Then from the mouth of the tunnel, a solid mass of Ugha warriors surged straight at him, shrieking with one voice.
Reconsidering, Indy turned on a heel and ran down the steps, taking them two at a time. More warriors boiled out of tunnels to either side of the stairs. Bolas struck all around like the mother of all hailstorms, clacking and clattering across the steps.
As he fled, Indy caught a glimpse of the valley below.
A vast plateau stretched across the hollow depression, covered with the ruins of a sprawling ancient city, half consumed by the jungle. Beyond the ruins, a massive lake seemed to float above the city—shining a brilliant blue in the sunlight, its surface frosted by mists.
Indy recognized it as a reservoir—engineered, not natural.
Despite the danger and terror, he was still an archaeologist. He spotted silvery blue lines spiraling through the city and understood what they were.
Aqueducts—flowing from the reservoir.
He followed the spiral of aqueducts to the center of the ruins, where a towering stone temple waited. It was a giant stepped pyramid, climbing in terraces. It had to be the fabled Great Stone Temple of Akator.
Indy squinted.
At the top, he could just make out—
Indy suddenly slammed forward, struck from behind, tackled by two of the small warriors. One leaped onto his back, wrapped a bola around his neck, and yanked his head back.
Serves me right for sightseeing.
A shout drew his attention to the right. Mutt came flying over, his arms straight out to either side. The kid clotheslined the pair of tribesmen across their throats and sent them tumbling off the stairs.
Mutt hauled Indy up. “Time to go, old man!”
They set off together, father and son, leaping two steps at a time, bolas sparking at their heels.
“Indeeee!”
Near the bottom of the stairs, Marion was down on her back. A warrior straddled her chest, pulling at her hair and holding a rock in an upraised arm.
“Mom!” Mutt yelled.
They were too far off, except—
kuh-RACK
Indy lashed out with his bullwhip. The leather sailed out to the very limit of its reach and wrapped once around the tribesman’s scrawny neck.
Good enough.
Indy yanked and sent the warrior flying.
Together, step for step, Indy and Mutt hurried down to Marion. They scooped her up as they passed, carrying her between them.
A regular happy little family united again.
But they still had to contend with two crazy uncles.
Ahead Mac stood his ground, punching and gouging. He used elbows and kicks to the groin. The man was not above fighting dirty.
Indy, Mutt, and Marion bulled through to him, collected him, and kept going, expanding their family grouping. The last member was skipping ahead, waving his hat as if he were in a Disney film.
They caught up with Oxley, momentarily ahead of all the warriors.
To either side, lining the stone roadway, rose massive sculptures and statues, draped in vines and coated with lichens and moss. One appeared to be a dragon or serpent. It seemed to be struggling to rise out of the ground, but vines and roots imprisoned it, slowly dragging it back under the earth.
Farther out, ancient structures and homes were also succumbing to the relentless claw and creep of jungle—not to mention the inescapable march of time.
Only one structure appeared impervious to all.
It rose ahead of them, climbing in stone tiers, pristine, a testament to early mankind’s ability to carve order out of chaos.
The Great Stone Temple of Akator.
But the shrieks and screams behind Indy reminded him once again that sightseeing was not on the schedule at the moment. Survival was the primary concern.
And only one man held the key to that.
Indy shouldered over to Harold Oxley. “Ox! You were here before! You got past them!” He waved back to the crush of Ugha warriors. “What do we do?”
The professor continued skipping, oblivious.
Indy grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. There was no reason to keep running. Where could they go?
“HAROLD!” he barked, trying hard to break through. “WE ARE GOING TO DIE!”
Oxley frowned at the tone of his voice, then turned to the warriors with a pained look of exasperation. He stepped away—toward the warriors.
The professor reached into the burlap sack tied to his belt and pulled the skull free. Standing before the rampaging tribesmen, he lifted the crystal skull high in both hands.
As a shaft of sunlight struck it, the skull ignited into a fiery rainbow of diffracted light. Shadows fell back. The sun itself seemed to shine a little brighter. Indy heard a slight humming that seemed to vibrate the very motes of light.
The leading edge of warriors skidded to a stop. Others piled up behind them. The whirl of bolas slowed and stopped. A low murmur of awe spread through them. There was no fear, or even abject worship, merely some understanding that both mystified and intrigued Indy.
Muddy arms pointed at Oxley. Heads nodded, and slowly the warriors retreated toward the cliff, leaving the intruders in peace.
Or maybe leaving them to do what must be done.
Mac stepped next to Indy and nodded to the skull. “I have to get me one of those.”
Indy slowly turned and faced the Great Stone Temple of Akator. It towered ahead, an ageless sentinel with a forbidding mystery at its heart. He shaded his eyes as he studied the colossal edifice.
“Mac, you may change your mind about that.”
FIFTY
“WELL, THERE’S got to be a way inside!”
Mac stalked around the flat summit of the temple pyramid, plainly hot and irritated. He took off his hat and swiped the balding crown of his head with a handkerchief, then tugged his hat back on.
Mutt ignored the complaining man. He followed Jones, studying what the old man was doing. It had been a solid hour since they’d clambered up here, climbing from terrace to terrace, examining each tier, looking for a way inside the temple.
All along, Jones had hardly said a word. With each level gained, he grew more taciturn and lost in concentration, especially when they reached the top and found no doorway into the pyramid. The few square openings along the sides of the temple appeared merely decorative and dead-ended within a step.
The entrance to the heart of the pyramid had to be here, on its flat summit. But how to get inside? The answer had to be tied to the strange structure that surmounted the temple.
Jones circled it, so Mutt did, too.
In the center of the pyramid’s plateau rested a massive stone box. It took up much of the open space atop the temple. It looked like a giant planter box, each side composed of a single slab of raw black granite, roughly hewn, it stood shoulder height. Along the base, a series of holes had been drilled through the slabs, but these in turn were plugged by pieces of stone.
Jones frowned and, fists on hips, stared at the unusual structure. Then, as if deciding something in his head, he stepped forward and reached up to the edge of the box. Pulling himself up, he clambered to his feet atop the box.
Mutt followed, though it took him a couple of tries.
The planter box was open at the top, but rather than being full of dirt, it was full of sand. A giant catbox, the British man had described it when they first reached the summit and gave the strange structure a cursory examination.
Still unimpressed and growing more and more irritated, Mac stood at the edge of the pyramid’s summit and waved an arm out over the city. “Where’s all the bloody gold? Look at this place! It’s a dump!”
Standing on the box, Mutt stared out over the valley from his higher vantage point. While the city lay in ruins, half consumed by the jungle, there remained to his eyes a tarnished glory to the place. The city must once have been a beautiful, vibrant metropolis. The statues, the spread of buildings, the open amphitheaters. It was a wonder o
f civic engineering. Centuries later, water still trickled through its aqueducts. Staring down from above, Mutt imagined the city full of gardens and fountains and laughing children.
His viewpoint was not shared by another.
“Just a pile of rubble,” Mac groused.
Off to the side, his mother sat with Oxley. She occasionally stared over at Mutt and Jones atop the sandbox with a soft smile. Mutt could guess what she was thinking.
Father and son, working together.
Jones knelt and dug out a fistful of sand. Wearing a look of concentration, he let the grains sift through his fingers. Then he stood back up and studied what sprouted from the heart of the sandbox. Four granite obelisks—each triangular in shape and fifteen feet long—rose crookedly out of the sand. They leaned outward, like stone fingers pointing toward the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. While the obelisks’ bases were buried in the sandbox, their far ends rested on square stone pillars that stood at each corner of the pyramid’s summit.
From below, the structure appeared to form a strange granite crown atop the pyramid. Mutt knew it had to be significant. But what did it mean?
Standing in the center of the sandbox, Jones turned in a slow circle and stared out at the length of each obelisk. Remaining silent, he finally nodded. He lifted his arms, laying one forearm atop the other in front of him. He angled one arm up, as if pantomiming the needle of a meter, and turned again in a circle. His eyes grew wider.
“Four become one,” he muttered.
Mutt frowned at the strange behavior. “What do—?”
Ignoring him, Jones patted one of the obelisks and turned. His eyes flashed in the sunlight. He had figured something out. He crossed to the box’s edge and hopped down.
Mutt followed him, leaping off the box and onto the stone summit of the pyramid. “You know something!” he accused. “Don’t you, Jones!”
The man ignored him and crossed over to Oxley. Drawn by the excitement, Mac joined them. The boredom in the British man’s expression had been replaced by curiosity.
Mutt’s mother stood up at Oxley’s side. “What is it, Indy?”
Jones pointed to the professor. “Harold made it this far, reaching the valley, but he couldn’t get inside the temple.”
“No kidding,” Mac mumbled.
“So Ox did the only thing he could,” Jones explained. “He took the skull back to the cemetery and hid it where he’d found it.”
Mutt remembered the underground burial chamber of the conquistadores and the two sets of footprints. Jones was on to something. The man’s eyes danced with a fervent excitement. Mutt’s own heart beat harder.
Oxley stirred and mumbled. “To lay their just hands on that Golden Key . . . that opes the Palace of Eternity.”
Jones nodded as if that made sense. He crossed to an overhanging length of one of the obelisks and pointed to its smooth surface. “These obelisks must have once been polished to a shine.” He pointed to the sun. “To reflect the light of the rising and setting sun. Shining bright.”
“A golden key,” Mutt said.
Jones nodded. “We’re looking at that key. But it’s been broken.”
“Broken?” Mac asked with a thread of worry in his voice.
Jones pointed to the lengths of stone, but before he could explain, Mutt had figured it out, too. It was so obvious. “The four pillars!” Mutt gasped and studied the triangular shapes of the granite columns. “If you stood them up together, they’d form one really big obelisk!”
“The golden key,” Jones said, clapping Mutt on the shoulder. “We have to join the four pieces together and re-create that key.”
Mutt’s exhilaration died to confusion. “But how do we lift them? Each one’s got to weigh four tons.”
“More like five, kid.”
Mutt sighed. “No wonder Ox couldn’t get inside.”
Mac snorted, unconvinced. “If that really is the key, I’d love to see the lock it fits.”
“You’re standing on it, bub!” Jones swung away and crossed to a stack of loose stones piled in one corner of the summit plateau. He searched around.
Mac crossed toward the box. He stared up and shook his head. “Madness if you think we can lift these stones,” he mumbled. “First Oxley, now Indiana.”
Off to the side, Jones straightened and heaved to his feet with a heavy rock in his arms. He lifted the boulder above his head—then with a roar of effort, he ran straight at Mac.
The Brit lunged out of the way. “What the hell? Are you trying to kill me?”
But Jones ignored him and continued straight to the box. He slammed the rock down onto one of the stone plugs lined along the bottom of the slab. The impact knocked the sliver loose. Sand began pouring out the unblocked hole.
“What are you doing?” Mac yelled at him, obviously still shaken.
“Emptying the catbox, Mac . . . just emptying the catbox.” Jones turned to Mutt, grinning wildly. “Give me a hand, kid.”
Mutt matched his grin as he suddenly got it, too. He pictured Jones pantomiming the needle on a meter.
Of course!
Grabbing up a heavy chunk of rock, Mutt joined Jones in knocking out more plugs along the base. Sand poured out of each, piling up.
“Mom! Ox!” Mutt called and waved. “Help us clear the sand away from the holes! Keep ’em flowing!”
Jones patted Mutt on the shoulder. “Smart, kid!”
They all set to work, even Mac.
While they scrambled, Mutt took a moment to step back. As the sand emptied from the box, the bases of the four columns dropped lower. Their ends swung up, balanced on the edges of the box. Their tips lifted off the square stone pillars at the corners of the pyramid and began to point higher and higher into the sky.
Soon all the plugs were out, and sand poured out of the holes on all the sides.
As a group, they backed away and watched in amazement as twenty tons of rock, aided only by gravity, swung upright in front of their eyes.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Mac said.
With a final trickle of sand from the box, the four sections teetered and came together—forming a single obelisk, perfectly erect and pointing straight into the sky.
His mother hugged Indy. “You did it!”
Immediately a low rumbling shook the plateau. The grind of massive gears sounded. Under their feet, the entire top of the pyramid began to split apart. Sections opened like an iris before them, folding away from the obelisk, driving them all back.
“But what did you do?” Mac asked, retreating.
Jones urged them to keep moving. “The twenty tons of stone acted as a pressure key. The weight settling on the one spot triggered the mechanism.”
As the floor opened farther, a cavernous space appeared below.
“The whole pyramid is hollow,” his mother said, peering carefully over the edge.
“Not quite,” Mutt corrected and pointed. “Look!”
In the center, the newly formed obelisk now rested atop its big brother. Its fifteen-foot length was now just the very tip-top of a hundred-foot obelisk. But that wasn’t all.
“Stairs!” Jones called out.
Mutt had spotted them, too. A stone staircase spiraled down the massive obelisk’s length. It consisted of small slabs sticking straight out of its surface.
But the opening iris was pushing the group farther and farther away.
“We’ll have to jump now!” Jones said. “Or it’ll be too far!”
Mutt’s mother shook her head. Mutt knew she wasn’t too keen on heights. So before she could forbid him, he ran and leaped. He sailed over the yawning gap and landed on the top step of the obelisk.
His mother pointed to her toes. “Mutt! You get back here, young man!”
Instead Mutt headed down and waved. “C’mon! This is why we came here!”
Jones and his mother shared a look. At the same time, both said, “He’s definitely your kid!”
With no choice, everyone
ran and leaped—even Oxley followed with a small whoop of excitement. They gathered together on the stairs and headed down, mindful of the eighty-five-foot drop.
“Slow and steady,” Jones warned as they proceeded down the steps.
“You know,” Mac said, “that wasn’t so bad.”
Jones swung toward him with a sour, worried expression. “Mac, you never say—”
The steps began to retract into the column.
Mac wore a chagrined expression.
Jones merely pointed and bellowed. “Run!”
Across the valley, Spalko stepped out of the dark tunnel and into sunlight. Stairs descended ahead of her, dropping into a wide bowl of a valley. She spotted the ruins of a city, and a distant lake. Behind her, the muffled pops of a pistol echoed from the tunnel.
Her lieutenant stepped to her shoulder. He carried a rifle that still smoked. She glanced back. The tunnel was littered with the bodies of tiny brown warriors. And some of her men.
“The rest have fled back to their tunnels, Colonel Doctor.”
“Very good.”
“Orders?” he asked.
She lifted the transceiver, seeking the trace. It blinked, confirming what she already knew. She pointed to the stone pyramid in the center of the valley.
There was only one order to give.
Spalko headed down the steps, trailed by her three best soldiers, Russia’s elite. She rested her hand on the pommel of her sword.
At long last . . .
“We end this.”
FIFTY-ONE
INDY FLED DOWN the retracting steps, flying around and around the giant obelisk. He cursed the ancient engineers. Why were these places always booby-trapped? Couldn’t solving the riddle of the obelisk be enough to gain entry?
Under his boots, the steps continued to pull into the obelisk. Each stair was now less than a foot wide and shrinking steadily.
“Faster,” he yelled.
Panting, Indy rushed down the stairs. His knees stabbed with pain, but he dared not slow. They were still four stories above the stone floor. Mutt and Oxley were a full turn ahead of him. They should be fine.
Behind him, Indy heard Marion and Mac gasping. He heard occasional high-pitched cries of terror from Marion—or maybe some came from Mac, too. Indy knew Marion had a thing about heights. Like he had about snakes.