Tunnels 04, Closer

him, then tried to get his thoughts in order. "That was close -- I thought we'd had it."
    Their escape had been nothing short of a miracle, and he still couldn't work out who it had happened.
    "You got us inside the pyramid, Dad! How did you work out the code on the stones?"
    "I didn't do anything," Dr. Burrows admitted, as he sat up, feeling his leg gingerly. "And I'm getting too old for this. My poor knees."
    "If it wasn't you, the... then how did we end up in here?" Will asked, trying to see what lay in the darkness around them.
    "Search me," Dr. Burrows responded, groaning as he stood up and began to rummage through his pockets.
    The instincts Will had honed during the months he'd spent deep in the Earth were returning, and he clapped his hands together, gauging the extent of the resultant echo. "Quite big in here," he observed.
    Dr. Burrows was still going through his pockets. "Yes, but we need to have a proper look at where we are, and for that we need some light. Got anything on you?"
    "Um... don't think so," Will said, also standing up to check his trousers, although he knew it was unlikely that he did -- the permanent daylight had made it completely unnecessary to carry a luminescent orb around with him.
    "Aha!" Dr. Burrows said, as he came across a small tube of matches he'd helped himself to from the stores in the fallout shelter. "Windproof matches. Good old army issue. Here we go," he declared as he took one out and struck it on the base of the tube.
    Will saw they were in a chamber, its roof some ten meters above them. Only two of the walls were visible in the flickering light cast by the match, and set into the one directly behind him he could see the stone steps they'd fallen down.
    "The floor," Dr. Burrows whispered. "Look at it."
    They were both standing on what appeared to be shapes carved into the floor, but unlike the plain reliefs on the exterior of the pyramid, these ones were colored.
    Dr. Burrows began to investigate, taking several steps as he held the match down low. "I think it's a map. There are features like rivers and mountains, and what must be cities on this. Look -- it certainly is a map! It's of the outer world! Here's Asia, And here's Europe." As he tried to see more of the map, he was sidestepping so quickly he nearly lost his balance. "All these continents are shown so accurately -- how is that possible?" He scuttled even further along. "And here's North America!" He whistled expansively. "No! So these people -- the Ancients -- were there millennia before Columbus!"
    "Before Columbus?" Will repeated, too preoccupied to fully grasp what his father was saying.
    "Yes -- and they could reach all these continents because they didn't have to navigate the oceans -- they came from inside the globe. They had the whole world at their feet."
    "Dad, I could do with some light over here," Will said, his patience wearing thin as his father continued to babble excitedly. At that very moment, Will's priority was to locate his Sten gun, but there was no sign of it anywhere.
    "Damn it!" Dr. Burrows said, as the match burnt his fingers and went out. As darkness swamped them again, Will could hear him scrabbling with the packet.
    With another match lit, Dr. Burrows moved over the map in the direction of the far wall. What was on it immediately caught his attention. There were more painted carvings, but this time it wasn't a map.
    A long procession was depicted on it. The figures were at least twice life size, and from their finery and the elaborate crowns on their heads they had to be sovereigns. Behind the king -- if it truly was a king -- was the queen, and she was being borne along in a sedan chair. Then came soldiers or possibly the royal guard, some in chariots that were each being pulled by four white stallions.
    And with this discovery, even Will forgot that he'd been trying to find the Sten for a second as he took in the spectacle. Then he noticed something in the scene. "Dad," he whispered. "It's the symbol from my pendant again."
    "Yes, it's in the ruler's cartouche," Dr. Burrows said, pointing at the panel below the kingly figure, where the three-pronged emblem was picked out in gold alongside some other pictograms.
    "Not just there -- it's all over the place," Will corrected him, spotting it on the crowns of the king and queen, and on a scepter the king was holding.
    In fact, the trident symbol was also emblazoned on the shields and breastplates of many of the royal guard, the gilding on