Tunnels 02, Deeper

half-chewed food strip instead of his pencil. He threw it away and, now using his pencil, quickly scribbled in the margin, guessing at the symbols where he had to because his sketching had been sloppy in places or because the tablet itself had been damaged.
    "Aleph... lamedh... lamedh..." he muttered as he worked from letter to letter, hesitating as he came to those that were unclear or that he couldn't immediately remember. But it didn't take him too long to recall them as he was so proficient in Ancient Greek, which was directly descended from the Phoenician alphabet.
    "By Jove, I've cracked it!" he shouted, his voice echoing around him.
    He found that the writing in the middle block of the tablet was a prayer of some form. Nothing very exciting in itself, but he could read it. Having gotten that far, he began to examine the uppermost block of writing again, which consisted of a group of glyphics. The symbols immediately started to make sense, now that he was seeing the detailed pictograph the right way up.
    The symbols were nothing like the Mesopotamian ones that he'd studied for his doctorate. Knowing that Mesopotamian pictograms were the earliest known form of writing, dating back to 3000 B.C., Dr. Burrows was only too aware that what tended to happen was that the pictographic signs became more and more schematic as the centuries progressed. So in the beginning the pictures would have been easily understood -- such as a picture of a boat or a bushel of wheat -- but with time they would develop into something more stylized, something more like the cuneiform letters in the middle and lower blocks on the tablet. Into an alphabet.
    "Yes! Yes!" he said as he saw how the top section repeated the prayer written in the middle one. But it didn't appear as though the writing had evolved directly from the pictographic symbols. All of a sudden, he was hit by the implications of what he'd stumbled across.
    "My God! So many millennia ago, somehow, a Phoenician scribe came from the surface... he did this... he carved a translation from an ancient hieroglyphic language. But how did he get down here?" Dr. Burrows puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath. "And this unknown ancient race... who were they? Who in tarnation were they?"
    His mind was bombarded with possibilities, but one, perhaps the most far-fetched, loomed far above the others. "The Atlanteans... the Lost City of Atlantis!" He caught his breath, his heart pounding with the supposition.
    He babbled breathlessly to himself, quickly switching his attention to the lower block of writing, comparing it with the Phoenician words above.
    "By Jove, I think I've done it. It is... it's the same prayer!" he began shouting. And he immediately spotted the similarities between the hieroglyphs at the top of the tablet and the forms of the letters at the bottom. There was no question in his mind that the pictograms had evolved into the letters.
    And, using the Phoenician writing, he should have no trouble translating the lower inscription. He now had the key that enabled him to translate all the other tablets he'd found in the cavern and recorded in his journal.
    "I can do this!" he announced triumphantly, flipping back through his sketches. "I can read their language! My very own Rosetta Stone. No... wait..." He held up his finger as it struck him. "The Burrows Stone! " He jumped to his feet and turned to the darkness, holding the journal jubilantly above his head. "The Dr. Burrows Stone."
    "You poor schmucks, all you in the BritishMuseum, at Oxford and Cambridge... and shabby old Professor White and your cronies from LondonUniversity who bloody nicked my Roman dig from me... I AM VICTORIOUS... I WILL BE REMEMBERED!" His words echoed all around the crevasse. "I may even have the secret of Atlantis here in my hands... AND IT'S ALL MINE, YOU POOR SAPS!"
    He heard the clacking again and snatched up the light orb.
    "What the..."
    There, where the food stick had landed, something large was moving. His hand shaking, he directed the light at it.
    "No!" he gasped.
    It was the size of a small family car, with six jointed legs protruding at angles around it and a huge domed carapace for its main body. It was yellowy-white in color and moved ponderously. Dr. Burrows could see its dusty mandibles grinding against each other as it ate the food he had chucked aside. Its antennae twitching exploratively, it advanced very slowly toward him. He took a step back.
    "I... just... don't... believe...