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"We don't know yet for sure whether it was Phoenician or not But, yes, the inscriptions apparently e people being received by Mayans"

Paul Trout chipped in "Dr Chi had already guessed that the carvings calyphs to pinp

oint the location of the observatories Mayan observatories are scattered all over Central Aht, as far as he knew, have that particular boat theme"

Austin said, "You've got eight identical observatories at separate locations, dedicated to Venus, keyed into its cycles, and all having so to do with a mysterious fleet of boats"

"That's right," Gaoes to the heart of thethe blank expressions, she said, "Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan were incarnations of the Maya's od, Venus The Maya plotted the planet's course with incredible accuracy They knew there were eight days in the Venus cycle when the planet disappeared The Mayans believed Venus went to the underworld during that time They used architectural features to keep track of Venus and other celestial objects Doorways, sculptures, pillars The placement of streets Professor Chi thinks these observatories were part of a greater plan A map Chart Even a crude computer meant to solve a problem"

"Like the problem of the Phoenician, excuse me, the as-yet-unidentified boats?" Austin said

"Exactly" Paul replied "Page two in your folder is athe locations"

Another rustle of papers

Ga parallel lines fro our hair out we got a call from Dc Chi He had co to get in touch We told hi ere sure was there and needed his help"

Paul announced, "Page three in your folder, gentlemen Dc Chi had this faxed from the national museum The Spanish destroyed all but a few of the Mayan books Thus is one of the few that survived The Dresden Codex It has detailed observation tables for Venus The data were collected from observatories"

"What bearing does it have on our mystery?" Gunn inquired

"Mainly as an example of the type of information that was so iine the Mayan priests night after night gazing at the stars They collect the infor architectural features built into these same temples; forecast what the stars and planets would do"

"I've got it," blurted Yaeger "Soht tes are the hardware The Codex would be the software that tells the hardhat to do" Yaeger blinked rapidly behind his wireriy forward, the physical form of software can be soft; like the floppy disk that contains the program, or hard, like the hard drive"

"Or for our purposes, hard as stone," " Austin said

"Bingo!" Gaeniuses we have at NUMA"