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The passageway once again became wider and more polished Nina squeezed over the top of a pile of rubble, encouraged by a greenish glow in the distance She swahter the nearer she came

In pursuit of knowledge Nina had crawled through piles of bat guano and lairs guarded by badtempered scorpions As wondrous as the tunnel was, she was anxious to be out of it and drew a sigh of relief when the passage ended She floated up a stairway and through an archway, e into an open space surrounded by crumbled foundations

Nina suspected Dr Knox had an idea of what she oon, but he couldn't have known the extent of it Nobody could Hold on, girl Order your thoughts Assess the details Start acting like a scientist, not like Huckleberry Finn

She sat underwater on a waisthigh stone block and pondered her findings The port was probably a con traders and guarded cos of skepticisry for their dinner of solid scientific fact Before she s definitive, every square foot of the port would have to be explored and evaluated

She ventured a guess that the port had sunk fro earthquake of AD 10 Quakes were not as common here as in the Mediterranean, but it could happen Growl I know, I know No conclusion until all the evidence is in She watched the bubbles froht be a quicker way to get to the truth

Nina had a talent that went beyond the ordinary and the explainable She had discussed it with only a few dose friends, and then in forensic ter herself to an FBI criminal scene profiler who reads a cri psychic about it, she had convinced herself Only a superb coraphiclike the way dowsers find water veins with a forked twig

She discovered her talent accidentally on her first trip to Egypt She had pressed her hands against one of the huge foundation blocks on the Great Pyraesture, a tactile attempt to comprehend the enore and frightening happened Her every sense was assaulted by ih, its leveled sum blocks with a prileamed in the sun She could hear shouts The squeak of pullies She yanked her hand away as if the rock had turned red hot

A voice was saying, "Camel ride, missy?"

She blinked her eyes The pyraain The darkbroadly, he leaned onthe poood price"

"Shukran Thank you Not today" The driver nodded sadly and loped off Nina pulled herself together and went back to the hotel, where she sketched out the block and pulley arrangeineer friend He had stared at her drawing, enious" He asked if he could steal the idea to use on a crane project he had been working on

Since Giza there had been si she could turn on and off at will If she got a long distance call from the past every time she picked up an artifact, she'd be in an insane asylu to a net At a smaller version of the Coliseues of pain and terror were so strong, the bloodsoaked sand, severed li so vivid, that she retched For a while she thought she had lost her hts Maybe that's why she didn't like the Romans

This was no Roman amphitheater, she rationalized Before she talked herself out of it, she swae of the quay, placed her palms on the fitted stones, and closed her eyes She could picture the longshore aainst wooden h of relief Served her right for trying to shortcut the scientific process

Nina shot a few photographs, disappointed only that she hadn't found a shipwreck She collecteda few last shots when she saw the roundish protuberances rising from where the bottom was sandy

She swaer object Intrigued, she got down on her knees and cleared e carved face about eight feet from its blunt chin to the top of the scalp The nose was flat and wide and the mouth broad, with fleshy lips

The head was covered by a skullcap or closefitting hellower She stopped digging and ran her forgers over the black stone