Indiana Jones and the Secretof the Sphinx (2 page)

Lo covered his ears against the clanging sound.

Indy continued to hammer, quicker and with more vigor, turning the chisel as he went. More sparks and bits of granite erupted from the point of the chisel.

He stopped after a dozen blows, blew away the rock dust, and inspected the depression he was making in the stone door. "Maybe I've got the wrong spot, but from the book I found in Cairo—" Indy gritted his teeth. "No, this is it. I haven't made a mistake."

Indy placed the chisel firmly against the spot, drew the hammer back, and struck. The chisel broke through—accompanied by a sound like a rifle shot—then disappeared from Indy's hand as it was snatched through the door by some unseen power.

Lo placed a hand to his mouth and stepped back.

There was a whistling sound as a torrent of night air was sucked in through the hole. Within seconds, the surface of the door around the hole was coated with a white layer of frost that was quickly turning to ice.

"Black magic," Lo stuttered.

"Not quite," Indy said when the rush of air had subsided. Indy grasped the handle and pulled. The round door, which fit like a tapered cork into the pipelike tunnel behind it, began to come forward. Lo rushed to help Indy with the door, and soon the three-hundred-pound cork was resting between them.

"But how?" Lo asked.

"Vacuum," Indy said. "The tomb had been sealed with a partial vacuum. Just a slight difference in air pressure makes locks and chains unnecessary. You found out that a team of horses couldn't have pulled that door away. But break the seal and equalize the pressure, and it becomes rather simple."

Lo nodded.

"The chisel broke through the mortared-over holes where the tomb builders stuck their hoses to pump the air out," Indy said as he brought out a battery-powered light. He strapped the lamp and reflector over his fedora and clipped the battery pack to his belt. To keep the power cord out of his face, he ran it through a belt loop over his back pocket before plugging it in.

"What Jones think is inside?" Lo asked, his eyes gleaming. "The stories I have heard since childhood—mountains of gold, rivers of silver, a skyful of jewels."

"I intend to find out," Indy said as he climbed into the tunnel. Then he shot Lo a stern look. "I will assume anybody else in there with me means trouble—and act accordingly." Indy rested his right hand on the holstered butt of his .38-caliber revolver. "If I find anybody else in there with me—well, anybody else who hasn't been dead for a few thousand years—I will shoot them. Do you understand?"

Lo nodded.

"Good," Indy said. "Stay here and stand guard. If there's any trouble, give a shout. If I'm not back in an hour before first light, leave."

Indy looked at his watch. It was past one o'clock in the morning. Then he took a gulp of fresh night air and ducked into the tunnel. It soon opened onto a wide corridor with stairs spiraling downward. The vaulted ceiling was high enough for Indy to stand without worrying about crushing the crown of his hat, and the corridor seemed unthreatening until Indy completed the first revolution of the downward spiral.

He was greeted by the first of what would become a seemingly endless row of terra-cotta soldiers lining the sides of the tunnel, standing at the ready, their faces frozen forever in menace. Their eyes were polished stones of blue, red, and green, which had been set into the clay before it dried. Their cheeks bulged out, as if they were preparing to blow up an ancient balloon, and their lips formed delicate O's, and behind many of these lips were the same kinds of marbles as the eyes. Up from the floor ran a stout piece of bamboo that, Indy supposed, helped keep the statues upright. Even their balance was artificial, Indy thought; the only real things about the soldiers, it seemed, were their weapons: Swords gleamed, lances threatened, and crossbows remained cocked and pointed at the center of the passage.

Indy particularly disliked the look of the crossbows.

He noticed that no two of the soldiers were alike, despite the similarities of marble eyes and bulbous cheeks. It wasn't just that they were in different poses or had different weapons or clothes; each figure had its own face, its own personality, as if the sculptor had taken his inspiration for each face from life, but had transformed the original visage into a grotesque parody.

A few yards farther on, Indy found his chisel on the floor of the tunnel amid some brown shards. He knelt, put the chisel back in his satchel, then stood to inspect the clay soldier his unintended missile had struck.

The victim had fallen against a comrade to the right. The chisel had struck the soldier beneath his sword arm, shattering the clay armor over his rib cage. Indy directed the light into the hole.

Inside, human bones shone like ivory.

Indy knew of the folktales about Qin, first emperor of China and architect of the Great Wall, who ruled two hundred years before the birth of Christ. According to legend, it had taken seven hundred thousand laborers nearly four decades to build his tomb (which, according to legend, was a miniature replica of the universe) and two hundred thousand of his best troops had been buried with him. It was not uncommon for kings to be interred with guards, servants, or family members to make their afterlife more pleasant, but Indy had doubted the size of Qin's spirit army. Now, walking between the rows of terra-cotta corpses, he was not so sure. The soldiers looked as if they were ready to spring to life to protect Qin's treasure.

Since the tomb had been hermetically sealed, not even a layer of dust coated the terra-cotta army. The floor and the walls of the corridor were as unstained if they had been constructed yesterday. Indy had the uncomfortable feeling that he had broken in to a modern, well-designed museum, rather than a tomb that had lain undisturbed for thousands of years.

Anxious to be out of the tomb by daylight, Indy pressed on.

He almost did not feel the silken thread against his face or notice the crossbow, held in lifeless hands, that was pointed at him. But reflexes took over as he felt the thread part over the bridge of his nose, and finally noticed the gleaming head of the crossbow bolt aimed at his solar plexus.

The bowstring twanged, but Indy was already doing a backward dive to the steps. The arrow flew over him, slicing the crown of his hat, then smashed into the stomach of a terra-cotta warrior on the other side of the corridor. The warrior, who was holding a battle-ax overhead, toppled.

Indy rolled away as the heavy ax cut a groove in the step where his neck had been. The warrior disintegrated into a jumble of shattered clay and human bones.

Indy sat up, brushed the brown dust from his clothes, and shook his head. "I'm getting too old for this—"

The step beneath him dropped down a few inches, followed by the hiss of air being forced through bamboo tubes.

"—stuff."

A stone marble popped from the mouth of one of the warriors and bounced down three steps before Indy caught it. The marble was green, streaked with white, and Indy rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. It was substantial and smooth, the kind he would have called a shooter when he was a kid.

"This is supposed to be scary?" Indy asked as he tossed the marble in the air and caught it palm-down. "Better try harder, Qin."

Another marble bounced past him, this time a red one.

Then he heard the sound of a hundred marbles hitting the floor above him, and rushing down the corridor. Indy stood and took a few more steps down the tunnel, and each step sank a little more. Soon a hailstorm of marbles were dribbling from the mouths of each of the soldiers, and the sound of the stone marbles pouring down the stairs grew thunderous.

A river of red, blue, and green overtook him.

Indy stood for a moment while the marbles swept past, then the surge become irresistible. It knocked Indy's feet out from under him and swept him along with the spherical tide, which crashed into walls and knocked over terra-cotta warriors as if they were bowling pins. Swords and knives fell from long-dead hands, and crossbow bolts whizzed in every direction. More marbles were added to the mix as they spilled from the broken clay figures.

The noise was painful.

The carpet of marbles made the tunnel as slippery as ice. Indy tried to slow his descent by grabbing hold of the soldiers, but clay arms and legs broke off in his hands. He winced as a fallen sword sliced through his leather jacket and nicked the flesh of his right shoulder.

"Okay,
this
is scary," Indy said.

He pulled his hat down over his ears with both hands and tucked his legs into his chest as the tide carried him swiftly down the spiraling passage.

The corridor opened onto a funnel-like pit, where thousands of marbles swirled around the rim like water about to disappear down a drain. The weapons and the pieces of clay and bone, which did not roll, slid directly into the depths of the pit.

Indy took the bullwhip from his belt and, as he swirled around the rim, lashed out blindly for the edge. Above, the whip found something to bite into, and Indy was soon dangling along the far side of the pit while the deluge of marbles washed over him.

Indy peered into the darkness.

"Whatever is down there," Indy said, "it can't be good."

He twisted for a moment before he managed to get a decent grip, then he began to haul himself, hand over hand, up the length of the twelve-foot whip. When he looked overhead, the beam of his electric lamp was reflected by a dozen glittering points of light. At first he thought he was looking up at the night sky, because the points seemed to make up familiar constellations—but the lights faded when he turned his head.

The slope of the pit began to lessen, and Indy soon had his legs beneath him as he scaled the last few feet. When he reached the top, he stood.

He felt as if he had come up through a drain in the bottom of the world. The end of the whip had caught the wing of a stone dragon that straddled the funnel on its hind legs and tail and that held the moon in its jaws. Indy knelt down, unsnared the whip, and became entranced as his lamp revealed the seas and craters etched on the ivory moon. It was about the size of a cantaloupe. The harsh electric light bounced from its ivory surface and bathed the chamber in soft, artificial moonlight. Suddenly aware that thousands of things sparkled in his peripheral vision, Indy turned his head.

Indy found himself in the middle of a jeweled sea, traversed by miniature sailing ships of silver and gold. Above, a canopy of diamonds shone in a midnight sky. The ceiling looked like an inverted bowl studded with jewels, and he could just touch the highest point with his fingertips. The floor of the chamber was flat and appeared to be about fifty feet in diameter. Continents were represented by patches of brown and green, but they were not arranged in the familiar pattern that Indy had become accustomed to since grade school. Instead, they were all a jumble, with Africa, India, and Asia encompassed by a single sea. The Americas and the poles were missing, and the world apparently ended just beyond southern Europe. The continents were studded with landmarks in precious metals.

Indy was off the coast of a storybook China, where a Great (but miniature) Wall serpentined around foothills of jade. The Yangtze and its tributaries were flowing mercury. The center of the universe, Peking, was marked by a glittering temple.

Indy was stunned. During a more rational moment, his senses might have reeled at the sheer volume of treasure in the room, in terms of monetary and historical value. But Indy was enchanted, caught in the spell of Qin's perfect world, half believing that he must be dreaming in his bed at the little house in Princeton, New Jersey. Gulliver-like, Indy stepped over the rim of the funnel and reached down to touch the bejeweled world.

His weight activated some ancient leveling device. Behind him, the moon fell from the dragon's jaws and began to swirl down the funnel. He dove after it, managed to get his fingertips on it, but was suddenly jerked back. The strap of his satchel had caught on one of the claws of the dragon's feet, and he hung upside down beneath the stone monster while the moon circled the neck of the funnel, then disappeared.

Indy closed his eyes and listened to the pale orb rattle down a system of pipes below him. Then there was a sharp mechanical sound, followed by the gurgle of water.

This might be bad, Indy said to himself as he tried to untangle the strap. He was unsure whether he would be safer remaining in the treasure room or risking escape through the series of traps that he knew must lie beneath him.

Already a fine mist was wetting his cheek. Indy sucked his lungs full of air and closed his mouth. In another moment the mist had become a trickle, and then a torrent. He grabbed his fedora just as it was swept from his head. Indy dangled from the strap like a leaf trapped in a storm drain. Even above the rush of the water he could hear a set of massive gears churning below him, and he imagined the brittle cracking of bones as they were crushed to splinters between stone teeth.

Indy could feel the strap weakening against the weight of the water, and although he tried to pull himself up to grasp the stone appendages of the dragon, he could not. When his lungs could stand it no longer he gasped for air, and was punished by a mixture that left him sputtering.

Then the water subsided.

He heard the ivory moon land back in the jaws above him. The sound of rushing air slowed and then stopped. Indy allowed himself to relax for a moment, hanging like a wet sponge. He was glad he had been unable to undo the strap from the dragon's claw.

"Finally." He sighed. "A break."

Then the strap, which had been tested nearly to failure by the action of the water and the abrasion of the stone, broke. The movement jostled the stone dragon, and the moon fell once again from its jaws into the funnel.

Indy slipped into darkness and disappeared down the shaft at the bottom of the funnel. The orb followed after. In a few yards the shaft curved, and from the fleeting illumination provided by the electric light Indy saw a tiny trapdoor that was the right size for the miniature moon to pass through. He turned, seized the ivory ball, and clutched it to him like a quarterback facing an overwhelming offense. He knew the trapdoor would trigger the deluge once again and that this time, caught in the confines of the shaft, he would drown.