Andy Mcdermott - Temple of the Gods

‘That, and us getting out alive — I think that’s pretty important too.’ He set off again. ‘Something I’ve been thinking about, though.’

‘What?’

‘Just how big is this meteorite? If it’s, I dunno, the size of a couch, or a car, we’ve got enough explosives to blow it to bits. But if it’s bigger, we might end up making the Group’s job easier. If all we can do is split it apart, then they can get right at the DNA or whatever’s inside it.’

It was a possibility Nina had also considered. ‘The best we can do is… the best we can do,’ she was forced to concede. ‘We just try to make it as hard for them as we possibly can. If they realise they’ve lost any chance to carry out their plan, well, like Glas said, they’re business people. Hopefully we can persuade them to free Larry without being vindictive.’

‘The Group might do that,’ said Eddie, grim-faced. ‘Stikes and Sophia won’t.’

‘Yeah, I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t point out the flaw in my one optimistic thought.’

The Land Rover continued across the empty expanse. Eddie lost sight of the aircraft, not knowing if it had changed course or was simply too far away. The terrain became harder, forcing him to slow down to navigate the rocky surface. Something appeared on the horizon ahead, a mirage rippling through the distorting heat-haze.

Nina peered at it. ‘Is that a hill?’

‘Hills, I think,’ said Eddie, as more shimmering peaks slowly rose into view. He noticed a faint column of what looked like steam drifting up from the tallest of them. ‘Or volcanoes.’ Nina’s lack of a reply made him suddenly very uneasy. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You’re not telling me…’

‘I think that’s where it is,’ she told him. The light but insistent tugging on her soul felt somehow more intense.

‘In a fucking volcano ?’

‘It ties in with Nantalas’s vision. And it fits with what I felt when I put the statues together in Switzerland. If Nantalas experienced the same thing, she’d interpret it based on her beliefs. Remember what the text said in the Temple of Poseidon, about Hephaestus? He was the Greek — and Atlantean — god of volcanoes.’

‘So it is inside a volcano. Great. How are we supposed to get to it?’

‘I have absolutely no idea. I don’t suppose there’s a fireproof suit in our gear?’

‘It’s funny, but I don’t think Alderley thought of that.’

The mirage took on a solidity as they got closer. The volcano was not particularly high, but it dominated the surroundings, a near-perfect cone looming over its foothills. After the better part of an hour they were on its flanks, the steepness of the rocky slope finally outmatching even the Land Rover’s hill-climbing abilities. Eddie stopped the 4×4 on a small sloping plateau and got out, looking up at the steaming summit. ‘So what do we do?’ he asked. ‘Go to the top and look down into the crater to see if we can see the meteor? Or a secret base with a monorail. That’d be cooler.’

Nina smiled. ‘I doubt even Blofeld would be dumb enough to build a base inside an active volcano…’ She stopped, frowning slightly.

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure. It’s another feeling, that there’s something…’ She slowly turned, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked across the hillside at a higher spot.

‘The rock?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel some kind of connection to this place…’ Almost absently, she headed up the slope.

‘Hey, hold on!’ Eddie hurriedly extracted the rucksack from the Land Rover, along with another bag of basic survival equipment, and went after her. ‘Take some bloody water, at least.’ He gave her the bag.

‘Sorry. But whatever it is, I don’t think it’s far away.’

They angled up the volcano’s side. While it was still active, the clumps of vegetation in the dirt, along with geological features that would require centuries, if not millennia, to erode, showed that it hadn’t erupted for a considerable time. ‘One less thing to worry about,’ said Eddie when Nina pointed this out. ‘I don’t want to be hopping over streams of molten lava like Lara bloody Croft.’

‘You don’t quite have her figure,’ Nina joked. ‘But I don’t think we’ll—’

She stopped as she cleared a rise — and saw something ahead.

‘Well, Christ,’ Eddie said, amazed. ‘There is something here.’

Part of the hillside had suffered a landslide, a swath of rock reduced to rubble. But among the debris were stones that very clearly had not been shaped by the random forces of nature. Straight edges and right angles stood out from the scattered scree. Nina broke into a jog towards the broken remains. ‘There must have been something built on the volcano!’

‘Or in it,’ said Eddie as he followed, pointing uphill.

About a hundred feet higher up was a dark opening in the scar where an earthquake had shaken loose the surface. Nina hesitated, wanting to investigate the stonework first, but then headed for the exposed passage. This expedition was not about archaeology.

The smashed masonry had come from a structure marking the way into the volcano, but the almost circular tunnel behind it appeared natural. ‘It must be a lava tube,’ she said as they approached.

‘So what’s all this?’ Eddie asked as they reached more debris on the ground. ‘Did someone build an entrance to it, like a gatehouse or something?’

‘I’ll make an archaeologist out of you yet,’ she said, smiling. ‘But I don’t think it was an entrance. Look how the stones are spread out — it’s an even distribution across the whole opening. This wasn’t built to mark the way in. It was built to block it.’

‘Until the landslide opened it up.’

‘Looks like it.’ They reached the opening. Even though little of the barricade was still intact, what remained had a distinctively harsh aesthetic that immediately suggested an Atlantean influence to Nina.

Eddie peered down the tunnel. It was about twelve feet in diameter, curling away into darkness like the trail of a monster earthworm. He sniffed for any tell-tale hints of sulphurous gases, but smelled only the desert air.

A feeling that something wasn’t as it should be made him move a few steps into the tunnel and sniff again. Still nothing — but now he realised why. ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.

‘This tunnel goes down into the volcano, right? And we know it’s still active because of the steam blowing out of the top.’

‘Yeah?’

‘So how come air’s getting sucked into the tunnel?’ He returned to the ruined wall and scraped up a handful of fine dust, then let the grains trickle out from his hand. They didn’t fall straight down, but instead curved away, drawn towards the shadows.

Nina joined him. He was correct; there was a definite flow of air down the lava tube, and it was at odds with the prevailing wind outside. But she had no clue how to explain it. ‘At least we won’t have to worry about being gassed if we go down there.’

‘ If? ’ said Eddie with a knowing smile.

‘Yeah, we’re going down there. I just wanted to, y’know, preserve the illusion of choice.’

His smile broadened. ‘That vanished the moment I married you.’

‘Hey!’

He winked, then became more serious. ‘There should be a couple of torches in that bag. Let’s have a look.’

Nina found the pair of flashlights and gave one to her husband as she switched on the other and shone it down the passage. The curving walls were slightly ridged, producing the unsettling impression of being inside the ribcage of a snake. The lava tube changed shape as it progressed, its cross-section undulating from a teardrop to a squashed ovoid, but the volume of molten rock that had formed it seemed consistent; the ceiling was never lower than eight feet high. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’