The floor of the entrance chamber sloped down and split into two tunnels, leading in different directions sixty degrees apart, equally dark and mysterious. The walls were bare and incredibly smooth to the touch, reflecting the light of his lantern with a muted matt glow. Cadmus slipped the oxygen mask onto his face, took a hesitant step forward and paused. His academic mind knew he ought to be recording his observations in some way. On the other hand, the adventurer in him suspected that after smashing the door to smithereens it was probably too late to think about doing things properly. With a determined step, he strode forward and on an impulse selected the right-hand tunnel.
He did not get far. After no more than twenty metres the passage veered again to the right, continued for the same distance to a sharp left, then carried on a little further before ending at a solid wall. Undeterred, Cadmus retraced his steps, carefully scrutinising the walls and ceiling along the way to make sure he had not missed anything. Once back at the entrance chamber, he barely paused before heading down the other passage to the left.
Around twenty metres later this passage veered left, mirroring what he found in the right-hand tunnel. As expected, when he had gone the same distance again, the passage turned sharply right, only to split into two parallel tunnels, the right one sloping down. Confused, Cadmus shuffled to a halt and shone his light down the descending passage, conscious that the trench entrance was now far behind. Without the lantern the darkness would be absolute.
“A labyrinth,” he murmured, his words muffled by his mask. “Crafty aliens.”
His suspicious were confirmed when a quick exploration of the right-hand tunnel led him around a bend to another dead end. Upon returning to where the original passage split, Cadmus took a few steps down the left-hand tunnel and then stopped to root through his pockets for a piece of chalk. He was just about to leave a mark to help him find his way back when something further along the wall caught his eye. Curious, he shuffled across to look and then gasped. Barely a metre away along the same wall was a neat white cross. Someone or something had been here before him and had the same idea.
He returned the chalk to his pocket, his hands shaking. As far as he was aware his expedition was the first to excavate at this spot, but the cross on the wall and Govannon’s earlier remarks about the odd stratification and a buried oxygen tank were making him think again. Yet he was certain there were no published archaeological reports on Arallu.
He lifted a cautious finger to the cross and found it was indeed white chalk. With a casual sweep of his jacket sleeve the mark was gone. This was his moment in history and he wanted nothing to suggest otherwise.
“This is my discovery,” he murmured. “Mine!”
“The past belongs to all, I think you said,” a small voice replied.
Cadmus froze. For a moment he thought he saw a small furry shape sitting on the floor ahead, then in a blink of an eye it was gone.
“Hello?” he called, his voice wavering. “Is anyone there?”
Silence greeted him like a heavy shroud.
“Anyone?”
There was no reply. Taking a deep breath, Cadmus swept the beam of his lamp down the empty tunnel before him and behind, then hesitantly walked onwards down the left-hand passage. He tried hard to convince himself that the silence and cloying darkness was playing tricks with his mind. Yet he was sure the voice had not been in his head.
A short while later the passage veered again to the right, after which there was an identical stretch of tunnel that ended in another sharp left and a split into parallel passages, the right-hand one once again sloping down. When he looked for a chalk mark, he found it in the left-hand passage as before, reinforcing the idea he was following in someone else’s footsteps. After hearing the strange voice, it was not a comforting thought.
He was beginning to understand the layout of the star chamber. He knew from aerial scans that the shape buried beneath the desert was a huge six-pointed star. It seemed he was moving clockwise within the outer wall, with every sixty-degree turn to the left followed by a hundred-and-twenty-degree turn to the right. As he followed the left-hand passage onwards, this deduction continued to prove true and two turns later he found himself at a sharp bend where again the passage split. Here he found another white cross, this time in the right-hand passage that descended into a darkness that felt thicker than ever. Pausing only to wipe the mark from the wall, he continued on his way.
Once again a familiar pattern emerged of gentle left turns followed by sharp turns to the right, though the gap between corners was shorter than before. Despite the sloping passages, the ceiling level remained unchanged and was now twice as high as in the earlier tunnels. Every sharp right-hand bend had the same parallel split as before, all marked with ever-familiar chalk marks that he removed as quickly as he found them. With each half-turn around the perimeter, the white crosses directed him to a deeper and more compact level. It dawned upon Cadmus that the labyrinth was a concentric set of star-shaped passages, linked together in a slow spiral to whatever lay deep at its centre.
After the twelfth cross Cadmus felt weary and subdued. The cloying darkness was making him hallucinate and on more than one occasion he was convinced he heard the patter of paws and a distant yet plaintive yowl of a cat. He had been in the chamber for almost three hours and was now so far underground that the light of his lantern no longer reached the ceiling. The narrow passage was nevertheless claustrophobic.
“My dear Professor Cadmus,” came a voice. “I think maybe you’re in too deep.”
Cadmus came to an abrupt stop and fearfully looked around into the darkness.
“Who are you?” he cried through his mask. “Where are you?”
A grey tabby cat ambled from the shadows. The professor stared at the apparition in disbelief, his mind doing somersaults. The cat regarded him solemnly, its yellow eyes glowing in the light of the lantern, then turned away to lick its fur.
“No pets are allowed on site,” Cadmus reassured himself. “Cats do not talk. Therefore, the creature sat in front of me washing itself is clearly a figment of my imagination.”
The cat paused in its ablutions and gave him a hard stare. All of a sudden, the four-legged phantom leapt dreamlike from the floor and promptly metamorphosed into a tall, raven-haired woman, dressed in a floor-length coat of silver and black fur. Cadmus gave a whimper and stepped back, fearful for his sanity. There was a god-like air to her that was both incredibly beautiful and unspeakably cruel, as if she would quite happily stab him to death with a hairbrush. The woman took a step forward, leaned casually against the wall and regarded the professor with a weary gaze. He was not surprised to see that within each yellow iris her pupils were dark vertical slits.
“You have no imagination,” she purred. “You profess to be an academic but you’re nothing more than a feeble-minded bureaucrat, just one more pawn in the great game. Do you really know why you are here, deep down in this forgotten hole in the ground?”
Cadmus took another step back. “Who are you?”
“Some things are best left buried,” she told him. “You don’t have to be one of them.”
“What?”
“Turn around!” she said, sounding impatient. Her accent, together with her olive complexion, made Cadmus wonder if she was Greek. “Go back! You’re almost out of oxygen. Do you really want to die down here?”