Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

Matt glanced at Pedro who was looking out of the window, even though there was very little to see. “OK?” he asked.

Pedro nodded.

“You should get some sleep,” the professor said. “This could be a long night.”

Two hours later, she stopped and checked her map. The sun had virtually disappeared below the horizon but there was still a red glow in the sky, as if it was unwilling to let go of the heat of the day. The professor pushed the gear stick into four-wheel drive and spun the wheel. Almost at once the jeep began to bounce up and down as it swapped the bitumen surface of the highway for the rough stones and rock of the desert floor.

They drove for another hour. The professor glanced a couple more times at the map but she had a good idea where they were going. After all, she had been visiting this place for more than thirty years and knew just about every inch of it. At last she stopped.

“We can walk this last part,” she said. “There are spades in the back. Also water bottles, sandwiches and – most important of all – chocolate. Peruvian chocolate is absolutely first rate, by the way. Nothing like those sickly little bars you get in England.”

Matt stepped out of the jeep.

He guessed that the great rectangle – the place of Qolqa – must be somewhere in front of him but he could see nothing of it. The rapidly fading light didn’t help. He understood now why the Nazca Lines had remained undiscovered for so long. There was nothing to see at ground level apart from a flat, empty plateau. He was like an ant, crawling across a tabletop. The landscape was simply too big to decipher. Only from above would the pictures become visible. He had seen them clearly from the plane. Now he was among them they had disappeared.

“Look here!” Professor Chambers called out.

She turned on the torch and pointed it down. The beam of light picked out tyre tracks – freshly made, Matt guessed. It seemed that the desert was a bit like the surface of the moon in that any mark stayed there permanently. The professor followed the tyre tracks for a short distance, then swung the torch around. Two cars had come. This was where they had stopped. There were dozens of footprints. Several people must have got out.

“This is going to be easier than I thought,” Professor Chambers muttered.

“What do you mean?” Richard asked.

“Your poem tells us to stand in front of the place of Qolqa. That’s where we are now. And somewhere here there must be… something. As I’ve already made perfectly clear, it must be below the surface because if it wasn’t, I’d have seen it. In which case, I thought we’d have to spend half the night digging. But that’s not the case. All we have to do is follow the footsteps. Mr Salamanda may think he’s clever but he’s left us a path.”

They followed the footsteps away from the jeep and ever further into the desert. After about two hundred metres, they came to an area where some sort of digging had obviously taken place. The earth was loose. And in the light of the torch, the colour was quite different.

“This is it!” Richard said.

“Yes.” Professor Chambers handed him the torch. “The four of you can start digging. I’m going back to the jeep.”

“What for?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to make the tea!”

There was one spade for each of them and together they began to dig. There was barely enough light left to see by. To Matt, it seemed that the other three were little more than shadows. It was still hot. After just a few minutes of digging, the dust had clogged in Matt’s throat. It stung his eyes and settled in his hair. He could feel the sweat making muddy tracks as it trickled down his face. Pedro had stopped digging. He was now holding a torch for the others.

But the earth, already disturbed once, came away easily. In just a few minutes, they had dug a trench half a metre deep. Meanwhile, the professor had returned with the food hamper and a Primus stove. Matt heard the hiss of gas and then the pop of the flame as she lit it and began to boil some water for tea. She clearly had no fear of being seen – but then the stove only let out a tiny pinprick of light in the great emptiness of the desert and it was highly unlikely there was a guard anywhere near.

Atoc’s spade hit the ground with a loud clang. “There is something…” he said.

Richard and Matt stopped and went over to where he was working. He had struck some sort of brickwork.

“Be careful!” Professor Chambers called. Was she afraid of what they might find? Or was it that she didn’t want them to do any damage to something that might be of archaeological interest?

Quickly, the four of them began to scoop away the earth, using the side edges of their spades. Professor Chambers came back over with the torch. Something flat and square had been revealed. She swung the light over it and saw a brick platform, decorated with a design in the centre. As they scraped off the last of the earth, more of the design was revealed. At last they could see it.

Professor Chambers looked down and frowned. “I take it that this is the sign you described to me,” she said. “The sign of the Old Ones.”

“Yes,” Matt whispered. He shivered. The heat seemed to have evaporated. “This is the sign.”

“But what is this thing that it’s on?” Richard asked.

“It’s a platform.” The professor peered more closely at it. “About five metres square, I would say. The bricks are made of andesite. Nothing unusual about that. But the design! Arrows and squiggly lines. That’s quite wrong!”

Pedro asked a question. Atoc translated. “What is it doing here?”

“Do you know?” Matt asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do have a pretty good idea.” Professor Chambers ran the torch over the surface one last time. “Let’s have some tea before we cover this back up,” she suggested. “And while we’re sitting down, we can have a talk.”

They went back to the Primus stove and Professor Chambers filled five mugs with hot, sweet tea made with mint leaves that she had picked from her garden. Apart from the hiss of the gas, all was silent in the great emptiness of the desert.

“I’ll try to keep this simple,” she began. “Although it isn’t. It’s actually bloody complicated. But I’ve told you about the mystery of the Nazca Lines. Now I’ve got to explain to you my solution to the mystery. I actually wrote a book about it a while ago although not many people believed me.” She fell silent for a moment. “Maybe Salamanda read it. Maybe I’m partly responsible for everything that’s happened. I’ll try to explain.

“As I told you, I’ve studied the lines for most of my life. I was fascinated by them from the moment that I first saw them, and at the time I thought it was because they were so beautiful… so very perfect. But as the years went on, I realized that I was wrong. I can’t explain how it happened but I began to believe that they… that there was something evil about them. The pictures of the animals are wonderful. I don’t deny it. But it crossed my mind that to the ancient Nazcan people two thousand years ago, they must have been terrifying too. Huge spiders. Monstrous whales. Even the monkey is grotesque, reaching out with its spindly arms. It has only four fingers on one hand. Why do you think that the people who drew the lines gave it one finger too few?”

“Maybe they couldn’t count,” Richard said.

“No, no. They could count perfectly well. But, you see, in primitive societies, deformity is something to be feared, a bad omen. Maybe that’s the point. All the animals could have been drawn simply to scare people.”

She took out another cigar and lit it. The smoke shone silver against the black night sky.