"I'm not going in there," Lizzie called from outside the tunnel of fallen rock.
"Good," Remo said.
"But I'm alone out here," she shouted. "What if those maniacs with the guns come back?"
"Maybe they'll shoot you," Remo said. "Death is just another way to get peace and quiet."
His heart sank as he heard the scuffle of hands and feet behind him. "Watch. Now we'll all be trapped," Lizzie complained, her voice echoing around him like a bad odor. "Some rescuers."
"Here it is," Po said in the darkness.
Chiun answered, "Ah, yes."
Remo's eyes adjusted automatically to the darkness in the tunnel. At the end, he saw Chiun and the boy standing in front of what looked like a refrigerator.
"What's this?" he asked, touching its surface as he rose to full height. It cracked beneath his fingers.
The object was oval, about five feet high, and metal. Metal that crushed on contact. On its left side was a handle of some kind. "I think it's a door," Remo said. He reached for the handle, then jumped back in surprise when it was suddenly bathed in a circle of light.
The light jiggled. Remo whirled around.
"Flashlight," Lizzie said. "Naturally, I'm the only one who remembered to bring one."
"You are the only one with eyes so weak as to need one," Chiun said. He brushed Remo's hands away and opened the metal door. Remo, Lizzie, and the boy followed him into the chamber beyond.
Inside, the flashlight's bobbing circle illuminated a strange sight. It was an aisle, made of linoleum, it seemed, only glossier, sturdier. The ceiling of the structure was rounded, as if they were standing in a long tube, and made of the same material. Everything looked crisp and new except for the sides of the structure. Along the walls, for some reason not apparent to any of them, hung ghostly gray layers of thick, rotting cloth, as fragile as cobwebs.
Remo squeezed past Lizzie back to the oval door and pushed on its rim with the heel of his hand. It disintegrated under the moderate pressure. "This is the same metal the laser guns were made of," he said. "But the floor's plastic." He moved to the cobwebby hangings suspended from the ceiling. "And these things..."
"Don't touch anything!" Lizzie bellowed. "We don't know how old this is."
"Oh, come on," Remo said. "This metal isn't even rusted."
"Some of these temples contain tombs that are nearly airtight," Lizzie said huffily. "At Palenque, for example—"
"It's a plane of some kind," Remo interrupted. "It's got to be. The aisles, the airlock door, the..."
His eyes automatically followed the light from Lizzie's flashlight. It was quivering on the far end of the tubular structure they were standing in.
"God, what's that?" Lizzie whispered.
The light rested on still another door. But this one was round and made of hard white plastic. The surface it rested on was a sphere. A giant plastic ball.
"Don't tell me that's five thousand years old," Remo said.
"Oh, God. Not the spaceman theory. It can't be." Lizzie's hands shook as she walked toward the white globe. She opened the door.
The spheroid interior was heavily and uniformly padded with some kind of springy orange plastic. Six sets of seat belts dangled from the walls as if the pod were a ride at an amusement park, a luxurious, expensive version of the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Chiun and the boy explored the round, soft chamber as Lizzie fingered the seatbelts. Could this have been the discovery that the first archaeological team had written to the university about— the thing that was so important that they dared not put it down on paper? The thing the naked tribesmen were willing to kill to protect?
Her mind was racing. She had not seen the vehicle when she first arrived at the Temple of Magic. Apparently a wall had been erected around it. The Mayans did that; it made sense. The temple within the temple.
"I'm going to take a look at the other end," Remo said.
Lizzie jumped out of her reverie. "I'll come with you." She stepped awkwardly out of the pod, following Remo down the smooth aisle.
"Get back," Remo said. His voice was quiet, imperative.
"Don't bully me," she said. "I'm the archaeologist. I have every right—"
"Get back!" He shoved her toward the pod. She fell, landing on her rump outside the open door.
"How dare you," she seethed. But the floor was moving beneath her, and she recognized the tremors. "Earthquake!"
"Get in there," Remo shouted, picking her up bodily and tossing her into the padded ball. "You'll be safer in there."
The floor heaved crazily. The shock propelled Remo backward, sending him crashing against the fragile, cobwebby hangings. His back struck something hard and plastic. A knob. No, a switch, Remo thought. A plastic switch imbedded into some material that shattered like glass from the weight of his body.
The cloth in front of it exploded into dust. Outside, in the main chambers of the temple, more rocks were falling, crashing thunderously to earth.
"Hurry," Chiun said. He had picked the screaming woman off the floor and buckled her into one of the safety belts. The boy Po strapped himself in wordlessly.
A good kid, Remo thought, pulling himself with small, rapid steps toward the padded pod. He's keeping his head. Chiun was right about him. He'd been right about the girl, too. Pain in the ass from the word go. Without her, the two of them would have been able to get out into the open with the boy. He was small and kept himself still. But they'd never make it with a hysterical, screaming adult hampering every movement.
Another wave hit. Just outside the door, Remo flew off his feet again. Chiun's arm swept out to take hold of Remo's and pulled him inside the pod. He slammed the door closed.
The old man was standing in the center of the padded chamber, his minute movements keeping him in perfect balance as the woman and the boy jolted wildly beneath their belts.
Remo breathed deeply. The shaking was a lot less pronounced in the pod.
"What did I tell you?" Lizzie shrieked. "We're trapped. Just as I said."
"Score one for you," Remo said nastily.
"We're all going to die here," she moaned.
"For once, just shut up, okay? You're safer in here than anywhere else. We couldn't get outside now if... if..."
He glanced around the pod. Lizzie had stopped making noise and was staring at him in alarm. The boy, too, was looking up at him, open-mouthed. Remo heard himself speaking, but the voice was not his own. It was deep, dragging, hollow sounding. Slow, growing slower, like an old phonograph record winding down.
He looked to Chiun. The movement of turning his head seemed to take minutes. Chiun blinked, a long, lazy motion. Remo walked toward the door. He felt as if he were treading through molasses.
"Hold," came Chiun's voice, distorted and languid. "Do... not... open... it..."
Lizzie screamed. The sound filled the pod like a balloon, encapsulated and faraway. Her face was contorted, the mouth twisting slowly, the planes of her flesh seeming to wave like a mirage.