Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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hut, and when he returned he found Royan ready to go. But she was not

alone.

I see that you are bringing your chaperon with you," he remarked with

resignation.

"Unless you are tough enough to send him away." Royan smiled

encouragement at Tamre who stood at her side, grinning and bobbing and

hugging his shoulders in the ecstasy of being in the presence of his

idol.

"Oh, very well." Nicholas gave in without a struggle.

"Let the little devil come along."

Tamre lolloped away up the path ahead of them, his grubby shamma

flapping around his long skinny legs, chanting the repetitive chorus of

an Amharic psalm, and every few minutes looking back to make certain

that Royan was still following him. It was a hard pull up the valley,

and the noonday heat was debilitating. Although Tamre seemed totally

unaffected, the other two were both sweating in dark patches through

their shirts by the time they reached the point where the stream

debauched into the valley. Gratefully, they sought the shade of a patch

of acacia trees, and while they rested Nicholas glassed the side of the

valley through his binoculars.

"How are they after the dunking I gave them?" she asked.

"Waterproof," he grunted, "full marks to Herr Zeiss."

"What do you see up there?"

"Not much. The bush is too thick. We will have to foot'slog up the side.

Sorry."

They left the shade and made their way up the side of the valley in the

direct burning sunlight. The stream tumbled down a series of cascades,

each with a pool at its foot. The bush crowded the banks, lush and green

where the roots had been able to reach the water. Clouds of black and

yellow butterflies danced over the Pools, and a black and white wagtail

patrolled the moss-green rocks along the edge, its long tail gyrating

back and forth like the needle of a metronome.

Halfway up the slope they paused beside one of the pools to rest, and

Nicholas used his hat like a fly-swatter to stun a brown and yellow

grasshopper. He tossed the insect on to the surface of the pool, and as

it kicked weakly and floated towards the exit a long dark shadow rose

from the bottom. There was a swirl and a mirrorlike flash of a scaly

silver belly, and the grasshopper disappeared.

"Ten'pounder,'Nicholas lamented. "Why didn't I bring my rod?"

Tamre was crouched near Nicholas on the pool bank, and suddenly he

lifted his hand and held it out. Almost at once one of the circling

butterflies settled upon his finger.

It perched there with its velvety black and yellow wings fanning gently.

They stared at him in astonishment, for it was as though the insect had

come to his bidding. Tamre giggled and offered the butterfly to Royan.

When she held out her hand, he gently transferred the gorgeous insect to

her palm.

"Thank you, Tamre. That is a wonderful gift. Now my gift to you is to

set it free again." She pursed her lips and blew it softly into flight.

They watched the butterfly climb high above the pool, and Tamre clapped

his hands and laughed with delight.

"Strange," Nicholas murmured. "He seems to have a special empathy with

all the creatures of the wilderness. I think that Jali Hora, the abbot,

does not try to control him, but lets him do very much as his simple

fancy dictates.

Special treatment for a fey soul, one that hears a different tune and

dances to it. I must admit that, despite myself, I am becoming quite

fond of the lad."

It was only another fifty feet higher that they came to the source.

There was a low cliff of red sandstone, from a grotto at whose foot the

stream gushed. The entrance was screened by a heavy growth of ferns, and

Nicholas went down on his knees to pull them aside and peer into the low

opening.

"What can you see?" Royan demanded behind him.

"Not much. It's dark in there, but it seems to go in for quite some

way."

"You are too big to get in there. You had better let me go in."

"Good place for water cobra," he remarked. "Lots of frogs for them to

eat. Are you sure you want to go?"

"I never said that I wanted to." She sat on the bank while she unlaced

her shoes, then lowered herself into the stream. It came halfway up her

thighs, and she waded forward against the flow with difficulty.

She was forced to bend almost double to creep under the overhanging roof

of the grotto. As she moved deeper in, her voice came back to him.

"The roof gets lower."

"Be careful, dear girl. Don't take any chances."

"I do wish you wouldn't call me "dear girl"." Her voice resonated

strangely from the cave entrance.

"Well, you are both those things, a girl and dear. How about if I call

you "young lady?

"Not that either. My name is Royan."There was silence for a while, then

she called again. "This is as far as I can go. It all narrows down into

a shaft of some sort."

"A shaft?" he demanded.

"Well, at least a roughly rectangular opening."

"Do you think it is the work of humans?"

"Impossible to tell. The water is coming out of it like the spout of a

bath tap. A solid jet."

"No evidence of any excavation? No marks of tools on the rock?"

"Nothing. It's slick and water-worn, covered with moss and algae."

"Could a man get into the opening, I mean if it were not for the water

pressure?"

"If he was a pygmy or a dwarf."

"Or a childT he suggested.

"Or a child," she agreed. "But who would send a child in there?"

"The ancients often used child-slaves. Taita might have done the same."

"Don't suggest it. You are destroying my high opinion of Taita," she

told him as she backed out of the entrance of the grotto. There were

pieces of fern and moss in her hair, and she was soaked from the waist

downwards. He gave her a hand and boosted her back on to the bank. The

curve of her bottom was clearly visible through her wet trousers. He

forced himself not to dwell upon the view.

"So we have to conclude that the shaft is a natural flaw in the

limestone, and not a man-made tunnel?"

"I didn't say that. No. I said that I couldn't be sure.

You might be correct. Children might have been used to dig it. After

all, they were used in the coalmines during the industrial revolution."

"But there is no way that we would be able to explore the tunnel from

this end?"

"Impossible." She was vehement. "The water is pouring out under enormous

pressure. I tried to push my arrn up the shaft, but I did not have the

strength."

"Pity! I was hoping for some more irrefutable evidence, or at least

another lead." He sat down beside her on the bank, and ferreted in his

pack. She looked at him quizzically when he brought out a small black

anodized instrument and opened the lid.

"Aneroid barometer," he explained. "Every good navigator should have

one." He studied it for a moment and then made a note of the reading.

"Explain," she invited.

"I want to know if this spring is below the level of the entrance to the

sink-hole in Taita's pool. If it is not, then we can cross it off our

list of possibilities."

He stood up. "If you are ready, we can move on."

"Where to?"

"Why, Taita's pool, of course. We need a reading up there to establish

the difference in altitude between the two points."

nce Tamre knew where they were headed he showed them a shortcuts so it

took them just under two hours from the fountain head to the top of the

cliff face above Taita's pool.

While they rested, Royan remarked, "Tamre seems to spend most of his

days wandering around in the bush. He knows every path and game trail.

He is an excellent guide."

"Better than Boris, at least," Nicholas agreed, as he fished out his

barometer and took another reading.

"You look particularly pleased with yourself." Royan watched his face as

he studied the instrument.

"Every reason to be," he told her. "Allowing one hundred and eighty feet

for the height of the cliff below us, and another fifty feet for the

depth of the pool, the entrance to the sink-hole is still over a hundred

feet higher than your outlet through the fern grotto on the other side

of the ridge."

"Which means?"

"Which means that there is a distinct possibility that the streams are

one and the same. The inflow is here in Taita's pool and the outflow is

from your grotto."

"How on earth did Taita do it?" she puzzled. "How did he get to the

bottom of the pool? You are the engineering marvel. Tell me how you

would do it."

He shrugged, but she persisted. "I mean, there must be some established

way of doing things like that, of working under water. How do they build

the piers of a bridge, or the foundations of a dam, or – or – or how did

Taita himself build the shaft below the level of the Nile to measure the

flow of the river? You remember the description that he gives of his

hydrograph in River God?"

"The accepted technique is to build a coffer dam " Nicholas said

casually, and then broke off and stared at her. "My oath, you really are

a corker. A dam! What if that old ruffian, Taita, dammed the whole

flipping river!"

"Would that have been possible?"

"I am beginning to believe that with Taita anything is possible. He

certainly had unlimited manpower at his disposal, and if he could build

the hydrograph on the Nile at Aswan, then he understood very clearly the

principles of hydrodynamics. After all, the old Egyptians' lives were

completely bound up with the seasonal inundations of the river and the

management of the floods. From what we have gathered about the old man,

it certainly seems Possible."

"How could we prove it?"

"By finding the remains of his dam. It had to be a hell of a work to

hold the Dandera river. There is a good chance that some evidence of it

remains."

"Where would he have built the dam?" she asked excitedly. "Or let me put

it another way, where would you site the dam if you had to do it?,

"There is one natural place for it," he answered promptly. "The spot

where the trail leaves the river and detours down the valley, and the

river falls into the chasm.

They both turned their heads in unison and looked upstream.

"What are we waiting for?" she asked, and sprang to her feet. "Let's go

look-see!

Their excitement was infectious, and Tamre giggled and danced ahead of

them along the trail through the thorns and then up the valley to the

point where it rejoined the river. The sun had lost the worst of its

heat by the time they stood once again above the falls where the

Dandera. river plunged into the mouth of the chasm, and began its last

lap in the race to join the Nile.

"If Taita. had thrown a dam across here – " Nicholas made a sweep of his

arms across the mouth of the gorge, he could have diverted the river

down the side valley here."

"It looks possible," she laughed. Tamre giggled in sympathy, not

understanding a word of what they were saying, but enjoying himself

immensely.

"I would need a dumpy level to take some shots of the actual fall of the

land. It can be very deceptive, but with the naked eye it does look

possible, as you say." He shaded his eyes and looked up the bluffs on

each side of the waterfall. They formed two craggy portals of limestone,

between which the river roared as it plunged over the lip.

"I would like to climb up there to get a clearer picture of the layout

of the terrain. Are you game?"

"Try and stop me,', she challenged him, and led the climb. It was a

heavy scramble, and in some places the limestone was rotten and

crumbling dangerously. However, when they came out on the summit of the

eastern portal they were rewarded with a splendid overall view of the

ground below.

Directly to the north, the escarpment rose like a sheer wall with its

battlements crenellated and serrated. Above and beyond it there was a

dream of further mountains, the high peaks of the Choke, blue as a

heron's plumage against the clearer distant blue of the African sky.

All around them were the badlands of the gorge, a vast confusion of

ridges and spines and reefs of rock of fifty different hues, some

ash-grey and white, others black as the hide of a bull buffalo, or red

as his heart blood. The river in bush was green, the poisonous vivid

green of the mamba in the treetop, while further from the water the

scrub was grey and sear, and along the spines of the broken kopjes stood

the stark outlines of ancient drought-struck trees, their tortured limbs

twisted and black against the sky.

"The picture of devastation," Royan whispered as she looked around her,

'untamed and untaniable. No wonder Taita chose this place. It repels all

intruders."

They were both silent for a while, awed by the wild grandeur of the

scene, but as soon as they had recovered from the exertion of the climb

their enthusiasm resurfaced.

"Now you can get a good picture of it." Nicholas pointed down into the

valley below them. "There is a clear divide at the fork of the valley.

You can see the natural fall of the ground. There, from that side of the

gorge to that point below us, is the narrowest part. It is a neck where

the river squeezes through – the natural site for a dam." He swivelled

and pointed down to the left of where they sat.

'it would not take much to spill the river into the valley.

Once he had finished whatever he was up to in the chasm, it would taken

even less to break down the wall of the dam and let the river resume its

natural course again."

Tamre watched their faces eagerly, turning his head to each speaker in

turn, uncomprehending, but aping Royan's expression like a mirror. If

she nodded he nodded, when she frowned he did the same, and when she

smiled he giggled happily.

"It's a big river." Royan shook her head, while Tamre wagged his from

side to side in sympathy and looked wise.

"What method would he have used? An earthen dam?

Surely not?"  i "The Egyptians used earthen canals and dams for a great

many of their irrigation works,'Nicholas mused. "On the other hand, when

they had rock available to work with ..", they used it extensively. They

were expert masons. You have stood in the quarries at Aswan."

"Not much topsoil here in the gorge," she pointed out.

"But on the other hand, there is plenty of rock. It's like a geological

museum. Every type of rock that you could wish for."

"I agree," he said. "Rather than an earthen wall, Taita would most

probably have used a masonry and rock fill.

That is the type of dam the ancients built in Egypt, long before his

time. If that is the case, there is a chance that traces of it have

survived."

"Okay. Let's work on that hypothesis. Taita built a dam of rock stabs,

and then he breached it again. Where would we find the remains of it?"

"We would have to start searching on the actual site," he answered.

"There at the neck of the gorge. Then we would have to search downstream

from there."

They scrambled down the slope again, with Tamre picking out the easiest

route for Royan, stopping to beckon her whenever she faltered or paused

for breath. They came out in the neck of the valley and stood on the

rocky bank of the river, looking about them.

"How high would the wall have been?" Royan asked.

"Not too high. Again, I can't give you a precise answer until I have

shot the levels." He climbed a little way up the side of the wall. There

he squatted and turned his head back and forth, looking first down the

length of the valley and then towards the lip of the waterfall that

dropped into the mouth of the chasm.

Three times he changed his position, on each occasion moving a few paces

higher up the slope. The cliff became steeper the higher he climbed. In

the end he was clinging precariously to the side of it, but he seemed

satisfied. Then he called down to her.

"I would say this is about it, where I am now. This would be the height

of the dam wall. It looks about fifteen feet high to me."

Royan was still standing on the bank, and now she turned and stared

across at the far bank of the river, estimating the distance to the

limestone cliff rising above it.

"Roughly a hundred feet across," she shouted up to him.

"About that," he agreed. "A lot of work, but not impossible."

"Taita. was never one to be daunted by size or difficulty." She cupped

her hands around her mouth to shout up to him. "While you are up there,

can you see any sign of works? Taita would have had to pin the dam wall

into the cliff."

He scrambled along the cliff, keeping to the same level, until he was

almost directly above the falls and could go no further. Then he slid

down to where Royan and Tamre waited.

"Nothing?" she anticipated, and he shook his head.

"No, but you can't really expect that there would be anything left after

nearly four thousand years. These cliffs have been exposed to wind and

weather for all that time. I think our best bet will be to look for any

surviving blocks from the dam wall that might have been carried away

when Taita. breached it to flood the chasm again."

They started down the valley, where Royan came upon a chunk of stone

that seemed to be of a different type from the surrounding country rock.

It was the size of an oldfashioned cabin trunk. Although it was

halfcovered by undergrowth, the uppermost end – the one that was exposed

– had a definite right-angled corner to it. She called Nicholas across

to her.

"Look at that." Royan patted it proudly. "What do you think of that?"

He climbed down beside herand ran his hands over the exposed surface of

the stab. "Possible," he repeated. "But to be certain we would have to

find the chisel marks where the "old masons started the fracture. As you

know, they chiselled a hole into the stone, and then wedged it open

until it split."

Both of them went over the exposed surface carefully, and although Royan

found an indentation that she declared was a weathered chisel mark,

Nicholas gave her only four out of ten on the scale of probability.

"We are running out of time," he said, enticing her away from her find,

'and we still have a lot of ground to cover."

They searched the valley floor for half a kilometer further, and then

Nicholas called it off. "Even in the heaviest flood it is unlikely that

any blocks would have been carried down this far. Let's go back and -see

if anything was washed over the falls into the mouth of the chasm."

They returned to the bank of the Dandera and worked their way down as

far as the falls. Nicholas peered over.

"It's not as deep here as it is further down," he estimated. "I would

guess that it is less than a hundred feet."

"Do you think you could get down there?" she asked dubiously. Spray blew

back out of the depths into their faces, and they had to shout at each

other to make themselves heard over the thunder of the waters.

"Not without a rope, and some muscle men to haul me back out of there."

He perched himself on the brink and focused the binoculars down into the

bowl. There was a jumble of loose rock down the – small, rounded

boulders, and one or two very much larger. Some of them were angular,

and some with a little imagination could be called rectangular. However,

their surfaces had been smoothed by the rushing waters, and were

gleaming wet. All of them seemed partially submerged or obscured by

spray.

"I don't think we can decide anything from up here, and to tell the

truth I don't fancy going down there – not this evening anyway."

Royan sat down beside him and hugged her knees to her chest. She was

dispirited. "So there is nothing we can be certain about. Did Taita dam

the river, or didn't he?" Quite naturally he placed his arm around her

shoulders to console her, and after a moment she relaxed and leaned

against him. They stared down into the chasm in silence.

At last she drew back from him gently, and stood up.

"I suppose we should start back to camp. How long will it take us?"

"At least three hours." He stood up beside her. "You are right. It will

be dark before we get back, and there is no moon tonight."

"Funny how tired you feel after a disappointment," she said, and

stretched. "I could lie down and sleep right here on one of Taita's

stone blocks." She broke off and stared at him. "Nicky, where did he get

them?"

"Where did he get what?" He looked puzzled.

"Don't you see! We are going at it from the wrong end.

We have been trying to find out what happened to the blocks. This

morning you mentioned the quarries at Aswan. Shouldn't we consider where

Taita found the blocks for his dam, rather than what happened to them

afterwards?"

"The quarry!" Nicholas exclaimed. "My word, you are right. The

beginning, not the end. We should be looking for the quarry, not the

remnants of the dam wall."

"Where do we start?"

"I hoped you were going to tell me." He laughed out loud, and

immediately Tamre bubbled with sympathetic laughter. They both looked at

the boy.

"I think we should start with Tamre, our faithful guide," she said, and

took his hand. "Listen to me, Tamre. Listen very carefully!" Obediently

he cocked his head and stared at her face, summoning all his errant

concentration.

"We are looking for a place where the square stones come from." He

looked mystified, so she tried again. "Long ago there were men who cut

the rock from the mountains.

Somewhere near here, they left a big hole. Perhaps there are still

square blocks of stone lying in the hole?"

Suddenly the boy's face cleared and split into a beatific smile. "The

Jesus stone!the cried happily.

He sprang to his feet without relinquishing his grip on her hand. "I

show you my Jesus stone." He dragged her after him as he bounded away

down the valley.

"Wait, Tamre! she pleaded. "Not so fast." But in vain.

Tamre kept up the pace and burst into an Amharic hymn as he ran.

Nicholas followed at a more sedate pace, and caught up with them a

quarter of a mile down the valley.

There he found Tamre on his knees, pressing his forehead against the

rock wall of the valley, his eyes shut tightly as he prayed. He had

dragged Royan down beside him.

"What on earth are you doing?"Nicholas demanded, as he came up.

"We are praying," she told him primly. "Tamre's instructions. We have to

pray before we can go to the Jesus stone." She turned away from

Nicholas, closed her eyes and clasped her hands in front of her eyes,

then began to pray softly.

Nicholas found a seat on a boulder a little way from them. "I don't

suppose it can do any harm," he consoled himself, as he settled down to

wait.

Abruptly Tamre sprang to his feet and performed a giddy little dance,

flapping his arms and whirling around until he raised the dust. Then he

stopped and chanted. "It is done. We can go in to the Jesus stone."

Once again he seized Royan's hand and led her to the rock wall. In front

of Nicholas's eyes the two of them seemed to vanish, and he stood up in

mild alarm.

"Royan!" he called. "Where are you? What's going on?"

"This way, Nicky. Come this way!'

He went to the wall and exclaimed with astonishment, "My oath! We would

never have found this in a year of searching."

The cliff face was folded back upon itself, forming a concealed

entrance. He walked through the opening, gazing up the vertical sides,

and within thirty paces came out into an open amphitheatre that was at

least a hundred yards across and open to the sky. The walls were of

solid rock, and he could see at a glance that it was the same micaceous

schist as the block which Royan had found lying on the floor of the

valley.

It was apparent that the bowl had been quarried out of the living rock,

leaving tiers rising up to the top of the walls. The recesses from which

the blocks had been hacked were still plain to see and had left deep

steps with rightangled profiles. Some scrub and undergrowth had found a

precarious foothold in the cracks, but the open quarry was not choked

with this growth and Nicholas could see that a stockpile of finished

granite blocks remained scattered about the bottom of the excavation. He

was so awed by the discovery that he could find no words to express

himself. He stood just inside the entrance, his head slowly turning from

side to side as he tried to take it all in.

Tamre had led Royan to the centre of the quarry where one large slab lay

on its own. It was obvious that the ancients had been on the point -of

removing it and transporting it up the valley, for it was finished and

dressed into a perfect rectangle.

"The Jesus stone!" Tamre chanted, kneeling before the slab and pulling

Royan down beside him. "Jesus led me here. The first time I came here I

saw him standing on the stone. He had a long white beard and eyes that

were kind and sad." He crossed himself and began to recite one of the

psalms, swaying and bobbing to the rhythm.

As Nicholas moved up quietly behind them he saw the evidence that Tamre

had visited this sacred place of his regularly. The Jesus stone was his

own private altar, and his pathetic little offerings were lying where he

had laid them. There were old tej flasks and baked clay pots, most of

them cracked and broken. In them stood bunches of wild flowers that had

long ago wilted and dried out. There were other treasures that he had

gathered and placed upon his altar – tortoise shells and porcupine

quills, a cross that had been hand-carved from wood and decorated with

scraps of coloured cloth, necklaces of lucky beans, and models of

animals and birds moulded from blue river clay.

Nicholas stood and watched the two of them kneeling and praying together

in front of the primitive altar. He felt deeply moved by this evidence

of the boy's faith, and by his childlike trust in bringing them to this

place.

At last Royan stood up and came to join him. Together she and Nicholas

began to make a slow circuit of the quarry floor. They spoke little, and

then only in whispers as though they were in a cathedral or some holy

place. She touched his arm and pointed. A number of the square blocks

still lay in their original positions in the quarry walls. They had not

been completely freed from the mother rock, like a foetus attached by an

umbilical cord which had never been severed by the ancient masons.

It was a perfect illustration of the quarrying methods used by the

ancients. Work could be seen in progress in all the various stages, from

the marking out of the blocks by the master craftsman, the drilling of

the tap holes, the wedging of the cleavage lines, right up to the

finished product lifted out of the wall and ready for transport to the

dam site.

The sun had set and it was almost dark by the time they came round to

the entrance of the quarry again. They sat together on one of the

finished blocks, with Tamre sitting at their feet like a puppy, looking

up at Royan's face.

"If he had a tail he would wag it,'Nicholas smiled.

"We can never betray his trust, and desecrate this place in any way. He

has made it his own temple. I don't think he has ever brought another

living soul here. Will you promise me that we will always respect it, no

matter what?"

"That is the very least I can do," he agreed. Then, turning to Tamre, he

said, "You have done a very good thing by bringing us here to your Jesus

stone. I am very pleased with you. The lady is very pleased with you."

"We should start back to camp now," Royan suggested, looking up at the

patch of sky above them. Already it was purple and indigo, shot through

with the last rays of the sunset.

"I don't think that would be very wise," he disagreed.

"Because it is a moonless night one of us could very easily break a leg

in the dark. That is something not to be recommended out here. It might

take a week to get back to any adequate medical attention."

"You plan to sleep here?" she asked, with surprise.

"Why not? I can whip up a fire in no time and I also have a pack of

survival rations for dinner – I have done this kind of thing before, you

know! And you have your chaperon with you, so your honour is safe. So

why not?"

"Why not, indeed?" she laughed. "We will be able to make a more detailed

inspection of the quarry tomorrow early."

He stood up to start gathering firewood, but then stopped and looked up

at the sky. She heard it too, that now familiar fluttering whistle in

the air.

"The Pegasus helicopter once again," he said unnecessarily. "I wonder

what the hell they are up to at this time of day?"

They both stared up into the gathering darkness and watched the

navigational lights of the aircraft pass a thousand feet overhead,

flashing red and green and white as it headed southwards in the

direction of the monastery.

Nicholas built a small fire in the corner of the quarry nearest the

entrance, and as they sat around it he divided the pack of dry survival

rations into three parts. They nibbled them, and washed down the sweet

and sticky concentrated tablets with water from his bottle.

The fire threw ghostly reflections up the side of the ed the moving

shadows. When a quarry wall, and enhanc.

nightjar uttered it warbling cry from a niche high up the wall, it was

so eerie and evocative that Royan shivered and moved a little closer to

Nicholas.

"I wonder if somewhere on the other side Taita is aware of our

progress," she said. "I get the feeling that we have him a little

worried by now. We have untangled the first part of the conundrum that

he set for us, and I'll bet he never expected anybody to do that well."

"The next step will be to get to the bottom of his pool.

That will be really one up on the old devil. What do you hope we might

find down there?"

"I hesitate to put it into words," she replied. "I might talk it away,

and put a jinx on us."

"I am not superstitious. Well, not much anyway. Shall I say it for you?"

he offered, and she laughed and nodded.

He went on, "We hope to find the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.

No more hints and riddles and red herrings. The veritable tomb."

She crossed her fingers. "From your lips to God's ear!" Then she grew

serious. "What do you think of our chances?

I mean of finding the tomb intact?"

He shrugged. "I will answer that once we get to the bottom of the pool."

"How are we going to do that? You have ruled out the use of an

aqualung."

"I don't know," he confessed. "At this stage I just don't know. Perhaps

we might be able to get in there with fullhelmeted diving suits."

She was silent as she considered the seeming imposs' ability of the task

ahead.

"Cheer up!" He put his arm around her shoulders, and she made no move to