Traxel roared with amusement as Shepley lay there stunned, then knelt down, sympathetically examining Shepley’s face in the light thrown by the expanding persona within the tomb. Bridges whooped with surprise, gaping like a startled ape at the sumptuous golden mirage of the enchantress.
‘How did you find me?’ Shepley muttered thickly. ‘I double-tracked a dozen times.’
Traxel smiled. ‘We didn’t follow you, chum. We followed the rail.’ He pointed down at the silver thread of the metal strip, plainly visible in the dawn light almost ten miles away. ‘The gyro-car cleaned the rail. It led us straight here. Ah, hello, Doctor,’ he greeted the Old Man as he climbed the slope and slumped down wearily beside Shepley. ‘I take it we have you to thank for all this. Don’t worry, Doctor, I shan’t forget you.’
‘Many thanks,’ the’ Old Man said flatly. He helped Shepley to sit up, frowning at his split lips. ‘Aren’t you taking everything too seriously, Traxel? You’re becoming crazed with greed. Let the boy have this tomb. There are plenty more.’
The patterns of light across the sand dimmed and broke as Bridges plunged through the persona towards the rear of the chancel. Weakly Shepley tried to stand up, but the Old Man held him back. Traxel shrugged. ‘Too late, Doctor.’ He looked over his shoulder at the persona, ruefully shaking his head in acknowledgment of its magnificence. ‘These 10th Dynasty graves are stupendous. But there’s something curious about this one.’
He was still staring at it reflectively a minute later when Bridges emerged. ‘Boy, that was a crazy one, Traxel! For a second I thought it was a dud.’ He handed the three canisters to Traxel, who weighed two of them in one hand against the other. Bridges added ‘Kinda light, aren’t they?’
Traxel began to prise them open with a wrench. ‘Are you certain there are no more in there?’
‘Hundred per cent. Have a look yourself.’
Two of the cans were empty, the tape spools missing. The third was only half full, a mere three-inch width of tape in its centre. Bridges bellowed in pain: ‘The kid robbed us. I can’t believe it!’ Traxel waved him away and went over to the Old Man, who was staring in at the now flickering persona. The two men exchanged glances, then nodded slowly in confirmation. With a short laugh Traxel kicked at the can containing the half reel of tape, jerking the spool out on to the sand, where it began to unravel in the quietly moving air. Bridges protested but Traxel shook his head.
‘It is a dud. Go and have a close look at the image.’ When Bridges peered at it blankly he explained ‘The woman there was dead when the matrices were recorded. She’s beautiful all right — as poor Shepley here discovered — but it’s all too literally skin deep. That’s why there’s only half a can of data. No nervous system, no musculature or internal organs just a beautiful golden husk. This is a mortuary tomb. If you resurrected her you’d have an ice-cold corpse on your hands.’
‘But why?’ Bridges rasped. ‘What’s the point?’
Traxel gestured expansively. ‘It’s immortality of a kind. Perhaps she died suddenly, and this was the next best thing. When the Doctor first came here there were a lot of mortuary tombs of young children being found. If I remember he had something of a reputation for always leaving them intact. A typical piece of highbrow sentimentality — giving immortality only to the dead. Agree, Doctor?’
Before the Old Man could reply a voice shouted from below, there was a nearby roaring hiss of an ascending signal rocket and a vivid red star-shell burst over the lake below, spitting incandescent fragments over them. Traxel and Bridges leapt forwards, saw two men in a sand-car pointing up at them, and three more vehicles converging across the lake half a mile away.
‘The time-wardens!’ Traxel shouted. Bridges picked up the tool bag and the two men raced across the slope towards the half-track, the Old Man hobbling after them. He turned back to wait for Shepley, who was still sitting on the ground where he had fallen, watching the image inside the pavilion.
‘Shepley! Come on, lad, pull yourself together! You’ll get ten years!’
When Shepley made no reply he reached up to the side of the half-track as Traxel reversed it expertly out of the morraine of sand, letting Bridges swing him aboard. ‘Shepley!’ he called again. Traxel hesitated, then roared away as a second star-shell exploded.
Shepley tried to reach the tape, but the stampeding feet had severed it at several points, and the loose ends, which he had numbly thought of trying to reinsert into the projector, now fluttered around him in the sand. Below, he could hear the sounds of flight and pursuit, the warning crack of a rifle, engines baying and plunging, as Traxel eluded the time-wardens, but he kept his eyes fixed on the image within the tomb. Already it had begun to fragment, fading against the mounting sunlight. Getting slowly to his feet, he entered the tomb and closed the battered doors.
