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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."
Hiram Yaeger returned to his computer complex after lunch carrying a large cardboard box with a basset 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 basset 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 massive catastrophe."
"Any idea of what it was?" inquired Yaeger.
"Yes, it was recorded in the map of the heavens on the ceiling of the Colorado chamber," explained Max. "I haven't deciphered the entire narrative yet, but it seems that not one, but two comets swept in from the far outer solar system and caused worldwide calamity."
"Are you sure they weren't asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I've never heard of comets orbiting in parallel."
"The celestial map showed two objects with long tails traveling side by side that collide with the earth."
Yaeger lowered his hand and petted the dog as he spoke. "Two comets striking at the same time.
Depending on their size, they must have caused a huge convulsion."
"Sorry, Hiram," said Max, "I didn't mean to mislead you. Only one of the comets hit the earth. The other circled past the sun and disappeared into deep space."
"Did the star map indicate where the comet fell?"
Max shook her head. "The depiction of the impact site indicated Canada, probably somewhere in the Hudson Bay area."
"I'm proud of you, Max." Yeager had lifted the basset hound onto his lap, where it promptly fell asleep. "You'd make a classic detective."
"Solving an ordinary people crime would be mere child's play for me," Max said loftily.
"All right, we have a comet crashing to the earth in a Canadian province about 7000 B.C. that caused worldwide destruction."
"Only the first act. The meat of the story comes later, with the description of the people and their civilization that existed before the cataclysm and the aftermath. Most all were annihilated. The pitiful few who survived, too weakened to rebuild their empire, saw it as their divine mission to wander the world, educate the primitive stone-age inhabitants of the era who endured in remote areas, and build monuments warning of the next cataclysm."
