Chapter 1

Bill Ackerman:

He was a graduate student in anthropology who was invited to assist in the investigation of a cave complex recently discovered in the rugged mountains northeast of Phoenix, AZ.

Bill was just over 6' tall and weighed about 185 pounds, most of it bone and muscle. Bill worked out regularly at kung fu to try to keep from developing blubber from his academic lifestyle. He was rather handsome with brown hair and brown eyes in a symmetrical face. Women would give him second looks, but none so far had been induced to drool over him.

Sally Johnson:

She was a graduate student in anthropology who was invited to assist in the investigation of a cave complex recently discovered in the rugged mountains northeast of Phoenix, AZ.

Sally was 5'-6" tall and weighed about 135 pounds. She had just enough fat in the right places to make her attractive to men. In other words, Sally was a brunette "babe."

Sally and I had been at work at the cave complex doing the grunt work that the professors didn't want to do. After all, a graduate student is just another form of slave as far as the faculty is concerned. Sally and I had been assigned to many jobs as a team, so we got to know each other very well as we dug around and moved heavy stuff that the professors didn't want to get dirty with.

On one such occasion, we were deep into the depths of the cave and were working by the light of a pair of Coleman lanterns. At least we had one advantage we were not going to mention to the professors: it was a cool 72° F where we were, while it was a mean 112° F where the professors were at the mouth of the cave. We were afraid that if we mentioned this obvious difference to them, they would preempt us and stick us with a job in the direct sunlight. Oh, Drs. Hempsted and Josephson were nice enough and good teachers, but they had the common faculty feelings about the comfort of graduate students in the field.

Anyway, Sally and I were carefully working sand and dust away from the face of a large stone slab that began to look like a door. Our mentors had seen the photos that we had taken of the stone slab the previous day, and Dr. Hempsted had been the one to notice the glyphs painted on the surface. These glyphs looked so much like Viking runes that he and Dr. Josephson got very excited: excited enough to send us back today to clear away the crud covering the glyphs so that we could get even better pictures.

Well, Sally and I were doing our level best to get good pictures so that the good Doctors could get full credit for the discovery. Hell, if we were lucky, our names would appear in a footnote somewhere. We got the surface fully cleared and Sally wanted to be the one who took the photos. I didn't argue, but I spent the time adjusting the lights so that the glyphs were fully visible.

Sally had taken the full set of pictures that we needed, but she got the bright idea for me to put my hand against the stone to give a vivid impression of the scale of the drawings. That sounded good to me, so I reached out to touch the stone slab while she took that last picture.

I had set the lamps down in what were advantageous positions and reached to touch the stone slab. The moment I touched the slab, I discovered that I had bent over too far and was losing my balance. Without thinking, I put my full weight against the stone slab and touched two of the glyphs with my fingers. I have not idea whether it was the touching, the pressure, or both that caused it, but the stone slab started to move!

Naturally, I kept falling, and I must have yelled for help, though I don't remember actually doing that. Anyway, for whatever reason, Sally grabbed my belt to try to help me, but she was no where near strong or steady enough to halt my tumble.

The stone slab rolled away from its original position to reveal a tunnel behind it leading into darkness. I could not possibly stop my tumble into the tunnel, and I pulled Sally with me as I fell into the darkness. I expected to hit the floor of the tunnel with a painful thump with Sally on top of me. Well, that didn't happen!

We fell and fell and fell. Neither one of us has any idea how long we fell, but it seemed like hours. Sally kept a tight hold on my belt, so we stayed together as we fell. At first, we were in freefall, but we began to slow down after a while. We saw ahead of us, or was that below us, a pool of light that we fell into so gently that it was unbelievable. Sally fell on top of me, all right, but the impact was more like the strength of a lover's caress. No, that simile did not occur to me at the time.

Our breath was not even knocked out of us as a result of the fall. Sally released my belt and we rolled apart to stand and to look about us. What we saw looked like a movie set from a very expensive Egyptian mummy horror movie. There was no dust or dirt anywhere, and the room before us was furnished like an imagined pharaoh's tomb. There was a sarcophagus in the middle of the room with a multitude of ornate tables covered with treasure. It was mostly gold with a few gems thrown in, but none of the gems were cut in the manner that we were accustomed to.

At the foot of the sarcophagus was a table with a complete serving of food for a meal, including wine. We both discovered that we were damned hungry about now, so we were drawn to the food. Sally said, "Bill, do you think that the food is safe to eat? I know that I am hungry enough to take a chance on it."

"It looks that way to me, Sally, and I am willing to take that chance." That must have been enough encouragement for Sally because she took a bite out of what looked like the breast of a small bird.

Sally swallowed and said, "Dammit, this is good, and it can't be more than an hour since it was cooked because it is still warm inside." She proceeded to eat the rest of the portion she was holding while I picked up what looked like a pork chop. Well, it wasn't pork, but it tasted damned good, and it was also a little warm. There was enough food there for us to eat our fill and still leave some behind. We also drank what turned out to be watered wine, and we were pleasantly full by the time we finished eating. There were even some dates for dessert.

We had hardly finished eating when we heard someone approaching along a corridor. There was no door, so there was nothing to muffle the sound. I don't know why I did it, but I held my finger in front of my mouth to signal for silence as I pulled Sally to a poorly illuminated part of the room where we could hide behind some sort of decorative screen.

We got behind the screen just before a man in priest's garb and four soldiers came in. They left six slaves standing at the door. I was flabbergasted when I found that I could understand the new people.

"Our dear lord, Hephshut, has returned! He has eaten our offering. Quick, we must fetch the chief priest!"

I could tell from the look on Sally's face that she, too, had understood the priest. Neither one of us were all that interested in Egyptian history, but we had been through a couple of general classes on ancient Egypt as undergraduates. Sally whispered, "How could we understand the priest? And what is going on? As best as I can remember, Hephshut was a pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty."

"Yeah, I think that you are right about Hephshut, but I think that we will be in one hell of a lot of trouble if we are found in his tomb. Let's try to hide somewhere else before we are accused of being tomb robbers."

There was no other obvious exit, so Sally and I ran to the same corridor that the Egyptians had used. There was an alcove only a few feet farther along, and it was dark inside. We cut in there, and it was a damned good thing that we did! Hardly were we out of sight when a group of Egyptians approached the main room where we had been. This group consisted of men in priest's garb, soldiers with mean looking weapons, and slaves.