"There!" Ki huffed, suddenly halting.

The tunnel widened ahead, opening into a chamber, the far end, sides, or ceiling of which their weak flashlight could not reach. Ki looked over his shoulder. "What now, Mother-Professor?"212.

"We go in, follow the wall to the left so we don't get lost."

But that wasn't necessary, because as soon as they stepped out of the opening of the tunnel, a very dim glow appeared high above their heads. Both instinctively stepped back, afraid, but the light went dark.

"Ah," Che Lu spat out. She was tired of this tomb's games. She stepped forward several paces into the chamber. The glow came back, growing stronger with each pa.s.sing second. Soon it was as if a minisun were hovering about a quarter mile above their heads.

Che Lu turned her head, taking in the scope of her surroundings. After so long limited to the confines of the small scope of light from the flashlight, she was staggered by what her senses revealed.

She was inside a ma.s.sive cavern. Metal beams loomed up from the nearest wall and disappeared overhead, curving to follow the dome ceiling around to come down, she supposed, on the far side, which was hard to see because of the obstructions in the way. Obviously, the Airlia had not trusted the rock enough to hold without additional support. There were numerous large objects scattered about on the floor, the exact purpose of which was indeterminate. Most were in the form of black rectangles ranging from a few feet in size to one over a hundred meters long and sixty high. There were other shapes scattered about here and there also. As far as Che Lu could tell, the far wall was well over a mile and a half away.

To the far left was a bright green light glowing213.

out of the wall, brighter even than the one overhead. Unable to determine the scale of the light, Che Lu had no idea how far away it was, but she estimated at least a half mile.

"What is this?" Ki whispered. Che Lu felt the same need to speak quietly, awed by the scale of their surroundings. The place felt old and abandoned, with a thin layer of dust covering the floor, which was the same smoothly cut rock as that of the tunnel.

"I do not know," Che Lu replied.

"This is not a tomb," Ki said.

"No." Che Lu realized her student hadn't yet grasped all they had experienced yet. "It isn't of human origin either."

"Ah!" Ki yelled and stepped back as a red circle appeared in front of them.

Che Lu held her place, recognizing the beginning of a hologram. Soon the same figure was in front of them that had greeted them in the corridor. It spoke for several minutes in the same musical voice, occasionally pointing over its shoulder at parts of the room, then it disappeared.

"Let's go back," Ki suggested.

Che Lu regarded him curiously. "Back where?"

"Back to the others."

"And then?" she asked. "We wait to die?" She pointed at a place the figure had also pointed at several times; where the strong green light was emanating. "We go there." She started walking, not even waiting to see if Ki followed. She had no fear now. The message this time was different from the one in the tunnel, she could feel that. The first had been a warning; this one, well, she wasn't quite sure what it was, but it had not been214.

a warning. She didn't bother with the bamboo cane and pole.

She led them amid the machinery, some of which hummed with power.

"Look!" Ki cried out.

Che Lu looked in the direction he was pointing. There were three men moving between several of the large objects, about five hundred yards away, moving toward their position.

Che Lu instinctively grabbed Ki and pulled him back. The men were out of sight now, behind something. Che Lu took a deep breath.

Ki had pulled a small knife out of his belt and was gripping it with white knuckles.

"Put that away," Che Lu said sharply.

"But-"

One thing Che Lu had definitely noticed about the figures was the AK-74 weapons each held. Che Lu slowly looked around the edge of the next machine, Ki right behind her. Looking ahead, she could see one of the men about eighty yards ahead, halted and silhouetted against the green light source.

Where were the other two? Che Lu thought. Her instincts were tingling.

Turning, she froze, looking into the end of two AK-74's. Che Lu looked from the muzzles to the heads; they were not Chinese, that was for sure. She combined the weapons with the camouflaged smocks they wore and made a guess as to their origin.

"Please do not shoot," Che Lu said in Russian.

The taller of the two replied in perfect Mandarin. "Who are you?"

"I am Professor Che Lu of Beijing University. And you are?"215.

"Colonel Kostanov of the Russian Republic. How did you get in?"

"We blew open the main doors."

Kostanov raised an eyebrow. "Are they still open?"

"No. The army shut them behind us. We are trapped." Kostanov smiled, revealing even teeth. "Ah, then you join us and our party, eh, Professor? You are either very brave or very foolish to be here so poorly equipped. Or perhaps you know something about all this"-his weapon made a small arc- "that we do not know?"

Che Lu shrugged. "What I thought I knew about this tomb is obviously not true, so I think I know nothing you do not know. But I find it curious," Che Lu continued, "to find Russians inside one of China's most ancient archaeological sites."

"That's the least of the strangeness you have found here," Kostanov said. He shrugged. "I suppose I ought to just kill you both right now and continue on with my mission. Unfortunately, since I am unable to do the latter, I suppose I won't do the former; for the moment that is."

"Why are you here?" Che Lu said.

The muzzle of Kostanov's weapon lowered and his free hand encompa.s.sed the chamber. "You need ask?"

"How did you know this was here?"

"High runes," he answered simply. "We are not complete idiots. We can read some of them. More now that Professor Nabinger has made some of his findings public."

"How did you get in?" Che Lu asked.

"A side tunnel leading directly to this cham-216.

ber." Kostanov pointed to the side of the chamber opposite where Che Lu and Ki had come in. "You came in from there?" he asked, directing his hand toward the tunnel they had come out of.

"Yes."

"That was closed yesterday," Kostanov said.

"You can't get out either?" It was a question she had to ask even though Che Lu knew the answer, and now she knew why the army had been here and why her door had been blocked so quickly.

"No. At least not the way we came in," Kostanov answered. "We went up to the door but it was sealed from the outside, as we already knew. The other tunnel led nowhere. . . ." His voice trailed off.

"And the main way down, you tried that, did you not?"

Kostanov nodded. "I lost one of my men there."

Che Lu pointed. "And the green light?"

"A control room of some sort," Kostanov answered. He smiled. "We have not been foolish enough or desperate enough to start pushing b.u.t.tons whose function we do not now. Not yet," he added.

"How long have you been in here?" Che Lu asked.

"Three days now. It was dark when we came in. Nothing stirring. But two days ago the power came on in the control room and this room when you entered it.

Perhaps you had something to do with that?"

"I wish I did," Che Lu answered, "because that would mean I could get us out of here."217.

"How long have you been in here?" Kostanov asked.

"We entered less than a day ago."

"You are not as well supplied as we were," Kostanov noted, "but we have reached your level now, as our food and water are gone."

"What is all this?" Che Lu asked. "I don't know," Kostanov said. "We have been unable to get into any of the containers. Some seem to have machinery inside that is operating. Others are silent." His shoulder shrugged under the camouflage. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Che Lu pointed. "Let me see that control room."218.

Chapter 20.

Inside the Mars chamber the program was running without a glitch. With a gentle sigh of air the inside of the chamber equalized with the pressure inside one of the crypts. The last of the material covering the body was gone.

Eyelids flickered, then opened. Bright red eyes peered up at the roof of the chamber. A six-fingered hand reached up and grasped the side of the container, then tightened, pulling the upper half of the body up. The alien stared about the chamber, taking in the other silent crypts. It came back to the alien then: She was the first. The program would wait on her before completely waking the others in the first echelon. She was to make sure the time was right.

In New York, a large collective sigh of relief was released by the UNAOC staff as a new message from the Guardian II computer on Mars was received and began to be transcribed on the large219.

screen in the front of the conference room. The relief transformed into enthusiasm bordering on hysteria as the latter part of the message was deciphered.

APOLOGY.

FOR ENERGY DISCHARGE.

THAT CAUSED.

YOUR ORBITAL CRAFT.

TO MALFUNCTION.

IT MAS ACCIDENT.

ALL SYSTEMS ARE.

FUNCTIONING HERE.

WILL DEPART THIS PLANET.

FOR YOURS.

SOON.

WILL LAND ON YOUR PLANET.

IN TWO OF YOUR ROTATIONS.

PLEASE INDICATE WHERE.

OUR LANDING.

SHOULD BE.

ASPASIA.

Peter Sterling stood up and addressed the rest of UNAOC. "The Earth has forty- eight hours to prepare the reception."

At Cube operations Kelly Reynolds studied the intelligence reports that were forwarded to her via Quinn from many points around the globe. Much was happening and much would happen in the next two days. The impression was that the excitement of those in the UNAOC conference room mirrored the excitement that was breaking out all over the planet as the realization that aliens would be220.

landing on Earth in forty-eight hours washed over the world's peoples.

Kelly could tell that on the whole, the excitement was positive. The story of Aspasia's battle against the rebels five millennia ago, as transmitted to Peter Nabinger from the Guardian I computer, had now trickled its way into even the remotest corner of the planet. Hope had been ignited in the hearts and minds of the vast majority of Earth's population that there would soon be technological advances that would end war, famine, disease, pollution, and the other problems that ravaged the face of the planet.

The isolationists geared up to mount protests, but Kelly knew they were battling the inevitable, as there was nothing they could do to stop the wave of antic.i.p.ation.

Still, Kelly knew, all was not good. Sometimes the human race made her want to tear her hair out. There were those who also saw the next forty-eight hours as critical. Reading between the lines, many humans believed that the Airlia would help the UN impose peace on the planet, and since the current state of affairs was unacceptable to certain groups, they surged forward in revolt, terrorism, and rebellion to grab as much as they could before a status quo was invoked.

It was clear to Kelly Reynolds and the intelligence a.n.a.lysts what some of those events would be. In the Middle East there would be ma.s.sive uprisings in the Occupied Territories. According to the CIA, Iraq was preparing to launch another a.s.sault into Kuwait, one that was certain to be immediately smashed by U.S. and Allied air power flying from carriers in the Gulf and air-221.

fields in Saudi Arabia. Several ethnic regions of Russia would rise up in rebellion, and according to a.n.a.lysts, Moscow's weary reply would most likely be to pull its troops out of the areas and wait to see what the coming of the Airlia would bring.

In Central and South America revolution was getting ready to break out in several countries. In the United States some right-wing militia groups were preparing to conduct acts of terrorism, protesting the United States'

partic.i.p.ation in the UN and UNAOC. The FBI and ATF were already moving to preempt those acts.

Of more particular notice to Kelly, in China, the long-persecuted Muslim minority in the west had already seized several armories and, with the help of Taiwanese special operations units, had risen in revolt against the central government in Beijing as Taiwanese warships cruised close to Hong Kong harbor, raising speculation that Taiwan might attempt to attack the former colony. Kelly knew from reading the a.n.a.lyses that the small island state could never seize and hold Hong Kong, but agents in that part of the world reported that destruction of the strongest part of China's new economy was more the goal of the Taiwanese.

China. Kelly's gaze focused on that word. What was happening there? What was in the d.a.m.n tomb? Now that there was definite time-line for the arrival of Aspasia, her antic.i.p.ation was rising to an almost fevered pitch. She knew now that there was no way she could stop the mission, but she could pray, and that she did with all her heart, that the Airlia would arrive to find a united world222.to greet them and that her friends would make it out of China alive.