudden silence did not set well with the occupants of the Land Rover. Sand completely covered the vehicle and the air was growing foul.

"We are doomed because you refused to listen to the people who have lived here for thousands of years!" Arturi said, wiping sweat from his brow.

Sarah looked into the backseat and saw through the dome light that the guide was taking the situation far better than his boss was.

"We have twenty men up there that will get us out. What we don't need is for you to go and lose your cool," Will said, when he saw that Sarah had little patience with the Egyptian.

Suddenly they felt the Land Rover slide farther into the quicksand. Sarah saw long-buried, skeletal-looking bushes slide by the window in the wrong direction and she was worried that very soon they would be too deep to get out without the use of heavy equipment.

"The air's getting a little ripe in here, why don't you open a window," Mendenhall joked.

"Don't do that, you fool--do you wish to kill us all!"

Sarah looked back at Arturi, then back at Will. They both laughed at the same time.

"You are crazy, both of you, laughing at a time like this!" the professor said with as much indignity as he could muster.

"Mr. Arturi, the more you speak, the less air we will have to breathe. Take a hint from your man there: relax."

Sarah's words sounded good, but she knew that they were in a very serious situation. The vehicle was sliding deeper and deeper into the loose sand, one or two feet at a time. It as was if the very ground beneath them was spilling into some unknown abyss.

"Uh-oh," Mendenhall said again as the rate of their sinking increased.

Sarah closed her eyes and thought of Jack. The first thing to enter her mind was the base fact that he would be killed in the assault because they had failed him. The second thought was more personal in nature. The last time they had been together at dinner, she had chided him for being so straight and rigid all the time. She now regretted doing that.

Suddenly the descent stopped as the rear end of the Land Rover sank far lower than the front.

Will looked at Sarah with wide eyes. "I guess this is--"

He stopped speaking when he saw that Sarah's was looking beyond him through the driver's window. All she could do was point with her finger.

Will turned, not knowing what to expect, and his heart rate increased tenfold when he saw the stern countenance of a white face and blank, hollow eyes staring at him at him through the window.

In the backseat, Arturi yelped in terror.

"What in the hell is that?" Mendenhall asked.

"Oh, my God," Sarah said as she leaned closer to Will and shone a flash-light on the face in the window. "It's Apollo!"

"What?" Will asked.

"This is important, Will. What in the hell is it doing here, at the very spot the coordinates said the front gate was supposed to be? Over the years the movement of the desert must have swallowed it up, along with everything the Ancients had marking the place!"

"This is Egypt, young lady, not Greece. Why would a statue of Apollo be here?" Arturi said, when his heart had resumed its normal function.

"Listen, jerk, I know Apollo when I see him. The winged helmet, the--"

Suddenly the guide screamed. Sarah turned and saw what he was frantically pointing to. The rear window of the Land Rover was no longer covered in sand. She could make out ancient-looking timbers. Sarah now understood the reason why the vehicle had sunk beneath the sand. The weight of the Land Rover on the ground had broken support timbers lining the top of a cave or excavation. The sand had started filtering through until enough had vanished beneath them to take the vehicle down. They were no longer sinking because they had been stopped by the remaining timbers that now crisscrossed the back window.

As she shone her light on the rocklike timbers, she saw the cracks not only in the window but in the ancient wood itself. The weight of the Land Rover was starting to crack the remaining petrified wood.

"If this is the spot, it must mean that that timber is--"

"Fifteen thousand years old," Sarah answered Will as the age-hardened wood snapped and the Land Rover, with the great statue of Apollo in escort, started a free fall into the blackened underworld of Egypt.

The large tram system built by Coalition engineers saved hours upon hours of travel time into the bowels of Crete, but it still took close to two hours to reach the bottom. Tomlinson and the other Coalition members were tired and their nerves were on edge as they had received word that a naval task force was headed their way.

Tomlinson seemed not to care about the developing situation as he stood at the door, looking out at the amazing sight before him. Large banks of floodlights illuminated the most amazing scene in human knowledge.

"Oh, my God," Dame Lilith said in wonder as she stood next to Tomlinson and saw what he was looking at.

The Coalition Council watched as workers labored to clear a passage through the crumbled world of Atlantis. Columns the size of which none of them had ever seen before were lying on their sides. Giant statuary of the ancient Greek gods, most without limbs, heads, and bases, were prevalent throughout the city. Buildings lay where they had crumbled and giant mold spores covered most of the marble ruins.

Three great pyramids dominated the distant skyline next to the far side of the great Crystal Dome. A once-great aqueduct system at least four hundred feet high ran through the dome and ended abruptly where it had crumbled not far from the middle and highest pyramid. The magma of the original eruption had sealed the hole that the waterway ran through.

Tomlinson took the first step onto the soil of the world's most ancient roadway. He felt the thick cobblestones beneath his feet and knew the power of the place. The floodlights could show only swatches of what must have been a grand view. Giant lakes of seawater had formed when the great city went under.

"Now, that makes me quite nervous," Dame Lilith said, looking up.

Tomlinson followed her gaze to the darkened sky of the great underground ruin. The lights from below barely illuminated the Great Crystal Dome. Buried under two hundred feet of Mediterranean seabed, the water still cascaded through large cracks in the crystal and its protecting covering of rock and sand.

How many billions of tons of seabed must the architecture be supporting? he wondered.

"After close to fifteen thousand years, why hasn't the water completely flooded the domed area?" Caretaker asked as he studied the geodesic structure.

"Look," Tomlinson said as he pointed to steam rising from a thousand different areas. "The water is boiling off from the magma activity beneath the city. The pressure inside the dome must be considerable, and it assists the structure in supporting the tremendous forces arrayed against it."

"That would explain the horrible humidity and pressure my ears are feeling. But just how stable is the city?" Lilith asked.

"Strong enough to support the weight of the world. What amazing ancestors we had!" he said as he stepped farther into the great city.

A smaller dome, which had once been lined with the largest pillars of all, took up the furthermost portion of the city. The building beneath that dome had been crushed during the final cataclysm that had claimed Atlantis. Tomlinson smiled when he saw the structure through the lights.

"Have the excavation start there, but only after the Wave equipment has been installed completely. That is the priority."