"Until bones or fossils are found that prove they existed," said Hatfield, "they'll have to remain a myth from the past."

Pitt didn't debate further with Hatfield. He turned and walked behind the stone chairs still holding the mummies and stared at a large curtain of sewn animal hides that covered the far wall. Very gently, he lifted one corner of the curtain and looked under it. His face took on a mystified expression.

"Careful," warned Hatfield. "That's very fragile."

Pitt ignored him and raised the curtain in both hands until it had curled above his head.

"You shouldn't touch that," Hatfield cautioned irritably. "It's a priceless relic and might crumble to pieces. It must be handled delicately until it can be preserved."

"What's under it is even more priceless," Pitt said in a impa.s.sive voice. He nodded at Giordino. "Grab a couple of those spears and use them to prop up the curtain."

Hatfield, his face flushed crimson, tried to stop Giordino, but he might as well have tried to halt a farm tractor. Giordino brushed him aside without so much as a sideways glance, s.n.a.t.c.hed two of the ancient obsidian spears, planted their tips on the floor of the chamber, and used their b.u.t.t ends to hold up the curtain. Then Pitt adjusted a pair of floodlights until their beams were concentrated on the wall.

Pat held her breath and stared at the four large circles carved into the polished wall, with strange diagrams cut within their circ.u.mferences. "They're glyphs of some kind," she said solemnly

"They look like maps," spoke up Giordino.

"Maps of what?"

A bemused smile spread Pitt's lips. "Four different projections of the earth."

Hatfield peered through his gla.s.ses over Pat's shoulder. "Ridiculous. These glyphs don't look like any ancient maps I've ever seen. They're too detailed, and they certainly bear no resemblance to geography as I know it."

"That's because your shallow mind cannot visualize the continents and sh.o.r.elines as they were nine thousand years ago."

"I must agree with Dr. Hatfield," said Pat. "All I see is a series of what might be large and small islands with jagged coastlines surrounded by wavy images suggesting a vast sea."

"My vote goes for a b.u.t.terfly damaged by antiaircraft fire on a Rorschach inkblot test," Giordino muttered cynically.

"You just dropped fifty points on the gray matter scale," Pitt came back. "I thought that of all the people, I could count on you to solve the puzzle."

"What do you see?" Pat asked Pitt.

"I see four different views of the world as seen from the continent of Antarctica nine thousand years ago."

"All jokes aside," said Giordino, "you're right."

Pat stood back for an overall view. "Yes, I can begin to distinguish other continents now. But they're in different positions. It's almost as if the world has tilted."

"I fail to see how Antarctica fits into the picture," Hatfield insisted.

"It's right in front of your eyes."

Pat asked, "How can you be so dead sure?"

"I'd be interested in knowing how you reached that conclusion," Hatfield scoffed.

Pitt looked at Pat. "Do you have any chalk in your tote bag that you use to highlight inscriptions in rock?"

She smiled. "Chalk went out. Now we prefer talc.u.m powder."

"Okay, let's have it, and some Kleenex. All women carry Kleenex."

She dug in her pocket and handed him a small packet of tissues. Then she fished around in her tote bag through the notebooks, camera equipment, and tools used for examining ancient symbols in rock, until she found a container of powdered talc.

Pitt spent the short wait wetting the tissue with water out of a canteen and dampening the glyphs carved on the wall so the talc would adhere in the etched stone. Then Pat pa.s.sed him the talc, and he began dabbing it on the smooth surface around the ancient art. After about three minutes, he stood back and admired his handiwork.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Antarctica."

All three gazed intently at the crude coating of white talc Pitt had dabbed on the polished rock and then wiped clean, outlining the etched features. It now bore a distinct similarity to the South Polar continent.

"What does all this mean?" Pat asked, confused.

"What it means," explained Pitt, gesturing toward the mummies sitting mute in their throne chairs, "is that these ancient people walked on Antarctica thousands of years before modern man. They sailed around and charted it before it was covered with ice and snow."

"Nonsense!" Hatfield snorted. "It's a scientifically proven fact that all but three percent of the continent has been covered by an ice sheet for millions of years."

Pitt didn't say anything for several seconds. He stared at the ancient figures as if they were alive, his eyes moving from one face to the next as if trying to communicate with them. Finally, he gestured toward the ancient, silent dead. "The answers," he said with steadfast conviction, "will come from them."

24

HIRAM YAEGER RETURNED TO his computer complex after lunch carrying a large cardboard box with a ba.s.set hound puppy inside that he'd saved from the city pound just hours before it was scheduled to be put to sleep. Since the family golden retriever had died from old age, Yaeger had sworn that he had buried his last family dog and refused to replace it. But his two teenage daughters had begged and pleaded for another one and even threatened to ignore their school studies if their retriever wasn't replaced. Yaeger's only consolation was that he wasn't the first father to be coerced by his children into bringing home an animal.

He had meant to find another golden retriever, but when he'd looked into the sad, soulful coffee-cup eyes of the ba.s.set and seen the ungainly body with the short legs, big feet, and ears that dragged on the floor, he'd been hooked. He laid newspapers around his desk and allowed the puppy to roam free, but it preferred to lie on a towel in the open box and stare at Yaeger, who found it next to impossible to steer his concentration away from those sad eyes.

Finally, he forced his attention on his work and called up Max. She appeared on the monitor and scowled at him. "Must you always keep me waiting?"

He reached down and held up the puppy for Max to see. "I stopped off and picked up a doggy for my daughters."

Max's face instantly softened. "He's cute. The girls should be thrilled."

"Have you made progress in deciphering the inscriptions?" he asked.

"I've pretty much unraveled the meaning of the symbols, but it takes a bit of doing to connect them into words than can be interpreted in English."

"Tell me what you have so far."

"Quite a lot, actually," Max said proudly.

"I'm listening."

"Sometime around 7000 B.C., the world suffered a ma.s.sive catastrophe."

"Any idea of what it was?" inquired Yaeger.