Seven Ancient Wonders Read Online Free Page A

five-foot-long spiked pit that blocked their way. But strangely, the stone railway tracks of the slipway still flanked this pit, so they all crossed it rather easily by taking a light dancing step on one of the side rails.
    As he ran, West fired a flare into the darkness ahead of them—
    —and thus revealed their menace.
    ‘It’s a sliding stone!’ Wizard called. ‘Guarding the Third Gate!’
    A giant square-shaped block of granite—its shape filling the slipway perfectly and its leading face covered in vicious spikes—was sliding down the slipway, coming directly towards them!
    Its method of death was clear: if it didn’t push you into the spiked pit, it would slide over that pit on the stone runners and push you into the lower diorite pit . . .where it would fall in after you, crushing you, before whatever came out of the side passages made its big entrance.
    Jesus.
    Halfway between the sliding stone and the Eight, sunken into the angled floor of the slipway, was a doorway that opened onto a horizontal passage.
    The Third and last Gate.
    The Eight bolted up the slope.
    The block gained speed—heading down the slope, propelled only by gravity and its immense bulk.
    It was a race to the Gate.
    West and Big Ears and the girl came to the doorway cut into the sloping floor, ducked inside it.
    Wizard came next, followed by Fuzzy and Princess Zoe.
    The sliding granite block slid across the top of the doorway just as the last two members of the team were approaching it.
    ‘Stretch! Pooh! Hurry!’ West called.
    The first man—a tall thin fellow known as Stretch—dived, slithering in under the sliding stone a nanosecond before it completely covered the doorway.
    The last man was too late.
    He was easily the pudgiest and heaviest in the group. He had the olive skin and deep lush beard of a well-fed Arab sheik. His call-sign in his own country was the rather mighty
Saladin
, but here it was—
    ‘Pooh Bear! No!
Nooo!
’ the little girl screamed.
    The stone slid over the doorway, and despite a final desperate lunge, Pooh Bear was cut off, left in the slipway, at the mercy of the great block.
    ‘No . . .!’ West called, hitting the underside of the sliding stone as it went by, sweeping the helpless Pooh away with it.
    ‘Oh dear, poor Zahir . . .’ Wizard said.
    For a moment, no-one spoke.
    The seven remaining members of the group stood in stunned silence. Lily started to sob quietly.
    Then West blinked—something inside him clicking into action.
    ‘Come on, everyone. We’ve got a job to do and to do it we have to keep moving. We knew this wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Hell, this is only the beginning—’
    He turned then, gazing at the horizontal corridor awaiting them. At its far end was a ladder cut into the end-wall, a ladder that led up to a circular manhole cut into the ceiling.
    White light washed down through the manhole.
    Electric light.
    Man-made light.
    ‘—and it’s about to get a lot worse.’Cause we just caught up with the Europeans.’
     

     
     
    The Grand Cavern
     
    West poked his head up through the manhole to behold an absolutely
awesome
sight.
    He was at the base of a gargantuan cavern situated right in the belly of the mountain, a cavern easily 400 feet high.
    A former rock quarry, it was roughly triangular in shape, wide at the base, tapering to a point at the top.
    West was at the extreme south end of the cavern, while opposite him at the northern end, one hundred yards away, were the Europeans: with their floodlights, their troops . . . and a half-built crane.
    Without doubt, however, the most striking feature of the cavern was its charcoal-coloured diorite rockface.
    The rockface rose for the full height of the cavern, soaring into darkness beyond the reach of the Europeans’ floodlights: a giant black wall.
    As a quarry, the ancient Egyptians had mined this diorite seam systematically—cutting four narrow ledges out of the great wall, so that now the rockface looked