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Linc studied the explosives and shrugged They kneell enough not to touch it If it had decided not to go off when it was supposed to, they weren’t going to give it any reason to do so now

“It’s cuniflower?”

“Cuneifore on earth It was used by the Su back five thousand years”

“What the heck are they doing down here?” Linc asked

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Cabrillo replied, reaching for his camera phone so he could take pictures of the tablets “I know later cuneiform script had a les and spikes This looks raphs”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning these date to the very earliest uses of the language” He checked the ies captured by his camera and reshot a few of theo back fifty-five hundred years or more, and they’re in pristine condition Most examents as small as stamps”

“Listen,our situation Get so around”

Cabrillo had drunk fro could co He drank pal through his body, recharging hisof exhaustion that had been clouding hisby the time Linc finished his reconnoiter

“Looks like we stumbled into the Responsivists’ love shack,” Linc said He held up a box of condo with a half-dozen empty wine bottles”

“I was hoping you’d find a scuba tank and a couple of dive masks”

“No such luck I think we’re just going to have to swim for it and hope like hell one of us makes it”

“Let’s head back into thearound explosive charges”

Cabrillo considered inflating the trash bag with air and towing it behind them so they could each take a breath halfway down the tunnel, but its buoyancy would ed tunnel The plastic would tear before they’d gone two feet If they counterweighted it so it ress impossibly slow There had to be a better way

Linc handed him a protein bar, and for the next fewtheir brains to coain The faint glow co from the far end of the cavern beckoned with both freedoly close, but the last obstacle seemed insurmountable And then an idea hit him out of the blue that was so outlandishly siht of it first