Timeline

She thought, Symmetrical.

Excited, she went quickly to the next candle niche. The carvings depicted two leafy vines. The next niche: two hands clasped in prayer. She went all around the room in this way, checking each one.

None had feet.

Chris was sweeping his toe in big arcs across the floor, scraping away the mold from the underlying stone. He was muttering, "Big feet, big feet."

She looked over at Chris and said, "I feel really stupid."

"Why?"

She pointed to the doorway behind him  –  the doorway that they had passed through when they first came down the stairs. The doorway that had once been elaborately carved but was now eroded.

It was possible to see, even now, what the original design of the carving had been. On both left and right, the doorway had been carved into a series of lumps. Five lumps, with the largest at the top of the door and the smallest at the bottom. The large lump had a sort of flat indentation on its surface, leaving no doubt what all the lumps were meant to represent.

Five toes, on either side of the door.

"Oh my God," Chris said. "It’s the whole damned door."

She nodded. "Giant feet."

"Why would they do that?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes they put hideous and demonic images at entrances and exits. To symbolize the flight or banishment of evil spirits."

They went quickly to the door, and then Kate paced off five steps, then four, then nine. She was now facing a rusty iron ring mounted on the wall. They were both excited by this discovery, but when they tugged at it, the ring broke loose in their hands, crumbling in red fragments.

"We must have done something wrong."

"Pace it again."

She went back and tried smaller steps. Right, left, right again. She was now facing a different section of wall. But it was just wall, featureless stone. She sighed.

"I don’t know, Chris," she said. "We must be doing something wrong. But I don’t know what." Discouraged, she put her hand out, leaned against the wall.

"Maybe the paces are still too large," Chris said.

"Or too small."

Chris went over, stood next to her by the wall. "Come on, we’ll figure it out."

"Do you think?"

"Yeah, I do."

They stepped away from the wall and had started back to the doorway when they heard a low rumbling sound behind them. A large stone in the floor, right where they had been standing, had now slid away. They saw stone steps leading downward. They heard the distant rush of a river. The opening gaped black and ominous.

"Bingo," he said.

03:10:12

In the windowless control room above the transit pad, Gordon and Stern stared at the monitor screen. It showed an image of five panels, representing the five glass containers that had been etched. As they watched, small white dots appeared on the panels.

"That’s the position of the etch points," Gordon said.

Each point was accompanied by a cluster of numbers, but they were too small to read.

"That’s the size and depth of each etching," Gordon said.

Stern said nothing. The simulation continued. The panels began to fill with water, represented by a rising horizontal blue line. Superimposed on each panel were two large numbers: the total weight of the water and the pressure per square inch on the glass surface, at the bottom of each panel, where the pressure was greatest.

Even though the simulation was highly stylized, Stern found himself holding his breath. The waterline went higher, and higher.

One tank began to leak: a flashing red spot.

"One leaking," Gordon said.

A second tank began to leak, and as the water continued to rise, a jagged lightning streak crossed the panel, and it vanished from the screen.

"One shattered."

Stern was shaking his head. "How rough do you think this simulation is?"

"Pretty fast and dirty."

On the screen, a second tank shattered. The final two filled to the top without incident.

"So," Gordon said. "The computer’s telling us three out of five panels can’t be filled."

"If you believe it. Do you?"

"Personally, I don’t," Gordon said. "The input data’s just not good enough, and the computer is making all kinds of stress assumptions that are pretty hypothetical. But I think we better fill those tanks at the last minute."

Stern said, "It’s too bad there isn’t a way to strengthen the tanks."

Gordon looked up quickly. "Like what?" he said. "You have an idea?"

"I don’t know. Maybe we could fill the etchings with plastic, or some kind of putty. Or maybe we could – "

Gordon was shaking his head. "Whatever you do, it has to be uniform. You’d have to cover the entire surface of the tank evenly. Perfectly evenly."

"I can’t see any way to do that," Stern said.

"Not in three hours," Gordon said. "And that’s what we have left."

Stern sat down in a chair, frowning. For some reason, he was thinking of racing cars. A succession of images flashed through his mind. Ferraris. Steve McQueen. Formula One. The Michelin Man with his rubber tube body. The yellow Shell sign. Big truck tires, hissing in rain. B. F. Goodrich.

He thought, I don’t even like cars. Back in New Haven, he owned an ancient VW Bug. Clearly, his racing mind was trying to avoid an unpleasant reality  –  something he didn’t want to face up to.

The risk.

"So we just fill the panels at the last minute, and pray?" Stern said.

"Exactly," Gordon said. "That’s exactly what we do. It’s a little hairy. But I think it’ll work."