Nothing happened.
Karen sat up on her knees. “What’s wrong? What aren’t we doing right?”
“Maybe the mechanism is broken.”
Karen did not even want to think of that possibility. She knew that by now the lower passage must be totally flooded. There was no way back. They were trapped here. She felt tears coming to her eyes. Her throat tightened.
“How was the crystal supposed to trigger the secret passage?” Miyuki asked, still pondering the riddle.
“I…I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you say something about the other mechanism being pressure-sensitive?”
Miyuki’s words sank through Karen’s hopelessness. She remembered how the altar stone had moved back up into the ceiling after Miyuki had jumped off it. The mechanism must have been pressure-sensitive, responding to the change in weight.
Karen stared down at the crystal. It was heavy, unusually so. But if the secret door here was triggered by weight, then why hadn’t it triggered when she’d first walked across it?
Then it dawned on her.
“Get off! Get off!” she yelled at Miyuki, waving her away from the stone block and crystal. “We weigh too much!”
“What?” Miyuki said, but backed away.
Karen moved beyond the edge of the block. “It must be balanced to the weight of the crystal. No more, no less.”
Both women stepped away. Karen stared hard at the crystal. Still nothing. She felt a scream of frustration building in her chest. What were they missing?
She turned in a slow circle. The walls were blank and featureless. No answer—or was there?
She turned again. No wall sconces. No place to hook a torch. “Darkness,” she mumbled. “The belly of a snake is hidden from the sun.”
“What?”
“Turn off your flashlight!”
“Why?”
“Trust me!” Karen thumbed off her penlight.
Miyuki followed suit, plunging them into perfect darkness. “Now what are—”
A sharp grinding interrupted Miyuki. Rock on rock. Karen froze, praying she was right. In the hushed silence she reached out and fumbled for Miyuki’s hand.
Then a spear of sunlight appeared, sprouting from the floor to strike the ceiling. Blinking against the glare, Karen dropped to her knees. The stone block with the crystal was sinking into the floor.
Karen crawled to the edge and peered into the deepening hole. The shaft of sunlight came from a narrow crack in the left wall of the pit. As she watched, the block sank away and the crack grew wider, opening a side tunnel.
Light poured in.
Karen’s vision blurred with tears of relief. It was the way out!
Below, the stone block finally stopped its descent with a grating sound, leaving the side passage wide open.
Karen rolled to her side and waved for Miyuki to go first. “Let’s get out of here.” It was only a drop of a couple meters.
Grabbing her satchel, the Japanese professor, smiling with relief, clambered into the pit. She landed and crouched down, peering through the side tunnel. “It’s only a few feet! I see the sun!” Miyuki crawled into the passage, giving Karen room to come down.
Karen did not pause. She jumped into the pit. The sunlight blinded her for a moment, then she saw the blue sea beyond the short tunnel, shining bright. “Thank God!” She bent and entered the side passage. Twisting around, she grabbed the crystal star. She was not leaving behind her prize.
The star seemed much lighter now. She was able to pick it up with one hand. As she held it, the stone block ground up behind her and Miyuki, closing off the doorway back to the inner chamber. Turning to the exit, she shoved the artifact into her hip pocket. Free of her fingers, it sank like a lead weight, straining her pants’ seams. Damn, this thing is heavy. But as she moved beyond the tunnel and into the sunlight, cold metal pressed against the back of her neck, and she forgot about her burden.
“Don’t move!” someone ordered in Japanese.
She froze.
A second man jumped off the pyramid step behind her. With relief, she saw that he wore a police uniform with the Chatan emblem on his sleeve. It wasn’t the looters. She was ordered to face the stone, palms on the rock.
To the side, Miyuki spoke rapidly to another officer. He had her identification in his hand. He finally nodded, turned to the man holding Karen and waved him off.
Karen stepped away from the wall. “They got Gabriel’s warning over the teletype about the looters and were just under way when they heard the explosion,” Miyuki told her. “By the time they got here, the looters had already taken off. There was no sign of them, so they staked out this second pyramid, meaning to protect it.”
“And they found us crawling out and thought we were the looters.”
Miyuki nodded. “Luckily, Gabriel had transmitted our names, saying we were in danger.” Miyuki put away her identification. “We’ll have questions to answer, but there’ll be no charges.”
Karen took a deep breath. “Answers? I have more questions than answers.” She pictured the looter’s tattoo, a pale winding snake against his dark skin. Another serpent. In the light of the day, it seemed too much of a coincidence.
Karen wandered to the corner of the pyramid so she could see the other Dragon. Miyuki followed. Across the hundred meters, the Dragon’s summit was a cratered ruin. Smoke curled into the sky, a man-made volcano.
Why had their attackers done that? It made no sense.
And where had they gone?
“What’s wrong?” Miyuki asked. “We’re safe.”
“I don’t know.” Karen could not escape the feeling that the true danger was just beginning. “But let’s go back to the university. I think it’s time we tried to put a few pieces of this mystery together.”
“No argument from me.”
They turned away from the smoking pyramid and crossed back to the officers. The white and blue police motorboat waited in the water below, its lights blinking.
Karen sighed with shaky relief. “Remind me I owe Gabriel a great big hug.”
“And you owe me a new pair of Ferragamos.” With a tired grin, Miyuki swiped her hair from her damp forehead. “After all this, I’m holding you to your promise!”
Northwest of Enewak Atoll, Central Pacific
Ensconced in the ship’s geology lab, Jack and the others sat staring at the frozen video image of the inscribed obelisk: metallic symbols etched crudely into the crystal’s surface. “Who could have done this?” he asked.