Descendants of the Scythians

CHAPTER ONE

A geologist, an archeologist and two geology students decide to explore a cave, Artem the student is envious, falls into an archeological daydream, and faces the music in the cave.

It was growing dark but as night fell, it did not become cooler. It was the middle of July. Ivan Semenovich took off his embroidered Oriental skull-cap and wiped his shaven head with a handkerchief. The skull-cap was his favorite headgear.

“It’s hot, isn’t it?” he said matter-of-factly, and reaching up to the miner’s lamp, he turned the flame down. Then he pulled a large piece of paper closer to him which bore a diagram of the newly-discovered deposits and prospecting shafts, and turned to the others. His small, piercing gray eyes seemed to be assessing the mood of the three people facing him, although this time he evidently had no intention of reproaching them. His fingers smoothed his short mustache and his voice sounded almost gentle when, after a short pause, he began to speak.

“It’s not at all difficult, my friends, to analyse the results of our efforts. We have not found very much so far, the main impediment being… Do I need to tell you that what is hindering our progress is our working, as it were, along two lines? Yes, Dmitro Borisovich, working along two parallel lines, that’s how I would describe it. Your rebellious outbursts are what distracts you all the time, aren’t they? In fact, they distract not only you but also Lida and even Artem! I never imagined that archeologists could be so enthusiastic… All right, all right, I’ll stop, seeing that you’re ready to explode. What I was going to say is that the time has come to unite our efforts…”

The exordium was quite promising.

“All the data we have from the geological prospecting points to one and the same thing,” Ivan Semenovich continued. “The veins of copper ore cannot yet be traced very far below the surface, but their general direction can be determined: they descend into the depths.of the Sharp Mount.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been telling you all along?” said the archeologist, his glasses flashing reflected light.

“Like the rest of us, you have been putting forward certain ideas. But all these theories have to be thoroughly checked,” Ivan Semenovich replied. “Lida, be so kind as to pass me your diagram.”

Artem watched the girl rise slowly and gracefully to her feet, her movements deliberate and easy, pushing a straggling wisp of hair into place, take the paper from the windowsill and pass it to the geologist. The girl’s every supple motion was pleasing to the eye. Even the navy-blue overalls she wore, which looked so scruffy on the others, fit her perfectly.

“I haven’t finished it yet,” she said handing over the diagram.

“That’s all right, we’ll be able to make out the main lines anyway. Move closer everybody, will you,” the geologist said, unfolding the paper. “Here is the line of the prospecting shafts. All of them, except the sixth, indicate the general outline of…”

“The Sharp Mount!”

“Of course. The Sharp Mount and nothing else. You were right from the start, Dmitro Borisovich. Also anyone can see even without the keen sight you’re endowed with, Dmitro Borisovich — the diagram shows it unequivocally — that the lines of the prospecting pits run straight for a while and then they break. The veins disappear at a depth of approximately ten meters, and there’s no telling whether they reappear inside the mount. It’d be stupid to insist that they do without further borings, and deep ones at that. Surely you agree with that, Dmitro Borisovich! And we don’t have any data as to how the veins run further down, do we? I don’t as far as I am concerned, anyway.”

“But I have some data!”

“All, you do, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean to say that you have the geological data concerning the veins inside the mount?”

“Yes, I do.”

The archeologist, sensing the intrigued gazes trained upon him, deliberately wiped his glasses with a piece of cloth, and said:

“You may be interested to know that I’ve observed outcrops of the veins on the walls of the cave, and though I’m not a geologist I can assure you…”

Ivan Semenovich shrugged his shoulders:

“Again you’re talking about that cave of yours, Dmitro Borisovich. I deeply respect your knowledge of archeology and I remember too, without your reminding me, that you are not a geologist. But I must tell you at this point that there is quite a difference between archeology and geology… In view of this, I grant that your observations may have been those of a scientist but nevertheless…”

“I’ve foreseen the objections you would raise, my dear Ivan Semenovich, but ignoring the somewhat boorish manner in which they’ve been couched…”

“I do apologize, really!”

“Ah well, never mind, never mind. I have long grown accustomed to the manner in which you express yourself… And to a greater extent than you have managed to accept the archeological enthusiasm you keep mentioning… But let’s get back to where we started. In view of the objections I was sure you would raise, I invited Lida to accompany me to the cave today, in the capacity of, let’s say, a reliable geological witness.”

Artem opened his eyes wide in bewildered indignation: Lida went to the cave in the company of Dmitro Borisovich without even a word to him about it! All right, just you wait!

Suppressing a smile, Ivan Semenovich said:

“Well, that, of course, is quite another matter since Lida, as a student at a geological college does know something about geology… And may I ask what you found in that cave? If my memory serves me right, the cave in question is only fifteen or so meters deep?”

“It used to be until recently.”

“Oh, I don’t quite get your meaning. Has it suddenly gotten deeper, or what?”

“We got as tar as the obstruction caused by the rockfall. It blocked the way further down, but the cave in fact is much deeper…”

The geologist made himself more comfortable in his chair and looked at the archeologist with growing interest. Then he turned his gaze to Lida who forced an embarrassed smile.

“What a shame you didn’t tell me about it right from the start,” Ivan Semenovich said reproachfully. “You call that discipline?”

“Ivan Semenovich,” Lida said, now really red with shame, “we only decided to keep it a secret to make it more exciting now. A little surprise, that’s all.”

“Did Artem take part in your secret sally into the cave?”

“No, he didn’t. There were only the two of us. Artem was busy with something else and we didn’t want to disturb him.”

Artem, eyebrows knit, kept silent. Disturb him, indeed! It wasn’t a matter of his being busy, not at all! Besides, sorting geological samples wasn’t so important… The thing was that Lida and Dmitro Borisovich just didn’t want him to know anything. It was a case of clear-cut treachery since they surely were aware that he was interested in the cave, too! All right, he wouldn’t let them know what he thought about the whole thing! He had his pride, after all!

“I see, I see,” the geologist said pensively. “Anyway, I’d appreciate being informed of the results of your secret expedition. How deep is the cave?”

“I wouldn’t pretend to know,” Dmitro Borisovich said irresolutely. “And I don’t think it’s possible to find out yet.”

“Why not?”

“The cave is much too deep. We got down about to a hundred and fifty meters and turned back. And the end wasn’t in sight.”

“Ivan Semenovich,” Lida cut into the conversation. “When we were digging through the rockfall we saw a passage that led into another cave, a very long one too! Then a lot of small passages, galleries, corridors and openings. A sort of maze. That’s why we didn’t go any further. We were not ready for a speleological venture. Here, have a look, I’ve made a quick pencil sketch of the cave section we went through.”

Three heads leaned over the rough pencil sketch. Artem stayed put in his corner. He was determined not to budge.

The whole thing could be treated only as an offensive disregard of his person. Disgraceful!

Who was it who had first taken an interest in the cave when they had arrived just a month before and began prospecting — Artem of course! Who had kept assiduously collecting all kinds of information about it? Artem! Who had managed to find an old man who told them of some finds long ago in and around the cave? Again none other than Artem. Nobody would even have noticed the insignificant little cave had it not been for him. True enough, Artem wasn’t an archeologist; he was a geology student, but then, Lida wasn’t an archeologist either! She was also a student taking the same course as he. Anyway, one way or another, Dmitro Borisovich did not have the right — at least from an ethical point of view — to take Lida with him on this prowl that had turned to be so revealing. It was an affront! All right, now Artem knew what he had to do…

“And we did find four outcroppings of copper veins in the walls of the main gallery and two in one of the side corridors,” Artem heard as he became aware of Lida’s voice again. “They were real outcroppings. Ivan Semenovich, they really were! Won’t this cave be of great use to us?”

“So, they were real…” the geologist drawled. “Yes. Now the situation must be regarded from quite a different point of view. Dmitro Borisovich, don’t look at me so triumphantly! I’m of the opinion that the person who really has the right to be pleased with himself is Artem, for he first took an interest in the cave. By the way, why do you look so morose, Artem? What’s wrong? You are not unwell, are you?”

“Yes, quite a change has come over you,” Dmitro Borisovich joined in, turning his head to look at Artem.

“Our dear Artem must be daydreaming,” Lida said with a twinkle in her eye.

Artem slowly rose to his feet, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his overalls. He approached the table without uttering a word, looked at the Lida’s sketch and made a wry face.

“Really, Artem, what’s come over you?”

“He’s probably got some news to break. Is that it?”

But Artem turned away without replying, walked back to his chair, sat down, and only then did he speak. His voice was filled with a deliberate indifference.

“I’ve got nothing new to tell you. Neither am I daydreaming, nor am I sick. I’m fine. I’m just wondering since when Lida got so excited about archeology? She’s been quite lackadaisical about it up till very recently. And as far as her sketch is concerned, it’s poppycock,” he pointed to the paper on the table. “It’s a… you can’t call it anything but…”

“Ah, now I see what’s wrong,” Dmitro Borisovich said cheerfully. “You’re not being reasonable, Artem. I took Lida along precisely to get her interested in my archeological affairs. And it seems I’ve succeeded, isn’t that so, Lida?”

Lida nodded her head in ready affirmation, and then looked out of the corner of her eye at Ivan Semenovich: what did he think about the matter?

“Here we have another deserter from geology,” laughed the geologist. “Now I realize, Dmitro Borisovich, that I should not have come here with you, no doubt about it. Honestly, you’re a veritable enemy implanted in our midst. You will lure everyone here into your field, the way I see it. It looks as if we’ll all turn into full-fledged archeologists! All right, let’s get back to what we were discussing. Maybe Artem’s mood will improve in the meanwhile. Is that likely, Artem?”

“I’m not in such a bad mood as it is,” snapped Artem.

“Oh sure, sure, that’s obvious… Now, my friends, in light of the new discoveries we’ll have to introduce changes into our plans. You must admit now that I’m not as unyielding as some people think… incidentally, it’s you I have in mind, Dmitro Borisovich. Though, to be quite frank, I still have my doubts and don’t care to hide them.”

“For example?”

“Well… the thing is that the veins could disappear inside the mount just as they do close to the surface… But that can be checked. Moreover since your desire to probe the cave for archeological finds is clear to everyone, Dmitro Borisovich, we’ll unite our two lines into a common effort — geological and archeological. Do you have anything to add?”

The archeologist stroked his beard and spoke, seemingly lost in meditation:

“What attracts me most, Ivan Semenovich, is the fact that the cave is, so to say, an unexplored area. No one has set foot there for quite a long time. Remember what the old man said? T know that there cave inside out, I remember all its nooks and crannies. Been some time since they found anything in there. Which means that at least two or three of the locals were impeded by the rockfall, thinking it was the natural end of the cave. Now, since we’ve managed to get beyond it, I have quite different ideas about the cave.”

“So you have, have you? I’m eager to hear about them.”

“More than likely, the old man was referring to ancient artifacts. We’ve got a chance now of finding a lot more since I’m of the opinion that the cave once stretched deep into the heart of the Sharp Mount, and was spacious, too. It is quite plausible that some ancient people lived there or used it as a refuge to hide from enemies. That would explain the finds… There’s even more to it, if you’ll allow me to make some conjectures, which, of course, will be open to criticism. Considering the nature of the finds and how the villagers described them, I’m inclined to think that we may be talking about a tribe of ancient Scythians…”

“Scythians?” Lida and Artem exclaimed simultaneously. “Yes, Scythians, one of their numerous tribes. It’s quite conceivable. There’s another idea that I have, though it’s of a purely archeological kind, if you know what I mean. And as such it would be of no interest to you as representatives of the science of geology…”

“There you go again, Dmitro Borisovich,” Lida said disgruntled. “As soon as you get to something interesting, you stop short and try to make us prompt you into continuing. Please go on, we’re all ears.”

“All right, I’ll continue,” the archeologist said with a smile. “There’s a chance that we might find something in that cave that would tell us how the Scythians mined copper ore and how they extracted copper from it. It is known that they were excellent metal workers — copper, bronze, and especially iron. That’s the archeological side of it. But since I know only too well that our dear Ivan Semenovich cannot be tempted to take an interest in any archeological questions no matter how hard I try, I’ve thought of yet another reason to study the cave. And it’ll be a purely geological one.”

“Namely?” the geologist said, with evident interest.

“Well, when we have established that the Scythians…”

“Wait, you said you were not sure it was the Scythians who inhabited these parts.”

“Of course, you’re right, Ivan Semenovich,” the archeologist agreed. “Let’s put it this way — when we establish beyond doubt that the ancient tribe that lived here extracted ore from the cave, it would necessarily mean that the tribe knew of the local deposits, am I right? And, consequently, a geologist could draw his own conclusions from this fact, couldn’t he?”

^uI’ll give you one conclusion straight away,” Ivan Semenovich said. “If your ancient tribe did use the local ore, this ore must have been of a very high quality because the ancient people could hardly have known any methods of working low-grade ore. Yes, you’ve scored a point, Dmitro Borisovich. What a shame you’re not a geologist. You’d have made an excellent one if you hadn’t spoiled it all by enrolling at an archeology school.”

Dmitro Borisovich said with a smile:

“I’m most honored to hear such a refined compliment addressed to my humble person… I’ve laid down my reasons as to why I believe the cave should be explored quite thoroughly. Now I’ll try to put forward another convincing argument as I’ve… er… saved the most interesting part for the end…”

“Of course! You’re incorrigible. Pray continue.”

“Here it is. You’ll see.”

Dmitro Borisovich slowly unbuttoned his overalls, pulled something out of his inside pocket, and froze. He turned his head toward the door and was apparently listening to sounds coming from outside: there was slight but persistent scratching at the door.

“Diana, is that you?” called Ivan Semenovich.

The scratching was intensified. Lida got up and went to the door to open it. A big fawn-colored boxer dashed into the room yelping. She. ran round the room, muzzled everyone’s knees, then stretched out beside Ivan Semenovich, and quieted down, eyes half-shut. Only the stump of a tail wagged persistently.

“I’m glad you’ve come home,” Ivan Semenovich said, stroking the dog’s back. The tail wagged with renewed vigor. “Now, Dmitro Borisovich, please tell us what it is that you’ve saved for the end.”

“These drawings.”

The archeologist spread out a sheaf of papers torn from an ordinary school exercise book. A short sword, a horse’s head, and a sort of covered wagon were drawn in rough, broken lines on the sheets. The last bore an awkwardly drawn human head. Everyone looked attentively at the drawings for some time. Artem was the first to speak:

“Were they done by a child?”

The archeologist burst into hearty laughter.

“What a compliment, Artemi Everything you see here was drawn by me.”

“By you?”

“Absolutely. But it was not I who carved the originals of these images in the rock. In my drawings I’ve tried to be as faithful as could be to the carvings done by ancient people. So far I’ve been lucky enough to find four such carvings. These are just copies. I don’t belive I’ll be stretching the point too far if I say that these are of Scythian origin!”

The archeologist fell silent, carefully folding the papers. Then he said:

“Tomorrow I’ll photograph them. They are extremely interesting, extremely! They bear a certain resemblance to pieces in the wonderful Scythian gold collection in the Hermitage Museum. That’s my story,” he concluded solemnly, raising his hand.

A profound silence fell in the room. Only the hissing of the miner’s lamp and the geologist’s drumming on the table was audible in the silence. One had to admit that the archeologist was very good at putting forward very convincing arguments and sound ideas. At last Ivan Semenovich looked up and saw how Lida was eyeing him imploringly and how Artem, who had even forgotten his sulkiness, was waiting impatiently for his decision. Ivan Semenovich’s face broke into a wide grin:

“All right, you’ve convinced me!”

Excited applause greeted the pronouncement. The dog opened her eyes, wondering what all the fuss was about.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” the archeologist went on to say. “We’ll have a good rest and make all the necessary preparations since we’ll be facing a complicated and arduous task. And the day after tomorrow, we’ll start on our underground expedition. We’ll limit our explorations… mostly to the archeological line of our work — for a short period.”

“But the archeological line is sure to give us some geological results,” Dmitro Borisovich remarked.

“We’ll see, we’ll see.”

“Does that mean we’ll go exploring all together?” Artem asked, wishing to make things clear and definite.

“Yes, all together. And we’ll even take Diana with us. Will you join us, Diana?”

The boxer languidly opened her eyes again, but closed them in a moment: apparently the matter did not interest Diana in the least.

Thus it was that major change came about in the work of a small group of researchers who had travelled to a remote backwater in the heart of the Ukraine. But what had brought them there in the first place?

In the late nineteenth century, deposits of copper ore were discovered on the slopes of the mountain ridge. Nobody could tell for sure how much ore there was or of what quality. A certain engineer by the name of Hlebov decided to mate some money out of it. As he had the proper connections, he had managed to receive a government subsidy — quite a considerable amount of money — to build a factory. He even saw it through to the smelting of the first copper, after which he promptly disappeared. He had never really intended to turn the thing into a large-scale operation, for he was interested in only one thing — getting money from the state.

The factory quickly fell into disrepair, and it was soon reduced to a pile of bricks and odd pieces of equipment like trolleys and rails rusting here and there. The memory of engineer Hlebov, bent on having a good time drinking, and carousing with his friends well into the early hours, still lingered among the local villagers. Hearsay had it that there were deposits of copper ore inside the ridge, but whether it was true or whether there was enough to start extracting it on a commercial scale was unknown.

Some references to copper ore in the ridge could, in fact, be found in reports of various geological surveys preserved in the archives, but the evidence was vague and contradictory. This was hardly surprising since in czarist times, nobody seemed really to care about doing any further copper mining in the region.

Capitalists and businessmen, both domestic and foreign, were more interested in the coal fields located in this general area of the Donbas, for here, coal could be extracted practically from the surface. But this ridge did not have any coal so the entrepreneurs, eager to make quick and easy money, did not think it worth their while prospecting for copper along the ridge.

Neither was archeology much favored in this area. Local villagers occasionally found artifacts from ancient times, particularly at and around the Sharp Mount. But the finds, mostly objects of bronze or bone, did not attract much attention. No one suspected that the Sharp Mount might contain treasures.

In fact, there were no indications that anything valuable was hidden in the mount, as the villagers had never found anything made of gold or other precious metals or stones. Some bronze buckles and clasps, a few trinkets of very little worth — that was all. Dmitro Borisovich once said with a smile:

“As a matter of fact, we’re lucky. No one has done any excavations here; no one has explored the place as no treasures were thought to be likely to be found here. Consequently neither despoilers who grab one pretty trinket but ruin the rest nor grave robbers have ever found their way here. Everything that the cave may yield is ours to find and take.”

“Add copper ore to the list,” said the geologist.

The two men had been friends since their youth; they had travelled a great deal together and helped each other a lot, but each of them preserved an unshakable belief in the superiority of his own science. Such attitudes could be detected in their incessant light-hearted arguments.

They had been planning to explore the secrets of the Sharp Mount for quite some time, but for one reason or another the work had to be postponed several times. Thus it was only this summer that they had decided to combine work with pleasure and spend their summer holiday at the mount.

“But let’s not overburden ourselves with geological prospecting, right?” Dmitro Borisovich warned his friend in a decisive manner.

“Of course not. Neither shall we work too hard along archeological lines, right?” Ivan Semenovich replied in the same vein.

“The main thing is to get good rest,” Dmitro Borisovich added by way of explanation.

“Yes, prospecting and all that will be just to while away the time — purely for the fun of it,” Ivan Semenovich agreed.

“It’s a deal then!”

The reader may wonder at this point how Lida and Artem found themselves in the company of these two men of science. The explanation is very simple. Both the young people were students at the college where Ivan Semenovich taught: both were ardent lovers of geology. Lida, a distant relative of Ivan Semenovich, talked him into taking her along as a helper, to do some of the chores. How did Artem fit into the picture? That is also easy enough to explain. He was rightfully regarded as one of the best students at the college. Ivan Semenovich had high hopes for him and suggested that they spend their vacation together. Was there any need to say how overjoyed Artem was to accept such a proposal?.. To go on holiday in the company of his beloved and esteemed professor, and on top of it, to take part in real geological prospecting? It was nothing short of heaven!

Thus a close-knit group of two scientists and two college students had been formed; they had come to the foot of the ridge and settled in the vicinity of the Sharp Mount.

“Four people, not counting a dog,” Artem would say jokingly. The dog, a wonderful fawn boxer that Ivan Semenovich had brought along with him, could not be ignored, for Diana was large and intelligent, lacking, in the words of Lida, only the ability to speak.

It should be noted that Ivan Semenovich and Dmitro Borisovich had both broken their mutual pledges the moment they had reached the Sharp Mount. The only sense in which the trip could be called a holiday was that neither of them had any lectures to give or any thinking or writing to do. Prospecting had overstepped the bounds of mere “fun.” Very soon, there appeared prospecting shafts at the Sharp Mount that had been dug by Artem and Lida under the supervision of Ivan Semenovich. As far as Dmitro Borisovich was concerned, how could he think of anything else when he had an unexplored cave full of secrets at his disposal?

Truth to tell, the results of their prospecting and exploring had been negligible thus far. Some copper ore had, in fact, been found, but not much more. As has already been mentioned, all the copper veins broke off only a short distance from the surface, and all the hopes of the geologist rested on the unexpected finds that had been made by Dmitro Borisovich and Lida.

The archeologist had not been very lucky either until the other day, when he had managed to penetrate the rockfall barring the passage.

It would be worthwhile to say a few words about the cave if only for the reason that it had awakened an interest in archeology in Lida and Artem.

An opening to a dark underground passage half overgrown with shrubbery could be seen on the slope of the Sharp Mount among tall, thick weeds.

The locals suggested that it had served as a bandits’ hideout long ago; since then rockfalls had occurred in the cave, drastically reducing it in size and making it a very dangerous place, so that even children who enjoyed playing hide-and-seek games, generally avoided venturing into it.

During the first days after their arrival, the archeologist examined the cave. Unfortunately, he found nothing to mention except traces of copper ore veins.

Artem lucked out and chanced upon a very old man who was slightly deaf but still had a sound enough memory. From him, Artem learned that it was in this very cave that the old man’s father had once found several ancient artifacts, including broken pieces of old weapons. What had happened to the finds afterwards, the old man did not know. They had just disappeared, and that was all there was to it.

But Dmitro Borisovich, intrigued by the story, was not so easily put off. He knew from his own experience that such seemingly insignificant finds could lead to important archeological discoveries if you only looked in the right place. He willingly told the young man of such discoveries. Artem’s conversion to archeology dated from these stories. Artem wondered why he had never thought before that archeology could be such an entrancing subject!

“That’s because you’ve never had anything to do with the practical work of archeologists,” Dmitro Borisovich would say, chuckling through his moustache as he looked into Artem’s big black eyes that were burning with excitement.

When darkness fell, Artem and Lida would build a campfire. It was very agreeable to sit by the fire under the immense canopy of the starry sky. Everything around seemed full of suspense as the darkness pressed ever closer on all sides of the burning branches. Giving in to the insistent requests of Artem, Dmitro Borisovich would begin telling of things long past, and was so convincing it was as though he had personally witnessed the stirring events of ancient times. Even Ivan Semenovich was also fascinated, though he took every opportunity to reproach the two young people for their enthusiasm for “the science studying the dead” as he put it. Indeed, Dmitro Borisovich, who was a great lover of archeology, could easily inspire his listeners.

Lida and Artem imagined quaint scenes from ancient times when the tribes of Scythians, Sarmatians, Greeks, and Persians had wandered through these areas, when the great and powerful nations had appeared on the historical scene to fight their neighbors, to win bloody battles or to be routed and disappear…

Red tongues of flame rose up and mingled with black smoke. Artem listened to the archeologist with his head resting on his hands, gazing into the fire. It seemed to him that he was not listening to the archeologist’s stories but seeing the actual protagonists in flesh and blood.

He was especially fascinated by the stories of the ancient Scythians. Artem’s imagination was utterly captivated by this mysterious people, a mixture of different tribes who had progressed from very primitive conditions to more advanced ones: they were at first nomads, hunters and then tillers of the land. Artem was enthralled with the unusual customs of the Scythians, who did not leave behind any written texts, and of whose existence one could learn only from indirect sources: mention made by ancient Greek and Roman historians, and from archeological excavations at their burial sites, now thickly overgrown with grass.

It was believed that in their migration from Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Scythian tribes had mixed with other nomads, related to them in origin, in the Aral steppes, and then moved on to what is now the Ukraine and area around the Black Sea. Later on they were driven into the Crimea, Asia Minor and the Balkans by migrating Sarmat- ians. A part of the Scythians must have been absorbed by these new nomads, setting the scene for the earliest Slavic population on the territory of the present-day Ukraine. This story of the most ancient forefathers of Slavs sounded exciting and romantic!

That was the way the geology student had quite unexpectedly allowed himself to be captivated by archeology. And that was why it was such a blow for him when, as the reader already knows, Dmitro Borisovich and Lida had so treacherously left him out. No wonder he got angry. The reader remembers as well that he decided to do something to spite everyone. But what was it? It will soon be revealed.

Sunday is by rights the day a person can sleep late. That was what Artem believed and always did. But this particular Sunday, he got up earlier than usual. He dressed quietly, careful not to awaken Ivan Semenovich with whom he roomed, and picked up his miner’s gear.

Only the dog noticed that Artem was leaving. She looked at him expectantly, hoping he would play with her. But he stole away, and the boxer decided to be quiet, too. She rested her head on her outstretched front legs and closed her eyes.

The moment Artem was outside, he turned round to see whether anyone had noticed his leaving, and them made straight for the Sharp Mount. He walked through the high grass and weeds, heedless of the paths, hacking at the stalks with his pick as though the weeds were his personal enemies.

When he reached the cave, he stopped, lit the lamp, and entered. The familiar passage, the familiar damp walls. So far, so good. But where was the rockfall Dmitro Borisovich had been talking about? It did not take long to find it, and the hole in the rock suggested the way forward. Artem decided not to wait for anyone else. He was sure to make some extraordinary and extremely important discovery on his own.

Artem crawled through the hole and found that the tunnel got wider and higher. The rock reflected the light from the miner’s lamp as though it were polished. The cave was quite big, unexplored, full of mystery, concealing its secrets. Artem cried out in a burst of good humor:

“Oho-hoL.”

The loud echo reverberated somewhere far away, then died down, only to echo back from an even greater distance. The reverberations seemed to be running along the passage, breaking into separate sounds, like falling pieces of rock, generating strange, new menacing voices, quite different from Artem’s initial cry.

No, I won’t do it again. It’s a little unnerving, Artem thought to himself, directing the light along the ground to see the way ahead.

The passage grew wider as he moved forward, and it began to feel softer under his feet. Then at one moment, quite unexpectedly, Artem found that the passage forked and he had to choose which way to turn. He looked around hoping that something would suggest the direction. What was that on the wall? It looked like a drawing…

Oh yes, it was the profile, carved into the rock that Dmitro Borisovich had copied so carefully. No mistake about it. A human head, portrayed with rough lines cut deeply into the rock: short hair sticking from under a hood; a stern expression, a short straight nose and small beard. The face of a man from ancient times. Was he a Scythian? Most likely. Anyway, the visage corresponded to Artem’s mental image of the nomads: stern, manly, and yet marked with comeliness and pride…

Artem gazed at the profile for a while. An odd feeling came over him. For the first time in his life, he had come face to face with something truly ancient. Just to think that two thousand years before, an ancient artist had stood on that very spot, carving that profile in the rock!

But which way should Artem turn: left or right? Which way should he choose?

All of a sudden it dawned upon Artem that he should go in the direction the head on the wall indicated! Of course! Besides, there was a rough arrow scratched on the rock that pointed in the same direction. Without further hesitation, Artem turned right.

The new passage was narrower, and turned sharply at different angles. The corridor seemed to be bypassing huge rocks. Another fifteen or twenty meters, and Artem had to stop in a sudden disappointment — the passage was completely blocked by a wall of soft earth.

Another rockslide, Artem thought in frustration.

He was about to turn back. What rotten luck! Was it a dead end? But how could he return without finding anything? No, he positively had to try and do something about it. He had probably gone the wrong way; perhaps he should have turned left instead of right. But no, that arrow under the profile unmistakably pointed right. Maybe there was a way of getting around the obstacle…

Artem began thoroughly examining the wall, holding the lamp close. No, there was not a single crack. Then he suddenly held his breath.

He had caught sight of some barely noticeable traces of stonework in the wall right in front of his eyes. He held the lamp closer and was able to make out individual stones in the masonry. The stones were placed one upon the other, with darker lines of mortar in between to hold them together. Part of the obstruction was in fact a stone wall rising from the floor to the ceiling. How strange he had failed to notice it straight away!

The stone wall definitely concealed something. Otherwise, why should it be there? And how could he get inside? Had it been sealed up without any openings? There must be some treasure hidden behind it, what else? It was he, Artem, who would discover this secret… Oh, just you wait, Lida…

But before Artem had had any time to make a movement, he heard muffled sounds. He strained his ears to hear whether he had just imagined them. No, he hadn’t. Now he could make out distant footfalls: somebody was making his way toward him.

He was annoyed. He had no desire to share his remarkable discovery with anyone yet. The best thing to do now would be to hide somewhere so the approaching person would not notice him. That would allow Artem to avoid any unwanted explanations. But where could he hide? Artem began frantically searching for any sort of recess in the walls. But there wasn’t a single one! And the footfalls were drawing nearer and nearer. What a piece of bad luck! How would he explain his unauthorized visit to the cave?

Now Artem could also hear somebody whistling; the man who was approaching was evidently in a good mood: he was whistling quite a cheery tune. In a few seconds, a light blinked in the passage and…

“May I inquire what you are doing here, young man?” Artem heard the voice of Dmitro Borisovich.

Yes, it was the archeologist. He walked up, looked Artem over with suspicion (or so it seemed to the young man), and asked once again, this time somewhat sternly:

“Why have you come here, Artem? We decided to begin our exploration tomorrow, didn’t we? What does this all mean?”

Artem felt the blood rush to his face and neck. He tried to turn the whole thing into a joke:

“But you’re here, too, Dmitro Borsovich, in spite of…” That didn’t help in the least: it only aggravated the situation: the archeologist got quite hot under the collar: “What? I’m here because archeology happens to be my occupation. But what right have you to be here? Who told you to come? Who has authorized your visit? It seems that you, my dear friend, have not even informed anyone of your intentions! Am I correct in my assumption?”

Dmitro Borisovich was glaring fiercely at Artem through his eyeglasses.

“You seem to have decided to become an independent treasure hunter,” the archeologist went on implacably. “And this is after I’ve explained to you that it is benighted grave robbers that do most harm to archeology by defacing the most valuable evidence. Oh, I understand now — you wanted to make an important discovery on your own, so you kept your intentions secret? And then, probably, you would appropriate your finds without ever letting us know about them? Is that it, eh? Answer me!”

The accusations bordered on insult. He, Artem, a crass treasure hunter, a grave robber? Appropriate something for himself?

Artem tried in vain to think of some plausible excuse or explanation, but words failed him… Dmitro Borisovich was right to censure him: only now did Artem realize that his stunt looked rather suspicious: he had done something wrong and had nothing to say in his own defense.

Dmitro Borisovich kept his gaze fastened on Artem, and noticed the young man blink in desperation. He even seemed on the verge of tears. This placated the archeologist somewhat.

“All right, tell me what you were up to, Artem. You realize I thought you were up to no good, but still, I must know what brought you here? What would you think if you were in my place?”

At last Artem worked up the courage to give a hurried account of what had happened.

“You know, Dmitro Borisovich… I wanted, you know, so very much… I was so upset yesterday, when I learned that you and Lida…. that you went together to the… when you know I’m so interested in all these things… and so I decided…”

“You decided what?”

“I decided to come here and pay you back…”

“To pay who back? Me or Lida? And how you were going to do it?”

“To pay back both you and Lida… I wanted to find something really great… and then prove that I can…”

“Can what?”

“Can find something valuable and important… But I would never keep it to myself, Dmitro Borisovich! It’d be for everyone!” Then, quite unexpectedly, even for himself, he blurted out:

“And that would stop Lida from putting on airs, that’s what!” Artem knew the moment he had finished that his confessions were not a reasonable explanation, but nevertheless his words were not lost on the archeologist.

Dmitro Borisovich burst out laughing as though he had heard something hilarious. He went on laughing for quite some time, stopping only to wipe his eyes and burst into further guffaws.

“Oh my, oh my! You’ve made me laugh, you really have! To hear such a thing coming from a college student!”

Artem’s embarrassment reached a new stage as he heard these words. He had really said something stupid… Why on earth should he have mentioned Lida?… What did that girl’s putting on airs have to do with the situation at hand?

Dmitro Borisovich removed his hat and began fanning himself with it as though he were hot. He was still laughing: it seemed only a glance at the young man’s dismayed face was enough to send him off into another fit of laughter.

At last his mirth subsided, and his face immediately grew stern. Now he would probably say something that would cut Artem to the quick.

The younger man lowered his eyes, expecting a merciless verdict. What were his chances of being acquitted when he had been found guilty of committing a horrible crime against.archeology and his friends? What would he say, this implacable archeologist?

CHAPTER TWO

Confessions and lectures are exchanged, the overzealous nature of archeologists described, and a mysterious stone wall is discovered, behind which is hidden a still greater mystery in the shape of a small bronze chest, which, as Artem ardently wants to believe, contains no less a treasure than the gold crown of a Scythian chieftain.

Dmitro Borisovich gave Artem another searching gaze:

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

“Of course, Dmitro Borisovich!” Artem uttered in a whimpering voice. “My word of honor! I’ve told you everything there was to tell! I understand it was stupid of me, but, you know, something was sort of pushing me… and I, you know’… Dmitro Borisovich, please believe me!”

The archeologist smiled. There was really nothing more to ask about. The young man’s flushed and embarrassed face with its big black eyes blinking almost like a child’s, expressed more than any words could.

“All right, young man,” Dmitro Borisovich said at last with a dismissing wave of his hand, “let’s make our peace. But you’ll have to suffer a lecture from me all the same. And don’t pull such a wry face. First, you’ve earned it as punishment and second, it’ll be of some use to you. Which means that your gloomy expression’s out of place. Oh, it’s much better now. All right, tell me frankly: do you realize what incalculable harm your ill-advised prowling in the depths of this cave could have done to science? Yes, I do mean harm, and a very serious harm indeed!”

“I have moved around very carefully in the cave. I made sure I examined the walls and ceiling before I moved on. So, if you’re worried about unexpected rockfalls, I was on my…”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” the archeologist snapped, dismissing Artem’s words with an impatient gesture. “Of course that wasn’t what I meant when I spoke of harm to science. Your being buried in a rockslide would constitute no great loss to science. One overzealous young man less, that’s all. Oh, don’t take offense, it’s only a joke. Up to now, by the way, I’ve got my hope pinned on you, Artem, thinking that in the long run you’d make a decent scholar, provided, of course, you had the proper guidance. As a matter of fact, I have quite a different kind of harm in mind, a harm that could have been done not to you or me but to our common cause, to Science. Now, since you don’t seem to comprehend what I’m talking about, you must listen to what I have to say. And I ask you kindly to be most attentive so that my words get firmly in your rash young head.”

Dmitro Borisovich sat down on a piece of rock, produced a box of cigarettes and lit one from the little white flame of the lamp.

“Have a cigarette, young man. You don’t feel like it? Let’s then talk without the traditional peace pipe. Look at these things, will you?”

The archeologist drew the miner’s lamp closer to his feet. Near it he put the box of cigarettes, to the right of it — a pencil, and on the other side — his small-sized pickaxe. He was performing all these manipulations in such a concentrated, pensive and careful manner that Artem was indeed intrigued: it was so hard to guess what this complicated arrangement was designed for.

“So, young man, attention! Let’s imagine that all these things I’ve put down here are genuine archeological artifacts. And they are lying like this somewhere in a barrow or in a cave — somewhere where they have been spotted by an observant but hot-headed, grasping young man looking for archeological finds. Someone like you, for example. So, these archeological finds are resting just here. They are lying exactly the way they were put by our very remote forefathers in accordance with their traditions and rites. And we can learn about their traditions and rites only if we examine their arrangement carefully. All the more so in our case because we are probably dealing with traditions and rites of the ancient Scythians of whom we know next to nothing. We have neither descriptions nor authoritative statements about them. Now, here comes the enthusiastic young man. He sees, right in front of him, say, a vase of extraordinary beauty…”

Dmitro Borisovich swiftly snatched the box of cigarettes from the ground.

“The young man is, no doubt, excited. This is quite understandable as he has come across a genuine archeological treasure for the first time in his life. He examines the vase and the thought of how he will impress everyone with his unexpected find flashes through his rash mind. Yes, everyone, including one certain person who is of special interest to him… yes, yes, motives of this kind cannot be disregarded! But then, our young man sees other things lying around. He puts the vase down, grabs the sword, then a remarkable jug and so on…”

Dmitro Borisovich illustrated his story picking up the pencil, the lamp and the pickaxe from the ground with deft, swift movements. Artem watched him, not quite comprehending what the archeologist was driving at.

“So, he grabs one thing after the other, runs his fingers over it, makes many other hurried movements, quite in accordance with his effusiveness. He puts the sword back so that he can enjoy examining the jug, then he puts the jug aside when he thinks of the even greater beauty of the vase. At last, he chooses the most valuable thing of all… or even decides to take all of them to impress his friends even more. He returns and then it occurs to him that besides the things themselves, the very order in which these things were lying could be of a significant scientific interest. It is a well-known principle that the original arrangements of things in a find can tell the archeologist much more than the things themselves. It can reveal details of the ancient people’s everyday life, the meaning they attached to different things, plus much more. But in our case, unfortunately, the original arrangement of the things has been altered… It happened right at the moment when the young man began picking up the valuable vase… What’s more, in his excitement, he has trampled into the ground all sorts of shards and other tiny but important details. If they had been studied, they might have revealed a few more details about the ancients’ everyday life…”

Dmitro Borisovich gave Artem a sideways glance. The young man lowered his head abjectly, and was staring at his boots in dejection. Now he understood only too well what the archeologist was driving at!

“Dmitro Borisovich! I’ve found nothing! I’ve disarranged nothing! I’ve trampled nothing into the ground,” the young man made a feeble attempt at putting forward an excuse.

“Oh, I’m amazed, Artem, I’m amazed at how perceptive you are! I haven’t uttered a word that could suggest that it was you I had in mind describing a rash young man. And you’ve been so quick in making the right guess. Bang — and there you are. Oh, yes, you are right in saying that you’ve found nothing, that you’ve trampled nothing into the ground, that you’ve violated nothing… except discipline. Yes, I grant you that. But what if you had found something? Wouldn’t you have acted in the way I’ve just described? Can you, my dear friend, be absolutely sure you woudn’t? Be honest now!”

“No, I’m not sure,” Artem had to admit.

“That means?”

“That means that it could have happened just the way you described. Or rather, I’m almost sure it would have happened that way.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

“But, Dmitro Borisovich, I haven’t found anything, really, except, maybe for…”

Artem stopped mischievously. The archeologist looked up.

“Except for what?”

’’Except for this stone wall.”

“What?”

The archeologist sprang to his feet.

“Where? Which kind of stones?”

Artem pointed silently to the rough masonry and shone the lamp on it. Jagged outline of roughly hewn stones with barely visible joints emerged from darkness.

“The wall? Yes, that’s a wall, no mistaking it. The masonry probably dates back to antiquity,” Dmitro Borisovich muttered to himself, his excitement mounting as he ran his fingers over the stones. A profound change had come over him: he was a different man. His lecturing stance disappeared, and the quiet composure of an accomplished scholar was gone now! He alternately stood on tiptoe, squatted, leaned this way and that, examining the joints, and then, as if remembering something, he would step back suddenly to get an overall look at the stones, shining his lamp on them.

Artem looked at the archeologist at first with respect, then with bewilderment, and finally, in amazement, even mixed with scorn. After a while, the young man chuckled slyly and screwed up his eyes: his turn had come at last! He began speaking, carefully weighing the rhythm of his words:

“And now this overzealous, but no longer… er… young man has found something… or maybe somebody else has pointed out this ‘something’ to him. It doesn’t really matter. The main thing is — he has seen something interesting,” Artem went on, mimicking the archeologist’s mocking voice of a short while ago. “He is excited, this not very young, or rather quite elderly man. He examines the find, a wall, for instance. He touches it here and there, almost dancing in his archeological rapture. And note, that in his mindless dancing this elderly but overactive man tramples the ground all around the find, quite oblivious of the fact that in the ground there can be some very important… Ouch! Dmitro Borisovich! Please! I won’t do it any more! Just a little joke! Please!”

Artem was writhing in an attempt to free the ear that had suddenly been caught in the vice-like grip of the archeologist’s strong fingers.

“Dmitro Borisovich, I’ve stopped, you hear? Let go!”

“All right, I’ll forgive you, but only because you’ve shown me this wall. All the same, Artem, you’re much too impudent! How dare you mimic your elders? It’s not at all appropriate! Obviously, Ivan Semenovich hasn’t taught you anything about discipline. But in the present circumstances there are more important matters to discuss. This wall is quite extraordinary! Why don’t you tell me about it straight away? Why not? Answer me!”

“Dmitro Borisovich, it was you who kept talking, all I could do was keep my mouth shut and listen,” Artem said, carefully massaging his sore ear.

“Now you’ve got the cheek to blame me for not letting you talk?”

“No, it’s not that… just didn’t get the chance…”

“It’s no good, I repeat, no good. But we’ll talk about it later. Now, take the lamp and shine it over here.”

For some time Dmitro Borisovich ran his agile fingers along the joints between the stones. One was reminded of the sure, deft movements of a surgeon during an operation. At last, the archeologist whistled triumphantly, stopped his search and gave the young man a meaningful glance.

“Artem, this wall promises a lot of discoveries. I’m quite sure of it. Now we’ll try to get to the other side, just you and I. You’ve earned it. We’ll start in a moment!”

Artem held his breath — was this really happening to him? But the archeologist added:

“Before we do anything else, we must photograph the wall the way it is now. You can’t touch it before it’s photographed.”

Then, his composure restored, the archeologist prepared his small camera, equipped with a flash. After taking pictures from various angles, he approached the wall again.

“Now,” he said with satisfaction, “we can try to dig through it.”

Artem looked at the archeologist apprehensively:

“Dmitro Borisovich, you won’t be charged with having committed archeological sacrilege, will you?”

“Why should I be?”

“Well, they’ll say you’ve started digging through the wall without special permission. It was you yourself who told me that once.”

“Yes-yes-yes, I did tell you!” Dmitro Borisovich interrupted the young man. “What kind of archeologist would I be if I didn’t have a valid archeological license with me for the duration of the vacations?”

“What kind of license?”

“An authorization granted by the state to carry out any archeological excavations I see fit. See? And I’ve got the permit right here in my pocket. So now, young man, get your pickaxe ready,” ordered the archeologist curtly.

“Yes, sir. I’m not sure though I’ll be able to remove any of these stones. This mortar or whatever it is must have hardened into stone…”

“All right, we’ll see. Shove the pointed end under this stone…”

“And why this stone and not some other?”

“Do it first and we can talk later. Have you done it?”

“Yes.”

“Now use the pick as a lever and push the stone upward. Careful! Good. And I’ll get it from my end. Good. Careful! Push harder!”

The stone in fact yielded to their effort rather easily. Dmitro Borisovich must have examined the joints very thoroughly indeed…

“Now, don’t push too hard. Let’s lower it softly to the ground.”

They did it. A black hole opened in the wall. Dmitro Borisovich brought the lamp closer and looked in.

“See, Artem, there’s a hollow place behind it. There must be something just waiting for us to investigate it. Aha, I see you’re impatient to crawl through. That’s exactly what I was trying to warn you against. Not yet, wait. Let’s get another stone out. This one here.”

The second stone proved much harder to budge. The mortar had gotten so hard it made the stone impossible to move. The archeologist had to begin chipping the mortar with frequent well-aimed blows of his pick. At last, the second stone was placed beside the first one on the soft ground. Now the opening was wide enough to allow a man to crawl through.

“It’s not a very convenient entrance. But we’ll have to use it anyway. Here we go.”

In a trice, Dmitro Borisovich disappeared through the opening, holding the lamp out in front of him. Artem who was watching the archeologist’s movements with some apprehension, was very envious: the older man would be the first to see what was behind the mysterious wall. But the young man did not have to wait too long, for in a few seconds, from behind the wall came somewhat muffled voice of the archeologist:

“Artem, climb in, quick.”

Artem found himself in a low, shallow cave. He could easily reach the ceiling with his hand. A wall of roughly hewn stones separated it from the blind alley leading from the main cave. In all likelihood, the wall had been built by ancient people hundreds of years ago! But why there?

The wall sealed off the little cave from which, by the looks of it, there was no way to get any further. No openings, obvious or potential, were discovered. Could it be a sort of a burial vault? But again, nothing to support this theory was found. Nothing, except for a layer of century-old fine dust on the floor and protruding parts of the wall…

Dmitro Borisovich and Artem then began thoroughly examining all the walls of the cave in hope of finding some clue. There were carvings on the walls in other passages, weren’t there? So there was probably a chance of finding something similar here. But no, even a very thorough search failed to produce any carvings, pictures or other signs of human activity.

“No doubt we have here a natural recess walled off from the rest of the passage,” said the archeologist in a low voice. “It is absolutely clear this has been done for some specific purpose. So far so good. But what was the purpose? A storage place? Most unlikely, with all that dust here and nothing else.”

“Maybe someone was here before us and took everything there was to take away with him?” Artem put forward another theory.

“No, that’s absolutely out of the question. I’ve examined the stone wall very carefully and found no traces of it’s ever having been tampered with. Absolutely no signs or traces to suggest an earlier visit. Besides, would the robber take such great pains to put the stones back and mortar them? I don’t think your theory holds in view of this implausibility. Anyway, it’s inconceivable… Why should this empty hollow have been sealed off by a wall?…”

Dmitro Borisovich was lost in thought. Actem was looking at him, still entertaining some hopes that the archeologist would find a solution any minute now, would do something decisive about it. And they would return to inform the rest of a remarkable find. Lida would raise her eyebrows in envious surprise… She did it so charmingly… It was worth painting a picture of… But wait, what did Lida have to do with all this? It was much more important to evoke the interest of Ivan Semenovich! Then he would stop objecting to their archeological pursuits… Or, in the words of Dmitro Borisovich, to “the archeological line” of their work… Those eyebrows… they arched such perfectly straight lines above Lida’s green eyes… And my, how they sparkled! Again Lida was on his mind! There were serious matters awaiting his attention… Maybe they were on the verge of some extraordinary discovery, so why he should be thinking about Lida all the time?… Soon Dmitro Borisovich would come up with a solution, and then… and then…

But Artem’s hopes fell. Dmitro Borisovich put his lamp on the ground with an abrupt gesture of resignation.

“I don’t know,” he said with a sign. “I’ve never come across anything of the kind before and have never heard of anything like this being encountered by other archeologists. We need to think it over, discuss it, and avoid unnecessary haste. That’s probably the most important thing in such situations, Artem — avoid haste! Yes, that’s the thing. Now, young man, we’ll start back,” he said with determination. “Take this envelope. Collect samples of dust, first, at this wall, then at that one. I’ll take samples in the center.”

“And what purpose can that dust serve?”

Artem’s voice was brimming with bitter disappointment. It had all begun so promisingly — only to end so miserably! Dust indeed! A very valuable find, a lot to be proud about on coming back…

“Ah, young man,” said Dmitro Borisovich with a condescending smile, “you’ll never make a true, committed archeologist, no, no way. You’re after treasures, gold and valuables, aren’t you? Your mood would be much improved if you chanced upon any, correct? My young friend, dust can also be of great help to an archeologist. Don’t you understand how? Go ahead, collect it, and while you’re doing it I’ll prove the point, and you’ll have more respect for this modest gray dust. Back in the lab, we’ll examine this dust minutely, we’ll subject it to analysis. Maybe this analysis will reveal that the dust is partly composed of, say, rotten pieces of clothing, grain, bread or something else. And then it’ll be quite easy to answer the question which now seems so complicated: that will mean the mysterious walled-off recess was used by the ancients as a storing place for clothing or as a granary. Everything will fall nicely into place and explanations will be easily available. Do you understand now of what significance this despicable gray- dust can be?”

“Oh, yes, it’s quite thrilling,” Artem muttered, disconcerted. “If it is as you say, it wasn’t worth the trouble of getting in here. We’ve just dirtied our clothes for nothing. And the lecture you’ve given me I could’ve listened to in comfort at home.”

“What you’ve said is, my friend, first, discourteous and second, balderdash if you ask me. Science needs all possible kinds of evidence. Every little bit of new knowledge is important. Archeology, by the way, is based almost entirely on such tiny bits of evidence. All you have to do is look hard and see what you can see, examine whatever you find, and systematize. The abilities and qualities of a true archeologist are revealed through his attitude to such tiny bits of knowledge. Yes, my friend, in his attitude, and not in vociferous enthusiasm, not in clamorous interjections over an ancient artifact, even a very valuable one!”

Artem listened to this spontaneous lecture and methodically collected dust into envelopes. No matter what Dmitro Borisovich said about these bits of knowledge, it would be so much more exciting to find a pottery shard or even a bronze vessel, not to mention the crown of some Scythian tribal chief… Oh, that would be really terrific!

All of a sudden Artem stopped short, his eyes riveted to a spot at the foot of the wall just two steps away. It might be just another protruding stone, but it looked a bit different from the rest… like an artificial stone cube covered with dirt and dust… What kind of stone could it be? Artem glanced briskly back at the archeologist.

Dmitro Borisovich was pouring some dust into the envelope with great concentration and could not see what Artem was doing, so the younger man immediately set about removing dirt and dust from the rectangular protrusion. The surface was hard and rough… no, it wasn’t a stone and… not just a protrusion either… Artem’s heart began to race. He worked in a mounting frenzy.

“Once again I must remark that you’re prone to lapses of discipline, my dear young man,” Artem heard the archeologist’s voice coming as though from afar. “Did I tell you to take samples at that spot? I must say, you’re very inattentive, my friend, yes, you are, and very undisciplined too!”

Artem swiveled around. Dmitro Borisovich was holding the envelope, packed with dust, and looking at him in disapproval.

“And why are you wearing such a perturbed look on your face?” the archeologist went on to say. “As though you’re contemplating some neck-breaking stunt… or maybe you’re not quite all right and can barely stand?”

Artem took a deep breath and was again able to control himself. But his voice broke when he began to speak:

“Dmitro Borisovich, the thing is… I’ve found one tiny bit of knowledge here. Only I’m afraid it’s a little too big to fit into the envelope…”

Dmitro Borisovich did not suspect anything unusual hidden behind Artem’s seemingly inaffected, even indifferent voice.

“What tiny bit? Which envelope? What kind of claptrap is that, young man?”

“You’ve been talking all the time about some tiny bit of knowledge, right? And here, one such tiny bit has presented itself. It’s rather outsized, though. A sort of a box or something.”

In a twinkling, Dmitro Borisovich was at Artem’s side.

“What? Where? What box?”

“Right here, see for yourself.”

Artem pointed to the mysterious object which he had just been cleaning up. What had emerged was a small square chest, crudely made, embossed with an ornamental design. It was half-hidden in a niche. The bright white light of the lamps revealed the dark, greenish bronze under the dust. Artem looked at Dmitro Borisovich in triumph: what would he say now?

But the archeologist was oblivious of Artem, of his precious envelopes, of all the world. Now only the chest existed for him. He squatted beside it and touched its top as though he were afraid it was hot enough to burn his fingers. His hands trembled; his lips were moving, shaping inaudible words. He was evidently very agitated and overexcited, and Artem sensed it was not the right time for taunting him. It would be sacrilegious.

“Dmitro Borisovich, it’s a real big find, isn’t it? Is it valuable?” he asked in an undertone, feeling the excitement spread through him, too.

It was hardly worth asking since just one look at the archeologist was enough to tell the whole story. He tried hard to control himself but was not very successful. His efforts at constraint were easily visible. Dmitro Borisovich did everything that had to be done, that his long years of archeological experience had taught him to do, but he seemed merely to be going through the motions; his movements were mechanical, almost like that of an automaton. He took his camera out, photographed the chest from various angles, the same procedure as before the stone wall, but the mere fact that he almost dropped the flash twice, stumbled on the even floor, and did not comment his own unusual awkwardness allowed Artem to deduce that he was in a state of extreme agitation and tension. Artem, who kept his eyes glued to the archeologist, said eagerly:

“Can I help you?”

But Dmitro Borisovich did not even hear Artem. He lifted the chest off the ground and held it at the arms’ length as one holds a basin filled to the brim with water. After holding it in this manner for a few moments, he carefully lowered it back to the ground. Then he approached the chest from the other side. His hair was dishevelled; his spectacles lop-sided. But he didn’t see anything or hear anything; he was heedless of everything except for the chest…

Artem could make out a few words Dmitro Borisovich was muttering as though answering some questions he had silently put to himself:

“Yes… by the looks of it… dating to the Scythians… why only bronze?… strange, there’s no iron… hidden away for no one to see… a relic… extraordinary!… a real hiding place!…”

“So you think it’s Scythian?” Artem asked timidly.

But the archeologist was still quite inaccessible. He walked around the chest once again, bending his neck to one side like a hen that is aiming to peck at a seed it has just discovered. He looked at the chest first with one eye, then with the other, half-closing them at times. Then, suddenly rousing himself from his trance, he turned to Artem as though the young man had just appeared.

“Artem, my dear boy, this is quite extraordinary!” he cried out, grabbing the young man by his sleeve. “What stroke of luck brought you here? How did you guess the chest was hidden in precisely this corner?”

Artem shrugged his shoulders, embarrassed: what could he say really? He had just happened upon it; that was all…

But Dmitro Borisovich did not wait for him to answer. He went on speaking with ardor:

“My dear friend, you’ve surely got the luck of the devil on your side! It is doubtless of Scythian origin. And it is equally clear that the chest was placed here on purpose… As to who did it, I’d rather avoid making conjectures at this stage… It was hidden here, and then this recess was sealed off by a stone wall. I believe that solves the mystery of why the wall should be here! Do you follow me? It’s as clear as the fact that we’re standing here and now!”

Now Artem looked at the chest with more than mere curiosity. Other thoughts flooded the young man’s excitable mind.

Long centuries passed, days and nights inexorably following one another. Generations succeded each other. And all this time, the small chest had rested peacefully in the tightly sealed recess of the cave. Many centuries of time had enshrouded the chest; utter stillness had guarded it, and along with that, had lain the secret it concealed. Now, this relic of remote past has been discovered. It would be taken to the surface, and in the bright sunlight, the mysterious chest would yield up its secrets…

“Dmitro Borisovich, what do you think is inside?”

“Inside this chest?” The archeologist glanced at the chest once again and spread his hands in the gesture of helplessness. “I reckon your question could be answered here and now only by a clairvoyant, but even he, in my opinion, wouldn’t be able to make a very definite statement. What’s inside, really? It could be anything. Jewels, or… No, it’s no good racking our brains over it. All the more so, that I, no matter how hard I try, cannot recollect any similar finds made or described in archeology. Some very interesting and important discoveries have been made in the barrows — the ancient burial mounds — finds made during the excavation of ancient settlements. But never anything like this chest…” Dmitro Borisovich stroked the lid gently.

“To find such a bronze chest sitting all by itself in a cave, sealed by a stone wall — no, I’ve never heard of anything like that. Well, all right, soon we’ll know everything. Let’s get moving.”

The archeologist lifted the chest with great care and headed for the hole they had made in the wall.

“Light the way for me, Artem, give me some light!”

The yellowish envelopes, filled with the dust that had been collected in the cave, were abandoned. Dmitro Bori- sovicli, carrying the chest, stepped on one of them. The heavy trample tore the envelope and scattered the dust. But the archeologist paid no heed, for all his attention was concentrated on the bronze chest. Artem, who noticed all this, smiled to himself. In spite of the great solemnity of the moment, he couldn’t help launching another taunt. As soon as they got through the hole, he looked at the archeologist who was moving majestically, holding the chest in his arms as though it were an object of the greatest value on earth. The elder man was coughing to indicate the significance of the event, and his younger colleague said in a solemn voice, making considerable effort not to burst into laughter:

“I am grieved to inform you, Dmitro Borisovich, that unfortunately you’ll never make a true archeologist…”

“What’s that?”

“I said you’d never make a true archeologist, Dmitro Borisovich. You’re the kind of a person who is interested only in valuable finds. Chests, for example, or something else of that sort…”

“Oh, come off it! What is it you’re driving at?”

“You see, Dmitro Borisovich, archeology is a comprehensive science. It deals with not only occasional finds of artifacts, no matter how valuable, but with what you might call ‘trifles.’ Rather it deals mostly with the tiniest details. It is they, these details, when systematized, that are of greatest value to archeology. Archeology looks for such details everywhere. It examines, studies and systematizes them. It can draw most helpful conclusions from the analysis of, say, dust. True archeologists never discard the collected,samples, much less trample them mercilessly under foot, because they are never overwhelmed by individual finds, no matter how fascinating. That’s something truly dedicated archeologists never do… By the way, Dmitro Borisovich, don’t get too worked up. My ear is out of your reach now, so you’ll have some problems trying to grab it. Besides your Jiands are nicely occupied with the chest, this individual artifact…”

“How dare you! What impertinence!”

“Maybe I’m being cheeky, yes. But I’ll continue since I believe I’ll be able to make some things clear to you. As I’ve said archeology studies even what seems to be the most insignificant things and it is unthinkable for a dedicated archeologist to cast them on the ground and trample them disdainfully… like some archeologists I happen to know personally… Isn’t it so, Dmitro Borisovich, or am I mistaken?”

The archeologist’s reply was, to Artem’s great surprise, unexpectedly mild and placatory:

“You’re after your revenge, my friend? You want to get under my skin, you want to be witty at my expense, eh? My dear boy, you’re free to do as you like. But I have to tell you frankly that at the moment, I really don’t care. I’ll tell you one thing. When you yourself will become an experienced geologist… or maybe an archeologist, who knows?… then you’ll understand that there are moments when even a reserved scholar, burdened with age, knowledge and experience, turns into an over-enthusiastic boy all of a sudden. And when you have understood it, you’ll remember your taunts — and feel ashamed of them. All right, let’s forget about it. Light the way, Artem, I’m in mortal fear of stumbling and somehow damaging our find.”

“Yes, sir.”

Artem did not crack any more jokes. Even now, though he was still a long way from becoming a real scholar, he understood that the “moments” Dmitro Borisovich had been speaking about so earnestly, did in fact occur. If he, Artem, was so excited himself, then what a great effect this remarkable find must have had on the accomplished scholar who realized only too well the importance of this extraordinary discovery!

They were on their way out. The tall archeologist was walking in front of Artem, carefully watching his step, carrying in both hands the mysterious bronze chest that had been lying hidden for many centuries with its secret contents. Dmitro Borisovich said there could be jewels inside or anything else imaginable. Artem was itching to know what in fact it contained. What treasure, what unexpected things did this small chest with half-effaced embossing on the lid contain?

Artem was extremely anxious to get back to the others and show it to them and open it! The romantic youth was already seeing with his mind’s eye the exotic things that they’d be sure to find in the chest. There surely must be something especially precious in it — otherwise why should it have been hidden so thoroughly by the ancient Scythians?…What if it was the… the gold crown of a Scythian chieftain? This thought sent Artem’s heart racing madly. A gold crown!

But did Scythian chieftains wear gold crowns? What a pity he knew so little about Scythians! Well, perhaps it wasn’t a crown but some expensive headgear made of gold and studded with precious stones — it didn’t make too much difference, did it? One way or the other, the chest was sure to contain something extremely rare and valuable, there was absolutely no doubt about it!

But how slowly Dmitro Borisovich was walking! The chieftain’s crown! It would surely make a most worthy contribution to the famed collection of Scythian gold in the Hermitage Museum, the one Dmitro Borisovich had been talking so much about. And who had found it after all? Whose modest person would be for ever linked with the discovery of this extraordinary thing?

Artem couldn’t stand the torture of expectation any longer. His heart was about to burst with impatience. What was inside the mysterious chest, what secret was locked in it?

CHAPTER THREE

Lida is nonplussed, the chest is opened and a piece of parchment with writing on it is discovered inside, but it turns to dust upon contact with the air; the testament of Pronis is read and Artem makes another discovery

“It’s a wonderful morning, isn’t it, Diana?”

The dog gave a short but expressive bark in reply and looked quizzically at her companion, so full of joie de vivre. The dog’s short ears were pricked, the muscles of her strong legs taut, ready for jumps and capers. Diana was waiting for the command to start frolicking as it always happened during outings with Lida. But this time the girl was slow to start the fun, standing on a hillock, filling her lungs with fresh, fragrant air.

“Oh, how wonderful!”

She was knee-deep in luxuriant green grass and thistles; the warm rays of the July morning sun were caressing her face, the light wind seemed to be cuddling her, embracing her lithe, supple figure; it was stroking her neck, touching her hair with its invisible fingers. Everything was wonderful indeed! The girl surveyed her surroundings.

Once impenetrable forest thickets had covered the area, or at least that’s what Dmitro Borisovich said. Such a pity they were all gone! It would be so pleasant to wander through them! There must have been a plenty of wild animals living here, and the river must have been wider and deeper… And what now? No forests at all, only occasional small bushes. The river was narrow and the current slow, one could swim across in no time. It meandered like a snake, making a turn every ten meters or so, twisting this way and that, so if one swam for speed, one couldn’t see how far behind the rest were lagging; that was what had happened the day before when Lida challenged Artem. It wasn’t really any fun… Then she realized she had not seen Artem this morning yet.

“Do you know, by any chance, Diana, where our Artem is? He was sulky yesterday, all worked up. For no reason really. What made him boil was my visit to that cave with Dmitro Borisovich. Yes, we went there, so what? But he flew into a temper, he did, he was real mad… Very foolish of him! But where did he go today, so early in the morning? I should have talked to him… But I can’t stand it when somebody’s pouting… Maybe he’s gone swimming. Hey, Diana, let’s race to the river! Who’s faster?”

The river was situated beyond the hillock. Lida raced downhill, waving her arms, jumping over high thistles, laughing irrepressibly. Diana, glad that the long-awaited fun had at last begun, seemed to have decided to demonstrate her sprinting ability. She leaped over the thistles, quick as lightning, in one jump getting ahead of the girl, hid for a moment in the grass only to spring out and try to catch the edge of Lida’s skirt in her teeth. The girl waved her arms, wriggled, and tried to run away, but Diana easily caught up with her, barking happily, and gently nipped at Lida’s hand. She would release it only to nip it again a moment later, enjoying the game immensely. This continued for several minutes, then Diana stopped abruptly and froze to the spot.

“What is it, Diana?”

Diana gave a short bark, in quite a different way than before. It was, no doubt, a signal to draw the girl’s attention to something.

“Oh, what’s happened, Diana? What’s there? Oh, yes, I see, those two men must be from our party. Where are they coming from?”

Two men, their dark silhouettes clearly outlined against the blue sky, came into view on a distant hillock. The one walking in front of the other made strange gestures as if he were moving the thistles apart to clear the way for the other. As they got closer, Lida saw it was Dmitro Borisovich. It even seemed to her that she could make out his pointed beard every time he turned to the other man. The archeologist turned round very frequently, practically every other step. And the man who was walking behind him was no doubt Artem…

“Aha, so, they must have made their peace!” she cried out, pleased.

But why is Artem walking with two left feet? Oh he’s carrying something, a sort of a suitcase or a chest, right in front of him at arms’ length. Is that the way to carry things, Artem? Oh, aren’t you funny! And look at the way he’s walking — very carefully, watching his step, selecting a place to secure a sure footing…

He stumbled, and Dmitro Borisovich rushed to him gesticulating violently. Then he took Artem’s load from him. They exchanged roles. Now Artem was at the head, and Dmitro Borisovich was carrying a suitcase or whatever it was in the same strange manner as Artem had been just a little while ago.

“What is it they are carrying, I wonder?” Lida said pensively. “The path they are walking along runs from the Sharp Mount. They are definitely heading home… But what is that strange thing they are carrying with such a great caution?”

Then a thought flashed through her mind which made her jump high into the air, and shout at the top of her voice:

“Artem! Artem! Where’re you going?”

At first Artem did not seem to hear her; then he looked back, caught sight of Lida and pointed in an indifferent gesture to the Sharp Mount.

“What? You’re coming from the mount?”

But they had already disappeared beyond the crest of the hillock. It would be futile to call after them now. But why didn’t Artem stop, wait for her, or give a more articulate answer? Was he still out of humor? So very foolish of him!

Lida looked at Diana; the dog was looking at the girl in expectation, but she did not feel like frolicking any longer.

“Hey, let’s run home, Diana! While they’re walking so slowly downhill, we’ll run and catch up with them!”

But Lida had miscalculated. Artem and Dmitro Borisovich reached the frame tent ahead of her. As she burst into the room, out of breath, she heard only the conclusion of the story Dmitro Borisovich, evidently much excited about something, had been telling:

“Now it’s here in front of you, Ivan Semenovich. The chest we found in the walled-off recess. In fact, I must admit it was not ‘we,’ it was Artem who found it all by himself. Why to blush, young man? It’s true, isn’t it? You’re the one who noticed it under the thick layers of dust! The credit for the discovery is all yours. Our Artem is very observant; he’s got very sharp eyes!”

A small chest was sitting on the table. All the papers and diagrams had been shoved aside to make room for it. Ivan Semenovich was examining it with absorbed interest from all angles. Artem was standing beside the table, flushed, with an elated and jubilant smile on his face. So that’s what they’d been carrying! And the chest had been found by Artem?… Lida approached the table cautiously. An ancient, greenish-black chest with some half-effaced ornaments on top, still liberally sprinkled with dust, crude… Lida surreptitiously gave Artem’s hand a tug, and said under her breath:

“Well done, Artem! Congratulations!”

Artem gave her a glance, wanted to say something at first, but then changed his mind and squeezed her hand lightly, his eyes flashing.

“Yes, it seems to be a genuinely ancient thing,” Ivan.Semenovich uttered pensively. “It must have been made quite a few years ago.”

“Oh, yes, quite a few, quite a few!” said Dmitro Borisovich as though rejoicing over the fact. Eyes half-closed, head raised dreamily, he ran his hand over his pointed beard.

“Yes, quite a few. I believe… at least two thousand… Oh, I must photograph this chest right away.”

“Hey, when are we going to open it up?” cried out Artem impatiently. But the archeologist cooled him down with a single glance from under his spectacles:

“There’ll be plenty of time for that!”

The picture-taking was given a much too solemn air and proceeded far too slowly. But at last Dmitro Borisovich put away his camera and heaved a sigh of relief:

“Well, now we can try to open it. But it must be done as carefully as possible. No, no, don’t help me, Artem! And… you know what? Do me a favor and step back. I must concentrate properly on the task, and you’re distracting me!”

Oh, how maddeningly slowly the archeologist did everything, as though teasing everyone with his sluggishness. One even got the impression he was opening it merely to satisfy the others’ curiosity. But Artem could clearly see the excitement on his face and hear how it affected his voice. Aha, dear Dmitro Borisovich could barely control his own impatience!

This Artem did not say aloud; he only smiled to himself at the thought, with the conversation in the cave immediately coming back to mind.

Meanwhile, Dmitro Borisovich issued orders:

“Not a single unnecessary movement! Artem, why are you standing there as if you had nothing to do? Come over here, spread out some clean paper — not a single tiny bit from here must be lost. Not the tiniest of bits, understand?”

“Again this tiny bit of knowledge, Dmitro Borisovich?”

“Yes, my dear young man, of knowledge. As a matter of fact, you should bear it in mind that now none of your taunts can affect me in any way. They fall on deaf ears. All right, move to the right, Artem. You’ll have a better view. Ivan Semenovich, we’ll begin now. We should probably make the first attempt from this side… from right here in fact!”

There were some marks on the chest, indicating that it had once been fitted with a lock. But apparently, it was not the lock that was now holding the lid shut: it must have stuck fast to the chest under the weight of centuries. Dmitro Borisovich, exercising great caution, tried to pry open the lid with gentle pressure on all sides. But it would not yield to his efforts. The archeologist heaved a sigh:

“I’m so afraid to use force, you know… It might be so fragile after two thousand years…”

^uLet me try it,” Ivan Semenovich said. “I think my hands are stronger… Oh, don’t look so alarmed! I’m not going to break it. You may rest assured, my dear friend, everything’ll be all right.”

“The problem is, Ivan Semenovich, it might just fall apart! I beg you to be most careful, most careful!”

Ivan Semenovich leaned over the chest. Then a light cracking sound was heard. It was enough to make the archeologist jump with horror and spring to the chest.

“Oh, my God! You’ve broken it!” he wailed as though it were he himself who was being mutilated.

“No, I haven’t. I told you everything would be all right, didn’t I?” Ivan Semenovich said reassuringly and stepped aside. The chest opened. Dmitro Borisovich began muttering, overwhelmed with excitement:

“Let me come closer, make way!… Don’t touch anything! I’ll do the rest!”

No one made even a slightest move to infringe on the sacred right of Dmitro Borisovich to be the first to examine the contents of the mysterious chest. All of them just craned their necks, moved by curiosity and the desire to see something exceptional at last. But no one really knew what to expect, no one except Artem, of course. The gold crown of a Scythian chieftain — that was what was in the chest!

“Stay where you are, stay where you are,” Dmitro Borisovich went on mumbling. “Don’t come any closer. One mustn’t… First of all the chest must be photographed the way it is now. The first one who has the right to look inside isn’t me, it’s my camera. Besides, the chest seems… it seems to be empty,” he added after he duly succumbed to the temptation to peep in.

“What?”

“Empty?”

“But it can’t be empty!”

The last of these exclamations belonged to Artem who had never thought, even remotely, of such a possibility.

But still it was empty, or very nearly empty. Dmitro Borisovich did indeed produce a roll of something that looked like paper, holding it with both hands, his elbows sticking high into the air, after he had finished photographing the opened chest. But there was really nothing else inside except for a thin layer of fine dust covering its bottom.

Artem did not even try to hide his disappointment. The crown of the Scythian chieftain, where was it? A stupid old piece of paper — and that was all? Luck positively seemed to have turned its back on the young man! All his dreams had come to naught. What was the use of photographing the chest again and the roll of parchment, as Dmitro Borisovich was now so thoroughly doing? Of what value were they now compared to what Artem had hoped they would find?

But finally the archeologist put away his camera. He leaned over the chest again, closely examining the inside. He put the roll that had been discovered in the chest on a clean sheet of paper, doing it very carefully as if it were the greatest of treasures. He even placed his hands edgewise on both sides of it as if trying to protect it against something. Dmitro Borisovich, quite unlike Artem, did not seem to show any disappointment. And what is more, his face radiated excitement, his small pointed beard moved in nervous jerks, his eyes flashed triumph. He looked round, at every one in succession.

“My good friends,” he said at last in a solemn voice. “Do you know what’s in front of you?”

Everybody kept silent. Then Artem, shrugging his shoulders, said indifferently:

“In any case, it doesn’t look to be any kind of treasure…”

The archeologist flared up:

“Ignoramus! Yes, young man, you’re an ignoramus! This — not a treasure? Not worth the greatest of attention, you think? A genuine document from the Scythian times — not treasure? The only find of its kind in the history of archeology… How dare you! Now, young man, you surely know that not a single written text, not a single word, put down by the Scythians has come down to us! Everything we know about the Scythians we have learned either from artifacts or historical references by ancient Greek and Roman historians! Surely, you must know all this since I’ve already told you about it. Lida, go ahead and tell us: didn’t I speak about all these things?”

“You did, Dmitro Borisovich,” affirmed the girl in a low voice. She was ashamed for Artem; he shouldn’t have come out with that ill-advised remark of his.

“See? So, in other words, you, young man, are of the opinion that a piece of something made of gold or studded with diamonds would be of greater importance for science than this unique document? Rubbish, and foolishness. A gold gewgaw would be just another piece of high value. But this… this is…” the archeologist’s voice faltered with indignation. Suddenly he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Ah, it’s not worth talking about it anymore anyway. No, you’ll never make an archeologist, Artem, never. But, let’s cut this idle prattling short. I hate wasting time on it.”

Ivan Semenovich decided to help stop the altercation. He addressed the archeologist:

“Getting back to this roll, Dmitro Borisovich. What kind of paper is it?”

The archeologist immediately forgot about Artem, and turning to his friend, he said:

“Naturally at this point I cannot state anything positive about it except that it is a piece of specially cured leather. We can tentatively call it parchment. We’ll have to unroll and see what’s written there.”

“But how do you know without unrolling it that something is in fact written on the parchment? Maybe it’s blank?”

“That’s out of the question,” replied Dmitro Borisovich firmly. “I’m absolutely sure something’s written on it. You don’t believe me? You question my judgement? In just a moment, you’re going to see it with your own eyes. Lida, get a piece of paper and pencil ready. And what’s most important — one has to be extremely careful as this parchment is remarkably old. It can easily break, crumble, fall to pieces.” The archeologist grew even more agitated than before and now did not try to hide his excitement. His fingers trembled when he picked up the parchment again and began unrolling it as carefully as he could. The parchment was slow to yield: it rolled up again by itself as though it were spring-loaded the moment it straightened out. But it was enough to hold the unrolled part in the straightened position for several seconds for it to lose its elasticity and stay flat.

“Letters! Do you see them? Here they are, letters!” Dmitro Borisovich cried out in a transport.

Dark-brown letters could in fact be discerned on the inside of the parchment. They were ranged in straight lines, not even broken into separate words. What language was it?

“Those who want to find…” read Dmitro Borisovich in an undertone, at the same time unrolling the parchment a bit more.

“Oh, is that what’s written there? How can you understand these strange characters?” asked Lida in bewilderment.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” muttered the archeologist. “Yes, that’s what’s written here… in ancient Greek though there are some words of a different language… possibly Iranian, mixed in. Unusual phraseology for ancient Greek… Now, let’s see what it says further…”

The lines appeared one after another as Dmitro Borisovich kept unrolling the parchment, reading occasional phrases aloud:

“’The way is indicated by the map…’ That’s all very nice but where is the map? ‘I have found gold there…’ Gold? And who was it this ‘I’?”

At last the parchment had been completely unrolled. Dmitro Borisovich grabbed his camera again and photographed the parchment stretched out on the white piece of paper several times; the parchment was tawny with dark uninterrupted lines of letters. Dmitro Borisovich began copying them down into his notebook. He kept muttering something to himself, plucking at his heart; evidently he had come across some difficult passages in the enigmatic text. Nobody dared to disturb or distract him with questions. Lida felt Artem touching her shoulder lightly:

“Did you hear that about the gold?” he said under his breath.

“Wasn’t it you who were so displeased with the discovery of only the parchment and nothing else in the chest?” Lida said, also in a low voice.

Artem only shrugged his shoulders: there had been absolutely no way of guessing what was written on the parchment, had there? Lida added mockingly to drive the point home:

“Take care, by the way, not to let Dmitro Borisovich hear you. He’s already given you the once-over for your ‘dreams of gold,’ hasn’t he?”

The young man kept silent.

Dmitro Borisovich was almost finished copying the text, when Ivan Semenovich cried out in alarm, pointing at the parchment:

“Look, look, Dmitro Borisovich, what’s going on? The parchment’s changing color!”

“It’s gone darker! Yes, it has!” Lida cried out in her turn.

“It’s getting brown at the edges!”

Dmitro Borisovich, startled, leaned over the parchment to examine it closer. Its original appearance was indeed changing. The center was still light in color but on all sides, it had gone tawny, with the edges dark brown. Right before everyone’s eyes, this dark brown color was slowly expanding toward the center as though some dark liquid were spreading over the surface. Closer to the edges, it was impossible already to make out the letters, as they had merged with the dark background.

Dmitro Borisovich banged the table with his fist in fury. What a disgrace! What a crime against science! How could he, an archeologist of no small experience, have failed to foresee such an eventuality? Why hadn’t he thought about it? The ancient parchment, kept in an airtight metal box, had been well-preserved, out of contact with dampness and fresh air. Now the parchment had begun actively absorbing vapor from the air, and some rapid chemical reaction had started. The decay, delayed for hundreds of years, was doing its ruinous work rapidly and inexorably, and there was nothing that could stop it now.

Only he, Dmitro Borisovich, was to blame for it, and no one else! He should have taken some appropriate measures; he should have treated it with chemicals to give it the necessary resistance; or at least he should have put it between two sheets of glass, closing the edges with putty which would have stopped the air from getting to the parchment. It was a standard procedure; he had done it many times before… Besides, he knew so many other ways of preserving brittle and fragile ancient manuscripts!

“Condemn me, my friends, berate me, I’m guilty!” Dmitro Borisovich cried out in despair. “The ill-advised eagerness that made me hurry with the premature unrolling is to blame. I got carried away, that was the cause of the disaster… Oh, my God, what have I done! I’m burning with shame, I’m…”

His anguish cut him short; everybody saw that he’d never forgive himself for his own rashness.

“But, Dmitro Borisovich, you’ve photographed the parchment both before and after it was unrolled, from so many angles… the photographs’ll show everything… besides, you’ve copied down the text,” Lida tried to console him. But the heartbroken man only shook his head.

The parchment meanwhile had gone dark brown throughout; on the dark brown rectangle, boldly standing out against the background of the table, not a single word could be made out. It even seemed to have collapsed somehow, spreading closer to the surface of the table, almost sticking to the white paper. The thought of what would happen to the mysterious piece of parchment next flashed through the minds of both Artem and Dmitro Borisovich simultaneously.

“Maybe it should be removed to a safer place,” said Artem uncertainly.

“Yes, I think we should do so, at least for now… though I’m afraid it’s a little too late!” the archeologist replied plaintively. “There’s a piece of paper underneath the parchment. Let’s try to put it the way it is into a suitcase or something. The thing is not to touch the parchment itself. Artem, fetch an empty suitcase, will you?”

In a minute, the suitcase was placed open on the table. Dmitro Borisovich and Lida took the paper with the parchment on it by the corners, and very carefully began lifting it…

“Watch it! Don’t breathe on it!”

But lo and behold! The stunned onlookers saw a small piece tear away from the parchment and soar into the air like a black piece of ash, disintegrating as it went down. One of the bits lit on Lida’s hand, and she did not even feel it touch her skin, so small and almost weightless it was. In a few moments, only two or three tiny brown pieces were left to be seen on the sheet of paper that Dmitro Borisovich and Lida were still holding. This was all that was left of the parchment that had been found in the bronze chest — a couple of small pieces of brownish gossamery substance.

Only one little piece the size of a postage stamp was still floating in the air. A draft was carrying it toward the door, and all the eyes followed it. The flake floated right to the door, turned over and disintegrated…

“Well, my friends, how long are you going to keep holding that empty sheet of paper?” the voice of Ivan Semenovich rang out. He was wearing a broad smile. “Of course, it’s too bad our parchment has ceased to exist, but nothing can be done about it. After all, we still have the photographs, and they’ll be of some help, right? Don’t grieve over the loss so heartbrokenly, Dmitro Borisovich! Besides, you’ve copied down the text, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have,” the archeologist said gloomily. “I can’t be sure I’ve not made mistakes, though. The photographs.are our last hope.”

“Can you read and translate what’s written here? We’re dying to know what it says in some detail,” Ivan Semenovich said, feeling encouraging stares of Artem and Lida directed at him.

“I think I can.”

“That’s good, since, to the best of my knowledge, you’re the only person among us who can read ancient Greek. Let’s sit down and try to make out what it says. The text must be of extreme interest. It mentions gold, doesn’t it? If so, it concerns geology as well as your archeology.”

“How fast… how fast it disintegrated…” Dmitro Borisovich muttered as he sat down at the table. He pulled his handkerchierf out of his pocket and wiped his eyeglasses, misted over with perspiration. He put them back on and picked up the notebook with the text he had copied down. Lida was looking furtively over his shoulder. Artem chose to sit close to the chest, examining the tangled and intricate design on its top. They were reminiscent of some ornament, only not a single motif, not a single group of lines was repeated anywhere.

“I can’t say everything is absolutely clear to me as yet,” Dmitro Borisovich began, looking attentively at his notes. “As I’ve told you the text’s written in ancient Greek, but liberally mixed with another language, in all probability one of the Iranian group. But it is rather clear in general. Someone who wrote this parchment in the remote past… My, how fast it has disintegrated! How terribly fast! Right in front of otir eyes it turned to ashes… You all saw it happen…”

“Dmitro Borisovich, you’ve promised to translate what’s written here, and not to keep on bemoaning the sad fate of the parchment,” said the geologist, putting his hand on the grieving man’s shoulder.

“Yes, yes… It’s so painful to think about. Now, back to what I was saying: someone in ancient times wrote this parchment. Considering the fact that it has disintegrated so quickly, turned to ashes so to say before our very eyes…”

“Oh, Dmitro Borisovich, there you go again!”

“No, this time it’s to the point. Considering this fact, I can tentatively date the parchment as being at least twenty five hundred years old. In other words, the writer was a contemporary of the ancient Scythians. No doubt about it. But I must admit that the text does not make any mention of Scythians. Which makes it a little more difficult to attribute the document to some particular people… But of course we’ll make a joint effort to determine what’s what in due time. Here it says in my somewhat free thanslation with… er… some guesswork due to the words not known to me, since they’ve been borrowed from a language other than ancient Greek. So here it goes!”

The archeologist adjusted his eyeglasses, looked round again and began:

“’The one who wants… to find the treasure will do it… if he keeps going further and deeper into the cave… until he gets all the way to the spot shown on the map. He’ll find four heads and three horses to guide him… Beyond the torches pointing upwards and… torches pointing downwards he will find the fifth head and a boar. May the gods help him. He will find the treasure there. He will find there a lot of gold and… will dig it up… as I, Pronis, did. I found that gold and left it in its place. The one who reads this is a lucky man. He’ll take the map… and will find the gold in the walls as it was discovered by me, Pronis.’ That’s all, friends.”

In the deep silence that fell, one could hear the loud breathing of the dog.

Dmitro Borisovich wiped his eyeglasses again, looking at the listeners inquiringly with his myopic eyes.

“What do you make out of it?” he asked at last.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s not just a joke. It appears to be quite a serious document… a sort of testament,” said Ivan Semenovich.

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean that it has some very important information. It speaks about ‘a lot of gold in the walls,’ for example,” Dmitro Borisovich said as though thinking aloud.

“As long as it says something about gold in the walls, then we geologists must be all ears,” replied Ivan Semenovich. “Incidentally, the clues the parchment gives us shed light on some other things, too.”

“Like what?”

“I told you once that in the past attempts had been made to dig for gold in the Sharp Mount, remember?”

“Yes, we do,” affirmed Lida.

“It came to nothing then as negligible amount of gold had been found. The poor veins disappeared as close to the surface as the copper ones did… But if this parchment is accurate, and it is not just gold artifacts but real deposits, then…”

“Then what?”

“Then, apparently the gold veins must reappear exactly like the copper ones somewhere inside our naughty mount. Anyway, it opens some new vistas we didn’t expect…”

Ivan Semenovich grew pensive, reflecting upon his own supposition.

“But, Dmitro Borisovich, is Pronis really a Scythian name? It seems to have… I don’t pretend to know anything about it, but nevertheless… it seems to have a Greek ring to it…” Lida hazarded a guess.

“It does, beyond any doubt, sound Greek,” the archeologist supported Lida’s guess.

“And isn’t the language of the text Greek as well, even though there are foreign words in it?”

“So what of it?”

“What about the Scythians then? Where do they come in here? You said it was a Scythian document, didn’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, what I had in mind was that it has come down to us from the time the Scythians lived here in the vicinity of the Sharp Mount. In other words, I was referring to its age. That’s one thing. Second, proceeding from this fact, I assumed that…”

“All right, if it comes from the Scythians, why is it written in Greek and why is there a Greek name in it?” persisted the tenacious girl.

“As a matter of fact, some ancient Greeks could have found their way to this area too… say, some merchants. The ancient Greeks travelled very widely in general… But why should you pick on me, Lida, pestering me with all these questions? I’ve just hazarded a guess, quite plausible to my mind. Of course, I can’t prove it now with hard fact. But you keep battering me like a tiresome opponent in a scholarly debate.”

“Oh no, Dmitro Borisovich! The reason I’m asking all these questions is because I just don’t understand.”

“Besides,” said the archeologist, “there are some incomprehensible passages in this text.”

“Like where?” asked Ivan Semenovich.

“Well, for example here. What can it mean: ‘torches pointing upwards’ and ‘torches pointing downwards’? What are these ‘four heads’ and ‘three horses’? And further on — ‘the fifth head and a boar’? What did the writer mean by this?”

“Maybe it’s some kind of a code…” the girl hazarded another guess.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Then suddenly Artem’s voice rang out triumphantly:

“I know what kind of heads he means! The heads carved into the walls of the cave, some of which we’ve already found. And when we go deeper into it, we’re sure to find the rest the text mentions.”

“What about horses and a boar then?” Lida voiced her doubts.

“If we make a point of looking for them, we’re sure to find them too,” Artem replied with conviction. “Do you have anything else to suggest by way of explanation?”

“No, I don’t,” the girl admitted in all frankness.

Dmitro Borisovich began fingering his beard pensively, a sure indication of concentration when he was thinking over a problem.

“You may be right,” he uttered. “In any case, in our exploration of the cave, we’ll have to keep your interesting idea in mind. At this moment, Artem’s hypothesis is the only workable suggestion as to how the mystery of those heads and boars could be solved… An ingenious thought, my young friend!”

Artem could not help smiling contentedly.

“Nevertheless it does not offer a comprehensive solution,” the archeologist went on. “How should we interpret these torches for instance?”

“I don’t know,” honestly admitted Artem. “I can’t figure it out.”

“I don’t think the main problem lies here,” Ivan Semenovich cut in. “The heads, horses and boars might really be a reference to the pictures on the walls. Such a solution can be easily accepted. But the main thing — the enigmatic map mentioned in the text — where is it? The text itself doesn’t suffice to arrive at the final solution. The writer himself continually insists on the necessity of using some map. One gets the impression that those who will read the text will necessarily have the map as well. It is this map that is so conspicuously lacking. Could it have been put into the chest too?”

“Impossible. We examined it so thoroughly,” said Lida.

“Let’s have another look.”

But the new meticulous search did not yield anything. The chest was, beyond any doubt, absolutely empty except for a thin layer of fine dust at the bottom. Unfortunately this very dust led them to disheartening conclusion. What if the map had been drawn on another piece of parchment? What if that other piece of parchment had already decayed in the chest? This thin layer of dust could very well be its remnants… That could never be determined now…

“And what if we go reconnoitering without any map?” Artem asked hesitantly, for he was eager to find a way-out of this dead end.

“Nothing will come of it,” Dmitro Borisovich replied gloomily. “There are innumerable passages and corridors there. How will we know which way to go? The exploration of the cave without a map will take too much time…”

They were sitting around the table now. Dmitro Borisovich would not let the notebook out of his hands: it was as though he were afraid of losing it the way he had lost the parchment. Lida was staring pensively out the window.

There, beyond the hillock where she had been playing with Diana earlier in the day, the slopes of the Sharp Mount with its remarkable unexplored cave rose high. There, in the cave, if one were to believe Pronis, gold deposits were to be found… How fascinating! All these developments were more like an adventure story than real life.

Ivan Semenovich’s train of thought was of a different kind. As a sober, experienced geologist, he realized that the unexpected find made by Artem and Dmitro Borisovich necessitated the introduction of certain changes into their prospecting activities. Since the ancient manuscript really did speak of gold deposits, it would be foolish or even criminal not to try to locate them. Of course, Ivan Semenovich viewed things from a different point of view than the two young people or even Dmitro Borisovich, who was prone to be over-eager. The young people were seeking romance. Artem and Lida, after hearing stories about the Scythians, and learning of the enigmatic Pronis, all those heads, horses, boars and torches, were immediately thrilled by the suspense of the undertaking. As for Dmitro Borisovich, he was perfectly content with just the bronze chest and whatever other archeological finds they came across.

The strivings and thoughts of Ivan Semenovich were of quite a different nature. For him, a dedicated geologist who had been prospecting for valuable resourses all his life, the most important thing in all this unexpected affair with the chest lay in the unknown Pronis’ mention of gold deposits. That was something Ivan Semenovich simply could not ignore. But how should he set about looking for the gold?

If they had the map, mentioned by Pronis, it would make things so much easier. But even in the absense of the map, they had to start searching for the gold anyway. Things would go very slowly though, that much was clear. But then, what are the difficulties in this world for if not for man to overcome them!

Ivan Semenovich was mistaken in one thing though. Artem was daydreaming at the moment neither of the gold crowns of Scythian chieftains nor of the mysteries of the cave inside the Sharp Mount. His thoughts were flowing in quite a different direction, totally unconnected with present events. What had brought this on, Artem himself could not say, but in fact, he was reminiscing about his childhood.

He remembered neither his father nor his mother as they had died when he was very young. His memories began only with the orphanage. They were really his first memories and he called them “memories in gray overalls” in jest, because he and all other children there had been dressed in gray overalls for all occasions. Now it seemed such a long time ago…

Then, in search of adventure, he and his two friends had run away from the orphanage with its tedious monotonous routine. So he was a vagrant for some time, but came across nothing worthy of his time.

Once Artem saw some boys his age launching a toy plane in the field. He made their acquaintance; the boys were also from a foster-home, but theirs was quite different from the one he had run away from — not at all “gray-overalls” and dull. He could see it right away from the boys’ bright faces and animated talk. It was so exciting to watch the white model plane soar effortlessly into the air, so Artem stayed to talk to the boys. Then they all went back to the home for boys, and the principal allowed him to stay…

On the first night of Artem’s stay at the new children’s home, he was washed and dressed in clean clothes, then shown a new game he had never heard of called “Maze.” There were innumerable intersecting, twisting lines, drawn on a piece of paper with lots of traps and dead ends. The object was to find the way out of the maze without crossing the lines. It took Artem quite a long time, but in the end he found the way out. He liked the game immeasurably. And jthe teacher said with a laugh: “Always try to find a way out of any situation with the same persistency. Today you’ve found a way out for the second time.” Artem looked at her in bewilderment: why for the “second time”? The teacher explained: “The first time was when you came here. It was a way to escape hunger and homelessness. And the second time is now when you’ve found the way out of the maze. Do you understand?”

Artem smiled to himself when he remembered all that: he had made good use of the advice ever since. It had lodged firmly in his memory. From childhood on, he had always found a way out. He had finished high school, and now he was close to graduation from college. At the present moment, he was once again looking for a way out of a difficult situation… That’s right, he was looking for a way out… Hadn’t the recollections of his childhood and the Maze game with its traps and dead ends come to him in connection with their present dire straits?

Only then did Artem become aware that all this time, he had been holding the lid of the chest in his hands tracing his finger along the deep grooves of its tangled ornament. Again he smiled to himself: that’s what had really brought on the memory of the Maze game… It was as though he were again looking for a way out of the maze… this time made of a strange ornament rather than drawn on paper… How could he get out without crossing the lines?… Hm, what if he took this spot as a starting point?

He located the entrance, but where should he go from there? In fact there wasn’t much choice, since there was only one way along the main line with all the passages disappearing as soon as they branched off from the main route. This ancient craftsman had carved an amazing ornament to keep anyone who happened to be tracing it from going off the main line… What was that? What an extraordinary idea?

Artem’s head began to reel. He knit his brows trying to regain control of himself. No, it couldn’t be… It seemed… He ran his finger over the lines. Oh, had he found the map?

Artem could not control himself any longer. It was incredible, and yet he knew beyond a doubt now that he had made another discovery. What a tremendous piece of luck! Oh, how lucky, how very lucky he was! This was just what they were looking for, right here, so unexpectedly simple and clear. He couldn’t keep the news to himself any longer, especially since everyone was so gloomy…

“Hey, I’ve found it!”

They turned and stared at the young man in startled surprise. What had come over him? Why was his face glowing with such happiness?

In the meantime, Artem walked to the center of the room, holding the bronze chest in his hands and shouting frantically:

“The map! The map! It’s been found! It’s right here! Here it is, the chart of our mysterious friend Pronis!”

Artem did indeed look like a man possessed.

“Where? What map? What kind of nonsense is this, young man?” Dmitro Borisovich said, rushing to the boy in concern.

Instead of replying, Artem handed the archeologist the chest without uttering a word; he just pointed to the ornament on the lid.

“All right, so what does this have to do with the map?”

“It’s right here! You can see for yourself!”

“You mean this ornament?”

“Yes, this ornament, and none other! This ornament is the map Pronis mentions in his message. It’s like a maze, you know. Just have a closer look; it’s terribly simple!” Three heads leaned over the lid of the chest. Six eyes began examining the intricate pattern of lines on it, exchanging occasional agitated remarks. Dmitro Borisovich was distrustfully tracing the groove of the main line with his finger. Lida went into raptures, uttering words of praise; Ivan Semenovich nodded his head in contentment.

As for Artem, he had completely lost control. He rushed up to Diana, grabbed the head of the astounded dog, turned it this way and that, pushed her over, and rolled her over onto her back. Diana did not offer any resistance as she was quite accustomed to such expressions of feelings in the effusive young man. And in spite of the fact that today’s expressions were especially violent, Diana only gently pressed her teeth into the man’s hand.

Artem pushed and pulled, patting the dog’s back and sides. His happy voice rang out triumphantly in the room: “We’ve got the map! We’ve got the map! We’ve got it!”

CHAPTER FOUR

The representations of horses and Scythian heads are discovered on the walls of the subterranean passages, and the enigma of the torches is solved; an unexpected obstacle blocks the way and Diana expresses the common attitude toward it; gray gas threatens to destroy the expedition and there seems to be no chance of rescue.

Ivan Semenovich stopped before the entrance to the cave and turned to his companions. He looked everyone over thoroughly and meticulously checked their gear. As was always the case before, this time, too, Ivan Semenovich took upon himself the leadership in the expedition in spite of the fact that now it was of an archeological nature rather than a geological one. When Ivan Semenovich had drawn Dmitro Borisovich’s attention to this circumstance before leaving home, and suggested that the latter assume leadership of the group, the archeologist dismissed the offer with a wave of his hand:

“Of course I won’t, my dear friend. Going through a cave is not an archeological venture; it belongs rather to a realm of which you, as a geologist, have much better knowledge. If we’re lucky enough to come across some ancient artifacts which would concern archeology, then, yes, I’m at your service, and will gladly take up the leadership. But now… no, and once again no. Don’t talk about it any more. You lead us! You give the commands!”

This time they did not overburden themselves, since they planned an expedition of only a short duration. What they had set out to do was to investigate some of the passages and corridors in the cave. If the predictions and expectations came true, then they could always come back to the cave, bringing along diggers and all the necessary tools and equipment for carrying out steady, purposeful work.

“Is everybody in good shape? All right, all right, you don’t have to prove it, I can see that you are. Do you have the dynamite charges, Artem? Good. What about the map? Do you have that with you, too, Artem? You haven’t left it behind, have you?”

The young man grinned broadly: Ivan Semenovich must be joking!

“Good. Has everyone got something for lunch? Lamps? Pickaxes? Everything’s in order? All right then, let’s go. Dmitro Borisovich, please lead us since you already know some part of the way through the cave.”

The day, bright, sunny and warm, was left behind. Eternal night, damp and portentous, reigned supreme inside the cave. Lida realized that she was even slightly nervous. She felt quite different now than the time she and Dmitro Borisovich had explored the cave. She wondered why she was so apprehensive — what was the cause of her nervous tension. It was just a reconnoitering trip like the previous ones in which she had taken part. Had she been so affected by the fact that they were now following the route indicated in the ancient parchment that existed no more?… But did it make much difference what kind of a map they used — the ancient one or copy they had made?

Artem was — or seemed to be — more relaxed. He was constantly checking the route they were following against the one on the map copied from lid of the chest. Every so often he would look up at Dmitro Borisovich, Lida, and Ivan Semenovich. The geologist was reserved as always; he did not seem at all affected by their present unusual circumstances. There was probably nothing special in it for him since he seemed unaffected by the romance of archeology; rather he regarded everything in terms of geological prospecting.

Dmitro Borisovich, on the contrary, was quite understandably excited. For the first time since their arrival at the Sharp Mount, the entire group had set out on an almost purely geological venture which, in his opinion, was promising. Promising, yes, but what results would it yield? Hadn’t Dmitro Borisovich been bitterly disappointed many times before when seemingly promising beginnings had fallen through without justifying the hopes of the archeologists?… Could it happen this time as well?.. It shouldn’t, actually. The main thing was not to miss a single detail, not a single feature: everything here could be of importance, provided, of course, Pronis’s map and text were genuine.

That’s why Dmitro Borisovich was constantly on the alert, afraid of missing any other instructions Pronis could have left on the wall in addition to the ones indicated in the text. The archeologist was lighting the way with his miner’s lamp very carefully, and the patch of light thrown by it moved in front of him in an erratic pattern, revealing jagged protruding rocks, unexpected turns or steep rises.

The light from the lamp of Artem who was walking in the rear of the party, produced even more phantasmagoric effects. It gave the figures in front of him giant shadows which moved along the walls, jumped one over the other, curved up to the ceiling, and broke into phantasmagoric shapes which assumed the weirdest of configurations.

For some time they walked in silence. The archeologist was the first to break it:

“The head of a Scythian!” he called out solemnly, pointing to the representation of the head carved into the rock, with sharp severe features of the face in profile. Despite its rough, crude lines, the carving’s expressiveness revealed the dexterous hand of an ancient artist. The face, with its short nose and small beard, must have captured the distinct features of a warrior from the very remote past.

It was the very head Artem had seen yesterday, but now they had to turn in a different direction since the route Artem had taken the previous day was only a dead end. Artem looked at the map to see if it were accurate on that point, and in fact, the passage indicated that the way to the walled section was a dead end — the first proof that the map showed the actual layout of the passages.

Dmitro Borisovich walked on without hesitation and without consulting the map. He knew the way. They turned left, then began descending. The floor of the passage turned to soft ground quite different from the rocks they had been treading on just a short while ago. But the walls remained as rocky as before.

“That’s the sediment from the water that once flowed through here,” Ivan Semenovich commented in a low voice, writing something down in his notebook. “It must have been a sort of subterranean river. Hm, a curious point: it flowed not lo llie surface but the other way round, into the depths of the mount…”

“Hold it!” Dmitro Borisovich called out. He stopped at the new fork. “Artem, which way should we turn according to the map?”

“To the right,” Artem said with conviction.

“And what’s this?” Ivan Semenovich said, lifting his lamp high into the air.

Immediately above them, the representation of a horse was carved into the rock. It was a surprisingly good image: the steed seemed poised to jump, its hind legs slightly bent.

“Aha, the horse!” Dmitro Borisovich said triumphantly. “The first horse of those mentioned in the text. There should be two more somewhere on our way. Forward, forward!”

They saw the second horse at the next fork; Artem, after consulting the map, announced that they should take the right fork. Then he continued with an irrefutable conclusion at which he had just arrived:

“The horses mean we should take the right fork, and the heads mean we should go left. Besides, the arrows under the carvings point in the proper direction.”

At first, as was her habit, Lida expressed her doubts as to the validity of Artem’s hasty conclusion, but soon enough, she saw for herself that again, Artem’s hypothesis was correct; at the next fork, the carving of a human head appeared on the wall, and sure enough, they had to turn left. Artem beamed with satisfaction. They had been right in entrusting him with the map!

Dmitro Borisovich had not yet found much to rejoice in. They were already several hundred meters from the entrance, but he had not yet come across anything directly related to archeology, with the exception of the carvings, of course. But they, valuable enough in themselves, were not a phenomenon previously unknown to science; similar representations were rather well studied. Besides, these heads and horses had not yet taken them anywhere in particular.

The archeologist realized though, that it was much too early to jump to conclusions, but nevertheless, he couldn’t help remarking grudgingly:

“Imagine: it looks like no one has walked here since ancient times. Surely we’ll find something, won’t we?”

Ivan Semenovich was somewhat disappointed at the fact that no ore veins could be seen in the walls. In spite of this, he tried to remain cheerful. “We’ll see what lies further ahead,” he kept telling himself. “So far, we’ve been going steadily downward. We must be at least a hundred and fifty meters below the surface.” Ivan Semenovich made another note in his book.

The third and fourth horses were a short distance away, and as before the horses indicated right turns, and the head, a left one. The expedition continued deeper and deeper into the bowels of the mount. Now they were two hundred meters underground.

“Which way had the water been flowing?” said Lida, who was evidently thinking something over. “If it was downward, maybe we’ll find ourselves on the shore of an underground lake in the end. Right, Ivan Semenovich?”

The geologist did not reply straight away. He scrutinized the walls, the ceiling, and the ground of the underground passage. Artem was eagerly awaiting his reply. It would be great to discover an underground lake!

“Nothing can be said with certainty at the moment,” Ivan Semenovich replied at last. “At first, to tell the truth, I also thought that the underground river flowed downward. But now I’m not so sure.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you understand? Shame on you — a future geologist who should have observed and analyzed all the evidence concerning the rock bedding and layers. If you’re going to blush, Lida, don’t, because it was what I thought myself at first. Let’s look more closely into the matter. If the water was indeed flowing downward, where was its source? Remember, the entrance to the cave is rather high up on the slope of the mount. One could assume that the water first ran down the slope and then entered the mouth of the cave. But in that case, it couldn’t possibly have cut such a deep track in the rocks.”

“In other words you want to say that the water was flowing upward?” asked Lida in surprise.

“That’s not impossible. Let’s assume there was a large underground lake inside the mount into which water trickled down from the upper layers and got trapped there. At the point of overflowing, the water would begin finding a way out through the cracks. Don’t forget about the atmospheric pressure: that’s quite a significant factor. The water would begin eroding the cracks, making them wider and turning some of them into veritable river beds — similar to the one we’re walking on — in the course of thousands upon thousands of years. Oil or water geysers provide us with a similar phenomenon, after all.”

“Now I understand,” Lida said in a low voice.

“In the process I’ve described, at some point in time, the inflow of water could have been reduced for some reason, and the underground lake then would run dry, leaving a large empty space, polished inside with water — what we call a cave. Yes, I’m of the opinion that the water was in fact flowing upward.”

But neither Artem nor Lida had time to comment the geologist’s hypothesis. Dmitro Borisovich cried out something unintelligible, overwhelmed with surprise. The rest uttered inarticulate cries of amazement simultaneously.

The passage came to an abrupt end as though it dissolved into nothing. Like a river emptying into the sea, the underground passage emptied into a huge cave, pitch-black dark and menacing. The bright light from their miner’s lamps was not powerful enough to win from the darkness even a small part of this immense cave. The light reached only the parts of the walls closest to them, and against the overwhelming blackness, the lamps seemed to have been reduced to feeble candlelights. The thick unbroken darkness hung before them like a coarse black carpet. Everyone stood in silence, overcome by the new discovery.

“Aha,” Ivan Semenovich uttered at last, and slowly continued: “That’s really rather a big cave… I never thought there could be such things in this area… What do you say to that, Dmitro Borisovich?”

“What can I say? This is not exactly my cup of tea, Ivan Semenovich. This cave comes as a great surprise, but remains a fact. And there’s something over there that baffles me… Look over there at those shadows — they’re columns but a bit too thick for columns as far as I’m concerned. Artem, let’s go and have a better look.”

Artem could make out the outline of the first column about ten meters away. It rose high into the air and disappeared into the impenetrable darkness above. The column seemed to get thinner the higher it went. But in the tricky light and enveloping darkness, it was impossible to tell for sure. There were dozens of columns around, so Dmitro Borisovich and Artem examined the bases of several ones in the light of their lamps, and Artem tried unsuccessfully to climb one of them.

As Ivan Semenovich and Lida joined the two men, the combined glare of the lamps increased the illuminating power, but not enough. Dmitro Borisovich suddenly called out, pointing upwards:

“Look up there! There’s something over there, too!”

The columns were situated a short distance from one another. They shone in the light of the lamps, their surface uneven but glossy. And high above them, apparently on the ceiling of the cave, something glittered, too. But what was it?

“It’s not the continuation of this column that’s glittering up there,” Ivan Semenovich said, peering into the darkness. “It’s something to the side… Aha, my good friends! The enigma is solved. As a matter of fact, it also solves the last riddle in Pronis’s text. Now everything’s clear!”

The rest were looking at him in bewilderment. What was Ivan Semenovich driving at? The archeologist asked then:

“What ‘last riddle’ do you have in mind?”

Without answering, Ivan Semenovich pointed to the nearest column with a broad gesture of his hand:

“Do you see these layers of deposits? Aren’t they fairly typical? Lida, you surely can tell us what natural formations are made of layers of limestone.”

Lida replied immediately:

“Stalagmites! Of course! What a shame I didn’t guess earlier! It’s so obvious!”

“And in this case, what’s glittering up there?” the geologist went on, breaking into an open grin.

Now it was Artem who responded:

“It must be the stalactites, nothing else. It’s amazing we didn’t guess right off.”

“Nothing so surprising in it, my dear friend. No one expected to see stalactites and stalagmites inside the mount. It doesn’t look like a geological formation that might have them. And secondly, this darkness could mislead anyone. So, there’s no reason whatsoever to be ashamed. And now — who can tell me what ‘last riddle’ of Pronis I had in mind?”

Nobody ventured an answer.

“My good friends, it is so easy to guess. Don’t you remember what the text says? ‘Beyond the torches pointing upwards and torches pointing downwards he will find…’ Here you have torches pointing upwards,” and he pointed to the stalagmites, “and torches pointing downwards, stalactites.

Isn’t this what Pronis wrote about? Ah, Dmitro Borisovich, you should have figured this one out!”

“Didn’t you speak of the obscuring effect of this darkness just a short while ago, Ivan Semenovich? Besides, these things are not at all my field of study. It is geology that deals with them, not archeology.”

“All right, all right, don’t start arguing; it won’t help you anyway. Let’s not waste time on idle talk. And this is not the proper place for debates. Artem, what does the map say now? Does it indicate a further route?”

Artem was crouching by the lamp reading the map at the moment. There were so many turns one could take indeed, wandering among the stalagmites that choosing the right one seemed quite impossible. The situation was further aggravated by the darkness! But Pronis’s map once again proved very reliable: the way through the stalagmite cave was indicated as perpendicular to the wall where the passage that had led them to it opened. The map also showed clearly that after a turn to the right at some point ahead of them, they should arrive at the end of the cave.

“Let’s get moving then,” Ivan Semenovich ordered after consulting the map. “It seems we’re on the right track. Time’s pressing!”

It was an exciting trip. The chimeric shapes rose high on all sides. They seemed to be growing from the ground, rising higher and higher, tapering and dissolving in the darkness. At some stretches, the ceiling of the cave seemed lower, or perhaps the ground rose; but which of the two things was extremely difficult to say. Anyway, at such places the light of the lamps reached the stalactites as well. These long glossy, uneven cones of fantastic variety were hanging from the ceiling with their tips almost meeting those of the stalagmites.

Artem was drinking in this phantasmagorical display put together by nature, so generous in its ingenious creations. Elongated snow-white cones gave way to glittering greenish formations like icicles that seemed liberally studded with shining precious stones; they in turn were replaced by large and thin sheets of limestone that seemed to be fluttering in a strong wind. These limestone sheets were so thin it made one wonder how they had come into being — one gentle touch seemed enough to shatter them into bits.

Then the rows of somber high stalagmites emerged from the darkness again. They stood like an immobile army of limestone troops, whimsically reflecting the light from the lamps and casting pitch-black shadows. For thousands of years they had been standing there, and they would remain standing for thousands of years into the future, watching the millenia pass. The enigmatic Pronis, prior to writing his testament, drawing his map, and carving it into the lid of the chest to be hidden behind a stone wall, must have passed through these majestic chambers, descending deeper and deeper into the subterranean world. For whom had he hidden the chest? He must have been a courageous man to have wandered all alone through such somber and menacing places.

“How beautiful and how unusual!” uttered Lida under her breath in excitement. “To think that all this has been created by no more than dripping water and limestone! Tiny drops falling from the ceiling, leaving imperceptible deposits of dissolved limestone… How long it must have taken for those giants to grow to their present size and form all these fantastic shapes!”

Artem understood Lida’s feelings very well, because he himself was impressed: he had never seen anything like it before!

“Rockslide ahead!” Dmitro Borisovich called out. “The way is blocked.”

Another barrier? Would they have to turn back without reaching their destination?

The path, meandering among the stalagmites, had taken them to the opposite wall of the cave and ended there.

Everybody stood in gloomy silence, eyeing the new hindrance. How thick was it? Would it be possible to get through? No one could provide an answer. Huge pieces of rock and earth seemed to have been tossed just at that spot on purpose by a hostile monster.

“Diana, what’s the matter?” Ivan Semenovich asked the dog.

The boxer, who had so far been running quietly at her master’s side — it was not her first trip underground with him, after all — barked fiercely and sharply again and again. She was standing before the rockfall, her muscles taut, her body straining forward, and seemed to be trembling with rage. She was staring at the rocks and earth blocking their way as if they were something alive and hostile. Another bark — worried and aggressive at the same time! Then the dog began to move away slowly.

The people exchanged worried glances: the dog’s reaction to the obstacle had puzzled them greatly as Diana had always been vivacious and friendly. What had come over her? Ivan Semenovich spoke in an attempt to dispell the gloom:

“Well, my friends,” he said as though nothing unusual had taken place. “It seems to me that Diana has expressed the feeling we all share: the rockfall is our common enemy! She doesn’t have any other means of expressing her reaction to a potential enemy except for barking…”

A well-presented and timely joke can work wonders. It can dispell a bad mood, cheer a body, make someone smile. And the transition from a smile to laughter, to more funny jokes, and even to genuine cheerfulness is an easy one. Ivan Semenovich knew all this very well. So he noted with satisfaction that even Lida who had been affected by the incident more than anyone else, smiled in response to his words.

“Let’s discuss what we can do in the present situation,” the geologist said. “Artem, what does your friend Pronis’s map suggest?”

“Unfortunately, nothing, Ivan Semenovich. Apparently, Pronis could not have foreseen a rockfall at this spot. According to the map, a narrowing of the passage should occur, or perhaps the beginning of another corridor where we have this blockage now. Then, there should be two forks, one after the other, further along the way. And then the passage seems to come to an end. If it weren’t for this obstacle, we would be very close to our destination… What a bad stroke of luck!”

“Well, it’s here and we can’t do anything about it!” Dmitro Borisovich muttered in annoyance. “It can ignore you, but you can’t ignore it, my over-confident young man!”

“Restrain yourselves, my friends! Show some restraint. We have not yet decided what’s to be done. Here are the facts: beyond the obstacle lies the route we should follow; the obstacle, to put it mildly, is a major one,” Ivan Semenovich remarked, raising the lamp to light up the huge pieces of rock and earth in front of them as if to size them up. “It’d be rather difficult to move all this. Hence, the solution to the problem. A very simple and reasonable solution. The only acceptable solution for anyone who doesn’t suffer from explorer’s itch.”

The silence that followed was pregnant with meaning.

“What solution do you have in mind?¹’ Artem asked impatiently.

“To turn back and return with workers and all the necessary equipment to dig through the rockfall in accordance with the regulations for conducting subterranean work. That’s the most reasonable thing to do — provided, I reiterate, the people involved do not suffer from explorer’s itch.”

“Oh no!” Lida and Artem cried out simultaneously. Dmitro Borisovich shook his head disapprovingly. It was clear no one wanted to postpone the attempt to get through.

Ivan Semenovich laughed happily.

“I must admit I expected just such a response,” he said, his tone filled with intrigue. “What a powerful thing this explorer’s itch is! I have to confess I’m not entirely free of it myself. So, to cut short any further argument over the retreat, let’s come up with a second solution to our problem.”

Everybody looked at him in expectation. Even the dog raised her head, looking at the geologist as if in proof of Lida’s conviction that she understood everything perfectly well but lacked only the ability to speak.

“The second solution is the following: to try to make our way through right now,” Ivan Semenovich said quietly.

“But how?” Dmitro Borisovich flashed a bespectacled glance at him. “What can we actually do with this rockfall pow?”

“Dig through.”

“Dig through without any help? There are thousands of tons of earth and limestone in front of us blocking our way. How can we get through without any heavy tools? Without many strong hands to help? With only our light pickaxes? I must say that your suggestion is, at best, groundless optimism,” fumed Dmitro Borisovich, his indignation mostly for effect. “I would never have expected such flippancy from you, Ivan Semenovich.”

“As a matter of fact, Dmitro Borisovich, optimism, as far as I’m concerned, can never do any harm,” the geologist retorted merrily. “Especially, when it is not so groundless as you assume, as you’ll have a chance to learn in a short while. Your impulsiveness, on the contrary, can hardly do any good. That’s the way it is, my dear archeologist! And I am not suggesting that we move all these thousands of tons of rocks with our rather weak hands. Now take a look, and tell me what you think of my preliminary calculations, or rather my ideas.”

He raised his lamp to light up the huge pile of rocks. The two giant stalagmites, standing like gateposts, were almost completely buried under the earth and rocks.

“I think we could attempt a breakthrough at this section. According to Pronis’s map, here, between these two stalagmites, another subterranean corridor or narrowing of the cave should begin. Is that so, Artem?”

“Yes, that’s correct, Ivan Semenovich.”

“So I think that at this spot it’s not thousands, or even hundreds tons of rock and earth that block our way but much less. Look: it’s mostly earth, a lot of it, true, but if you train your eyes upward, you’ll see that between the stalactites and tips of the stalagmites there sits a huge piece of rock, that looks like a pentagon. It was this rock which blocked the earth that was pouring down during the rock- fall. So, I would hazard a guess that in this section of the infall between these two stalagmites, only a thin wall of mostly soft earth has built up. It should be no more than a meter or so thick. So a mere meter of earth separates us from the passage we want to explore. You seem to be very sceptical, Dmitro Borisovich, so let’s see if I’m right.”

The geologist struck the wall of the rockfall to the right of the stalagmite, half buried in earth, which formed the right-hand post of their imaginary gate, watched as he did so by the distrustful archeologist. The sound of the impact was dull. Artem glanced at Lida surreptitiously: such a sound indicated that the wall was of considerable thickness. But Ivan Semenovich moved on, listening to the sound of the pickaxe striking the wall. When he hit the stalagmite itself, the sound was of a different, ringing quality.

“Isn’t it natural for crystallized limestone to ring when struck?” asked the mistrustful archeologist. “That doesn’t mean a thing yet, Ivan Semenovich, since the limestone…” He stopped short as the geologist struck the wall between the two stalagmites. There was definite change in the sound, suggesting there was a hollow space beyond the wall of earth. The indistinct echo died out only several seconds later.

“What do you say now?”

Ivan Semenovich lowered his pickaxe.

“It seems… it seems…” Dmitro Borisovich was hesitant. It was difficult to say for sure whether the blockage was too big or not — but now there was at least hope of getting through and moving forward. The archeologist grabbed his friend’s hand in a gesture of appreciation and said enthusiastically:

“I believe you’re right! No further proof is necessary!”

“Let’s consider the argument closed,” Ivan Semenovich announced solemnly, “and get down to work, my friends.”

The four pickaxes were raised in the air at almost the same time, but two struck a split second sooner, for Artem was eager to do something, and the archeologist was impatient to make up for time lost in futile argument. The strokes rained, sending stones and earth to the foot of the wall.

“One… two… one… two,” Artem paced himself putting all his strength into the blows. The others worked in silence. The pickaxes flew in a measured tempo, striking the earth and sending echoes through the cave.

Lida stopped for a moment to wipe the perspiration from her forehead. It seemed to her that the reverberations from beyond the wall were louder. Were they really making progress? She had to get back to work; there would be time to rest later.

Artem did not slacken his efforts. His pickaxe rose and fell with swift, mechanical precision. The hole in front of him was growing perceptibly. Stroke after stroke after stroke, without a letup.

Then his pickaxe suddenly slipped into an empty space beyond the wall. Before Artem had time to realize what had happened, grayish smoke began billowing from the hole with a whistling, hissing sound, covering the handle in a moment.

“Hold it!” Ivan Semenovich cried out, alarmed.

A jet of gray smoke shot from the small opening made by Artem’s last stroke. It was coming out under great pressure like water from a fire hose, sizzling and spreading in the air, sinking slowly to the ground. It flowed down in waves, burying the feet of the four people.

The alarmed dog began barking furiously. She jumped onto a broken stalagmite with a flat top and standing there, went on barking resentfully at the spurting smoke.

“What kind of gas is it?” asked Lida in a half-puzzled half-frightened voice, stirring the thick gray waves at her feet with the pickaxe.

Nobody knew the answer. It was definitely not mine gas since it had not exploded or caught fire when it came in touch with the flames of their miner’s lamps. Besides, the limestone environment was not conducive to the natural production of the mine gas. The archeologist, greatly intrigued, together with the rest, watched the gas flow down the slope like some viscous liquid. Then he stopped over and scooped a handful of the strange gas. It swayed in an elipsoid cloud in his palm without dissolving into the air or even dissipating. A very strange phenomenon indeed. Dmitro Borisovich sniffed the gas.

“It doesn’t smell of anything. But…”

He buried his nose into the gas.

“But you can’t breathe it. It lacks some vital ingredient, most probably oxygen.”

Artem inhaled some of the gas too but failed to discover either a taste or a smell in it. Something viscous and deadly heavy had lodged in his chest after he had breathed it in. An extremely unpleasant thing, this gas.

“Oh, look!” Lida cried out.

The gas was slowly filling the cave, its level rising exactly the way as if it were water pouring in. The gray waves of the gas undulated very close to the clear white flames of the lamps. Then one of the flames sputtered and;went out! The acetylene began spurting from the lamp with a characteristic sound, spreading its unpleasant sweetish smell around.

“The gas seems to be carbonic acid. It does not burn, neither does it allow anything else to burn. And you can’t breath it, since it has no oxygen,” Ivan Semenovich said, thinking aloud. “Artem, turn the gas regulator on the lamp down to cut off the flow of the acetylene.”

Noise of something breaking loose came from the wall: a huge piece of earth had been dislodged under the pressure of the gas and fell down with a crash. Now the gas began spurting like a big fountain, describing a wide arc in the air and falling down to flow into the cave in seething waves.

“We must retreat, my friends! The level of the gas is rising, and we can’t breath it. It’s dangerous to remain here any longer,” Ivan Semenovich said and then stopped short, going pale. Where could they retreat? To get out, they would have to go downward, retracing the route they had taken to reach the wall — a route which began on high ground but sank quite considerably to form a depression and rose again only a short distance from the rockfall. So down in the hollow, the gas would be the thickest as it was naturally flowing downwards. There was no way they could return the way they had come. In other words, there was nowhere to retreat! And the level of the gas kept rising; it was already up to their knees. What was to be done?

As far as they could see in the dim light of the remaining lamps, the waves of the dreadful gas were surging all around them; the level was rising implacably. It was impossible to.stop up the opening, for it had become wider under the pressure of the gas.

Ivan Semenovich looked around: Dmitro Borisovich appeared calm, his anxiety betrayed only by his tightly pursed lips; Lida was leaning against a stalagmite in a halfswoon; Artem was standing at her side. The young man’s big eyes moved back and forth from Lida to Ivan Semenovich anxiously, as though seeking advice, waiting for an order from the geologist that he would carry out immediately. The dog kept on barking furiously at the dense gas that was flowing ever closer to her.

“Climb on top of the broken stalagmites! The flow of the gas will probably decrease!” Ivan Semenovich called out. “The quantity of gas beyond that wall cannot be unlimited! Quick!”

It was the only thing left to do now — to move higher and higher, away from the dreaded waves of gas! Maybe it would all settle in the lowest part of the cave… But Ivan Semenovich realized now that this was a futile hope. To see it, all one had to do was to look around. The gas was pouring in much faster than it was settling in the bottom of the cave; its level was continuously rising. The bases of the stalagmites were already covered with the dense gray fog. The fog was rising inexorably and soon it would reach the people who had climbed onto the tops of the broken stalagmites. Evidently there was no hope that its flow would decrease since the gas was spurting from the hole with greater intensity than before.

Artem was supporting Lida, who had fainted, with one arm and holding on to the tip of the stalagmite with his other hand. Disconnected, confused thoughts flashed one after the other through his mind:

How can we get ourselves out of this mess?.. We’re lost, we can’t do anything!… The gas is pouring in… How heavy Lida is. I can’t support her for much longer… My arm has gone to sleep… I mustn’t let her fall… All right, even if I don’t drop her, the damned gas will get us sooner or later anyway… And there’s no way up from here!.. We’ll all suffocate… Diana is evidently still alive though she’s lower than we are… barking…

The situation seemed hopeless indeed. The gas was rising slowly but steadily, and there was something terrifying in this implacable movement…

One of the lamps that had been put on top of the stalagmite threw an even, undisturbed light on the sad picture: the people clinging to the cold, shiny, hard surface of the stalagmites to the last, and the big tawny dog, already covered almost completely by the gray blanket of horrible gas. Diana still gave occasional frightened barks, but they grew less and less frequent. Gray surging waves of gas rose, filling the cave, cutting off all paths of retreat. The gas had already reached the feet of the people perched on top of the stalagmites.

CHAPTER FIVE

A way out of the desperate situation is found which leads to an unexpected and incomprehensible source of subterranean light; the explorers escape through a hole to find woods, steep cliffs and a Scythian arrow; then they discover a crowd of exotically dressed people and witness a confrontation between the chieftain and the soothsayer; Artem interferes to stop the sacrifice but is captured along with his friends.

It seemed to Artem that he had been unconscious for some time. A strange weekness and despair had overwhelmed him. His eyes had closed quite by themselves; his head drooped lower and lower. But with his trembling hand that had gone numb, he was still holding tight to Lida whose limp body seemed heavier and heavier. The only one of his senses that remained fully alert was his hearing, and what is more it even seemed sharper. Artem heard every word the two older men said very distinctly; every little sound around him came in loud and clear; but he could neither respond nor move. It looked as though a thick covering had been thrown over everything. Under this covering were he and Lida whom he was holding… but no… she was moving away… And at some indefinite distance apart were the rest. Then Artem heard the voice of Ivan Semenovich:

“The gas is pouring over Diana… She’ll probably be the first to go…”

To go where? Artem tried to understand what the geologist meant but in vain: Ivan Semenovich’s words remained incomprehensible to him. Meanwhile, another voice reached Artem. This time it was Dmitro Borisovich speaking:

“Artem, hold on! There’s still a chance! Maybe…”

Maybe what? What did Dmitro Borisovich have in mind? Gathering all the strength left in him, Artem called back in a stiff led voice:

“I’m hanging on… I’ll hold on as long as… as long as J can… and I’ll be holding…”

Meaning that he would be holding Lida. He was holding her and would go on doing so… But what would happen when all his strength had ebbed away? What then? The hoarse barking of the dog was reflected in the multiple echo from the stalagmites. Why was she barking in such a strange way? The sound seemed muffled by a blanket. She stopped only to give another bark, but even hoarser this,time. No more sounds came from her afterwards. Then a voice:

“I think the dog has fallen from the stalagmite. Do you see her, Dmitro Borisovich?”

“No, I don’t,” the archeologist replied gravely. “Artem, keep your head up! The gas is getting closer to you. Keep your head up at all costs!”

Artem tried to raise his head — there was so much reproach in the archeologist’s voice… But, no, he couldn’t do it; his head was drooping down and he couldn’t do anything about it! Not just his head, but his entire body was being pulled down by some irresistible force. And how heavy Lida had become!…

The only thing Artem managed to do with great effort was open his eyes. Where were his friends? Oh, there they were. What was Ivan Semenovich up to, holding the safety matches and two dynamite charges? Was it really dynamite? And a fuse… What was he going to do?

“Attention, my friends!” the firm voice of the geologist resounded through the cave. “We have only one last chance of survival left… Only because it is our final chance I am going to try it, Dmitro Borisovich… The opening through which the gas is coming in is not too big. I’m going to throw these two charges into the hole. I hope the explosion will seal the opening. Do you follow me? I’m hoping there will be enough earth to seal the opening…”

“And.what if the explosion only makes the hole bigger? What then?”

“It won’t make our situation worse… Now… Watch it, everybody! Hide behind the stalagmites! Here it goes!”

A small flash from a lighted match. The fuse began hissing. A ring of smoke ran along the thick cord, accompanied with tiny sparks scattering around, getting ever closer to the charges. Artem gathered enough strength to watch all Ivan Semenovich’s movements closely. The explosion was their last hope. If they were lucky, the opening would be sealed off by the falling earth, the flow of the gas would be cut off, and consequently, its level will not rise, to drown them…

The geologist swung broadly, aiming the charges at the opening. With his other hand, he was holding on to the stalagmite. Another moment and…

But at the very last instant his foot in its heavy boot slipped on the slick surface of the stalagmite. Ivan Semenovich tottered just as he was tossing the charges and the fuses were burning out.

“Oh blast it!”

The charges, a smoke tail trailing behind them, whizzed through the air and disappeared in the gray gas. They landed not at the opening but much further to the left, at the foot of big rock that jutted out from the wall. What a stroke of bad luck! Now there was no telling what would happen.

For another moment, the hissing of the burning fuse could be heard; the gas did not prevent it from burning, as it would burn even under water. Then a powerful explosion sent big pieces of rock flying high up into the air. Yellow flames billowed. The rocks tumbled down with singularly lethal force. A thunderous, continuous noise enveloped everything, and it seemed that the blasts were coming from all sides and would never stop. The stones kept raining down with a deafening rattle, bombarding and hitting the stalagmites.

But the gazes of the people were fixed not on the falling stones but on the place in the wall where the explosion had taken place. Now the picture had changed radically.

A wide breach had opened there: the blast tore a gaping hole in the rocks, and jagged pieces were strewn all around. An even light flowed into the cave from this hole. But it was not the bright daylight of the July afternoon they had left behind on the surface. This grayish light, tinged with violet, reminded one of dusk or a rainy overcast.day. But where could this light be coming from so deep underground? What was its source?

There was no time to think about it. The firm voice of Ivan Semenovich rang out.

“No gas is coming through the new opening!”

It was true. And what is more, the gray gas could be seen trickling into the new opening in small rivulets. Did that mean that there was normal air behind that wall? But Artem’s ponderings were cut short.

“My friends! There is only way to save ourselves: we must try to reach the new breach opened by the blast. Dash through the gas, holding your breath,” Ivan Semenovich said. “There’s not a minute to lose! The longer we stay here, the more difficult it’ll be. Artem, can you carry Lida all by yourself? No, you can’t, of course. Stay where you are! I’ll help you and Lida.”

Then Ivan Semenovich, filling his lungs with air, plunged into the gray water-like waves. In a few seconds his head reemerged beside Artem. The geologist caught his breath and said:

“Let’s try to carry Lida over to the breach together. It’ll be safer that way. Dmitro Borisovich, I hope you’ll manage without my help. All right, we plunge into the gas all together now. Now, one… two… three!”

Artem and Ivan Semenovich, carrying the unconscious Lida, made a dash for the opening. Artem, holding his breath, mechanically repeated all the movements of the geologist. Billows of the gray smoke kept moving in front of his wide- open eyes. In an instant, he could see nothing but the grayness on all sides. There was only one thing he was fully aware of — the steady progress of Ivan Semenovich. In fact, all Artem had to do was to carry Lida, mechanically keeping pace with the geologist. Artem stumbled; his feet slid on the slippery rocks; the opening was not yet in sight. There was no air left in his chest; it seemed ready to burst with strain… But he had to push on, no matter what.

Only a few final steps — had the distance been greater, Artem would surely have failed to make it! — and the gas seemed less dense. Wasn’t it the light from the opening he had just gotten a glimpse of?… In a moment Artem’s head was above the surface of the gas. He could start breathing at last!

Guzzling air, Artem forged ahead toward the opening. At the length of Lida’s body away, he saw the head of Ivan Semenovich, but the rest of the geologist’s body — and Artem’s as well — could not be seen yet through the dense gray gas. There it was, the breach… but where was the archeologist? Artem stumbled over a sharp stone. Another effort… how impossibly difficult were those last few steps!

“Higher, higher!” Ivan Semenovich said encouragingly. “Dmitro Borisovich! Don’t lag behind! In a few moments we’ll be out in the fresh air! Just a few more steps!”

His last strength spent, Artem tripped and nearly fell down on the cold, damp piece of the limestone lying in the breach. He could not move another muscle or carry Lida any farther. Artem was at the end of his rope. Ivan Semenovich got there just in time to grab him and keep him from falling.

Artem’s legs and arms must have had some residual strength left in them, since he managed to push himself through the opening. He collapsed on the other side, his head dangling down from the edge. Then, unaware of how it came about, he tumbled headlong, rolling down the face of the rock. His closed eyes did not see anything; his hands were unable to grab hold of any thing to stop his fall. The young man rolled all the way down and landed on a heap of stones. But he was totally indifferent to his immediate fate. A strange torpor had overcome him: his entire body had gone completely out of control. Only his hearing, as earlier, remained unaffected.

Something heavy landed close to him with a thud. Was it Lida? Oh, if only he could open his eyes! But it was entirely beyond his power to do so. Artem could still hear the sounds and voices from the outside world and nothing more. Now it was the voice of Ivan Semenovich — what a man! he managed to remain vigorous and energetic, not forgetting about anyone, always ready to help…

“Dmitro Borisovich! Give me your hand! I’ll pull you up. Did the gas get in your lungs?”

“No, I’m O.K…. I’ll manage… You can choke on that gas… you’ve been down there far too long… what if you fall… what if you fall and Lida tumble down with you?”

“Lida’s already on the other side of the opening. Give me your hand, I tell you! Do you hear? I order you to give me your hand!”

A pause. Then — some rustling or swishing… incomprehensible sounds…

“Give me your hand, damn it, or I’ll come down to fetch you!”

“Just a second… I think Diana’s right by my feet here… I’ll lift her up.”

“You won’t have the strength!”

“I will… here, I’m holding her… now, take her from me! Oh! My camera! It’s gone! I’ve dropped it! I can’t find it in this gas… oh, where is it?”

“Come on, get out of there, quick! Climb up here, quick! Never mind your camera! Quick! See, the rocks up there seem to have moved again, they’re balanced precariously! They can come crashing down any moment!”

“I’ve lost my camera!… How careless I am! No, I absolutely must find it… maybe it’s…”

“Stop it and get up here, I tell you! On the double!”

“All right, all right!”

Another heavy thud… It must have been Diana landing on this side of the opening. But why couldn’t he hear the geologist’s voice any more? What about Dmitro Borisovich? Did they make it through? What was it that Ivan Semenovich had said about “the precariously balanced” rocks?

As though in reply to Artem’s confused and disordered thoughts, a muffled and heavy rumbling could be heard. It increased in intensity by the moment. Something huge seemed to have detached itself from the rocks above the opening inside the cave. It tumbled down, striking the walls, the noise growing louder and louder. Now it seemed as though all the rocks in the world had been dislodged and gone clashing and rolling down into an abyss, breaking up into smaller pieces as they went.

Everything was shaking, quivering and rattling. The very ground quivered beneath the almost insensitive body of Artem. This pandemonium seemed to last for about a minute. Artem could not tell how long it actually lasted but it seemed a long time. He was continuously buffeted by the waves of air compressed by the huge falling rocks.

Abruptly all grew still, and this absolute, all-enveloping palm was more disturbing than the deafening noise of a moment ago, because it was completely incomprehensible to Artem. But was this stillness really so noiseless?.

The weary young man could discern some sounds — occasional stones falling… or perhaps echoes coming from afar?

But what difference did it make, for Artem was lying half-dead and completely motionless… Unable to stir a limb, to move a single muscle. So the stillness continued as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t move in any case… But maybe he had just been dreaming, for so many terrifying things all at once could happen only in dreams!

A sharp stone was prickling his shoulder, but Artem could not even twitch to relieve the pain. Chimerical images ran through his mind.

Surely it was all a dream, and yet not quite. In dreams, one is shut off from the surrounding world completely and is at the mercy of monsters, but Artem realized their unreality; now he felt the painful sharpness of a real stone; he was even aware of the closeness of the immobile hand of Lida… No, he was not mistaken; he knew for sure it was Lida’s hand — motionless but warm, very close to him on the ground. No, he was not dreaming!

Though his eyes were still closed, Artem seemed to see the gray waves of the mysterious gas all around, surging and filling up the cave; no, they had already filled it. The waves were floating low above Artem like clouds in the mountains, the cold heavy cumululi of a gloomy, rainy day. That was probably why he had difficulty breathing.

Then he imagined he was again seeing the stalagmites, the huge conic shapes towering all around him like columns or mighty tree trunks… Why trees? In his delirium he thought he had begun hearing that dreadful hissing again, it was driving him mad. Continuous, harassing… Was the,gas coming through the opening? But now the hissing seemed no more than the rustling of leaves. Leaves here? Trees? It was funny what incongruous fantasies beset him!

The young man even made an attempt to smile but failed. Not a single muscle moved. His condition was not unlike that of a person in the grips of a grave illness: he had lost control of his body while retaining the ability to use his senses. Beyond doubt, it was rustling leaves and not hissing gas that Artem heard!

The rustling intensified and then subsided like a light breeze blowing above the forest that makes the tops of the tall trees sway… It would be so nice to wander through such a forest, treading on the soft green grass, big tree trunks all around, singing… Hey, in the forest, in the foooorest, there are two oaks, two oaks, leaning towards each other, each other, like lovers, like lovers…

Why he wanted to sing this particular song he could not say. It must have been the uneven rustling, growing in intensity that suggested the tune and the words… But wait, what kind of leaves could be found deep underground? Ivan Semenovich had said back there, in the subterranean passage, that they were at least two hundred meters below the surface. So what kind of trees could grow at such a depth? Impossible. And yet it was unmistakably leaves rustling in the wind; he could even hear some sort of song — very distant, unfamiliar, monotonous. He could not make out the words, but the tune was there all the same. What a strange phantasm! All right, he could accept that, since delirium can produce far more terrible things.

A song — savage and severe, solemn and slow, moody and monotonous — was coming from very far away. At times it was barely audible, then it could be heard much better, as though gusts of wind were carrying it to him, then dropped it along the way, only to pick it up playfully. What a strange and unfamiliar song! Artem had never in his life heard anything like it. How painfully the sharp stone was pressing into his shoulder! If only he could shift just a little, move his shoulder away just a bit…

Suddenly Artem realized that he had in fact managed to shift his body. The stone was not hurting him any longer. So…

Very slowly and carefully, as though not trusting himself fully, Artem sat up, hoisting himself from the ground with feeble hands; there was still some residual pain in his shoulder. He opened his eyes hesitantly, as one does after a prolonged fit of unconsciousness — and closed them again immediately. Was lie still dreaming? Why this strange, inexplicable light?

He opened his eyes once again, this time extremely cautiously, shading them with his hand, just in case. The light was not from any particular source, but came from all sides; it was the incomprehensible, even light of evening when the westering sun hides behind heavy and dark clouds.

Right in front of him he saw the thick reddish-brown trunk of a tall tree. The bole rose very high up in the air to branch off into boughs and eventually disappear in the wide crown of pinkish-yellow leaves whose color suggested late September and not mid-July. Lush, tall grass grew among the trees… but it was very odd grass, unreal, not at all green but also pinkish-yellow. Everything looked as though the fall had already changed the verdure miraculously into its favorite hues. All the same, even in fall neither leaves nor grass acquire such a pinkish tint! How odd! And where were the stalagmites? And the cave for that matter? Where were the rest?

Artem looked around and saw Lida lying beside him at the foot of a white cliff. She was lying motionless on her back, her eyes closed and seemingly lifeless. Further away on the same cliff, he saw Dmitro Borisovich — also motionless — and close to him, Ivan Semenovich. They seemed to be unconscious. Or… no, he couldn’t even think of the other possibility; that would be too horrible!

Only then did Artem realize that he could still hear the strange song. So he had not dreamt it? No doubt now — this monotonous, stark, moody song was still in the air. But who could be singing it here? And for that matter, where was “here”?

For the next few seconds, he listened thoughtfully to the distant song and then almost * cried out in horror when something touched his shoulder.

“Who’s that? Oh, it’s you, Diana! You sure did give me a fright!”

The dog was standing beside him. She was making sounds of joy and tried to lick Artem’s face.

“Where are we, Diana? What is this place? You don’t know? Me neither.”

The dog rushed to Lida, sniffed at her, then went over to Dmitro Borisovich and the geologist. After that, she returned to Artem and began tugging him at his sleeve as if inviting him to follow her.

^uYes, Diana, I would have gone over to them long before if I only could get up! You think I’m sitting here like this for nothing? That I don’t want to know what’s wrong with them or help them? Ah, you don’t know me very well if it’s what you think. However, maybe I’ll try to get up.”

In fact, Artem didn’t feel as weak as he was just a few minutes before. His strength was returning quickly. He rose to his feet and walked unsteadily over to Lida. He stooped over her and touched her hand and forehead. Lida made an almost imperceptible movement; a quiver passed over her lips. ’

“Lida, my dear Lida, my love, wake up! Lida!”

He touched her face with his hand. An arch though weak smile brightened her face.

“My dear and my love?” she said in a low voice, without opening her eyes. “You’re much too sentimental today, my little one!”

She sat up, her movements slow. Her eyes were fastened on the young man who felt greatly embarrassed — he had not thought she would hear him. But he hadn’t said anything special, had he?

Meanwhile Lida took a quick look around and her smile disappeared from her face. She grabbed Artem’s hand.

“Why so much light! Where are we, Artem?”

“I don’t know, Lida. I’m as baffled as you are.”

“Isn’t it a wood?… leaves… and the grass is such an unusual color… It’s all beyond me, Artem!”

“The same here, Lida.”

“Everything’s yellow and pink… Maybe I’m dreaming?” Lida was looking around herself, greatly puzzled, not believing her own eyes.

“How did we get here?”

Artem only shrugged his shoulders — how could he explain anything to her if it was an absolute enigma to him?

“And where are Ivan Semenovich and the archeologist?” Artem pointed in the direction where both the men were lying.

“What’s the matter with them? We must do something!” Lida tried to get to her feet but failed.

“Oh damn!” she said under her breath.

“I was like that at first, too,” Artem said. “Don’t worry, in a few minutes you’ll be quite all right.”

“Artem, I just don’t understand…”

“Neither do I.”

He made a gesture of resignation.

“Where are we?” they suddenly heard the surprised voice of Dmitro Borisovich. “What kind of stage scenery is this? It was rather foolish to paint leaves and grass yellow and pink!”

Then Ivan Semenovich replied:

“It’s not scenery at all, my dear friend. It’s quite a real forest, but of such preposterous colors…”

“Wait a minute!” the archeologist cried out. “Things like this don’t exist, so I must be dreaming!”

“Then we must be dreaming collectively one and the same dream — Artem and Lida also wondered whether they were dreaming. Yes, my friend, that’s how things are. Not only you, but even such an old hand at geology as myself cannot find any plausible explanations. By the way, have a look at this unusual cliff we’re lying on.”

Artem took another look around. Tall trees with pink leaves stood close to what looked like an almost vertical cliff, rising high, with jagged rocks sticking out of it. In fact he could not see where the cliff ended. It even seemed to Artem that it pierced the thick gray clouds overhead.

“I can’t understand what’s going on, Ivan Semenovich,” Artem said at last, noticing that the geologist’s gaze was directed at him.

“Well, I must admit once again that I can make no more out of all this than you.”

“And who is singing that song?” said Lida.

“A song? Oh, somebody’s really singing!”

“And the song is getting nearer!”

“Quite a few people must be singing it…”

“The song is absolutely unfamiliar to me. I’ve never heard anything like it before.” As the geologist said it, he raised his hand in warning. “Listen, just listen, and keep quiet.”

In the ensuing silence, they heard a distant shout, then another one… Then the sounds of something like a tambourine could be heard; other tambourines still further away joined in; then more shouts — cheerful, triumphant, solemn. But how could it all be happening two hundred meters underground?

All four explorers were sitting now, in silence, glancing at each other from time to time. Something impossible and incomprehensible was going on! The strange sounds did not abate; on the contrary they grew louder as though thousands of people had raised a shout, drowning the beat of the drums.

“Is it a sort of a parade or something?” Artem attempted a joke, but it sounded very inappropriate. Nobody smiled or paid any attention to his words for that matter. Discom- fitted, Artem did not pursue the matter. He felt a growing anxiety; the others also looked quite disturbed.

“Look over there!” Lida cried out.

A long arrow pierced the dense pinkish-yellow folliage, swished past them, then struck the ground, its feathers quivering in the air, its slim shaft sticking out from the grass, the harbinger of an unknown menace.

Ivan Semenovich was the first to regain control of himself. Overcoming his weakness, he rose to his feet, walked over to the arrow, and pulled it from the ground. His gray eyes studied the unexpected messenger thoroughly. At last he shook his head disapprovingly. His face had acquired an I-don’t-like-the-look-of-it expression.

“Have a look at this thing, Dmitro Borisovich,” he said, handing the arrow to the archeologist. “It’s not a toy. And it is not the kind of arrow used in archery for sport these days either. It’s a combat arrow if I’ve ever seen one. The arrowhead is made of bronze, you know.”

“What? Made of bronze you say?”

The archeologist immediately stopped thinking about his weakness and fatigue, sprang to his feet, and ran to Ivan Semenovich.

“A combat arrow you say? Oh, give it to me!”

He took the proffered arrow and began examining it. He alternately brought it quite close to his short-sighted eyes and then held at his arm’s length, bending his neck in a funny manner, as though taking aim at it from under the spectacles.

“What do you say about it?” Ivan Semenovich asked impatiently, this arrow evidently becoming suddenly a very important thing for his musings.

“Just a moment, wait just a bit. I can’t come to a conclusion so quickly. My eyeglasses are all smutty.”

Dmitro Borisovich put the arrow on the bag nearest him, handling it as though it were the most precious of jewels. Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them very carefully with his handkerchief, all this without taking his eyes off the arrow one instant. Putting his glasses back on, he peered at the arrow, his head bent apprehensively and mistrustfully, but some hope glinted in his eyes.

“So, what can you say about it?” Ivan Semenovich asked again.

“It’s impossible. It’s much too… much too… and yet there’s no room left for doubt… You see, it’s…”

The archeologist was apparently having difficulty finding the proper words to express himself. He picked up the arrow again and said, displaying it for his friends to admire it as though it were a thing of enormous value:

“My friends, it is an exact replica of an ancient arrow! Arrowheads of this type have been found in the excavations of the Scythian burial mounds. But they were always damaged, rusted and bent. You see my point? But this one is a new ancient arrow!”

“What do you mean — ‘a new ancient arrow’? I’d say that’s a very odd collocation, Dmitro Borisovich. Could you please make your meaning clear?”

“No, I can’t! What do you want from me, Ivan Semenovich? I’m only describing what I see; I beg you to understand this. And I’m as puzzled as the rest of you! Truly I am!”

Artem glanced at Lida, and Lida returned the stare: it was nigh to impossible to make any sense of the archeologist’s confused words.

The distant song changed in tone; now it was filled with joy and triumph. There was neither severity nor despondency in it any longer. Now it was truly a song of victory and jubilation.

“I have really never heard anything like it before,” Ivan Semenovich said pensively, casting a glance at Artem and Lida. He probably meant both the song and the archeologist’s garbled explanations. But the archeologist was not aware of the song at that point, for he was fully absorbed in examining the arrow.

“Look at Diana,” Artem said to Lida in a low voice.

The dog was standing now, her legs wide apart. She turned her head in the direction from which the song was coming. The dog was obviously nervous. She was prepared.to fight an unseen and unknown enemy. Ivan Semenovich also noticed this. For some time he stood looking at the dog as if thinking the situation over. Then he said, quietly and determinately, putting special stress on this quietness and determination:

“My friends, we must find out what’s going on there. Collect your belongings and get ready to move. Dmitro Borisovich, you’ll have plenty of time to examine your arrow later.”

The archeologist gave Ivan Semenovich an annoyed look, but obeyed, putting the arrow under the flap of his rucksack so it was sticking out of either side, and scrambled to put it on.

Ivan Semenovich was the first to start forward, picking his way among the trees, moving in the direction from which the song was coming.

They were walking through a big, dense forest. Something about it was different from the forests they were familiar with. Maybe it was the uniformly enormous trees or the unusual coloring of the leaves and grass — something they had never seen before. Everything was new and complicated, as though they had suddenly been transported to a far-away land. Things were further confounded by the arrow, the song, and the beat of drums.

Suddenly Ivan Semenovich raised his hand in a gesture of warning that meant: “Be on your guard!”

They were approaching the edge of the forest. They could already glimpse the overcast sky through the giant trees; a few more steps and they would be out in the open… Abruptly Ivan Semenovich doubled over and jumped behind the nearest tree, signalling for the rest to do the same. Diana, obedient to the strong hand of the geologist who had grabbed her collar, went to lie down by his side. Her body was trembling. They looked out from behind the trees, bewildered beyond measure. Artem’s breath was taken away; his hand clasped Lida’s; he was afraid to make even the slightest movement. He had to be dreaming it all! What else could it be? In real life, nothing of the kind could ever occur — such things happened only in dreams!

A wide field of the same strange pinkish-yellow color stretched into the distance from the edge of the forest. There were long rows of kibitkas[1] with covers of felt close to one another in one corner of the field; other big wagons, some of which had six wheels, could also be seen there.

Much further away, beyond the kibitkas, was a large herd of horses. And in the distance, encircling this most unusual of subterranean landscapes, steep, almost vertical mountains, similar to the cliff from which the explorers had started, were rising high into the air, seemingly without any ledges, to disappear in the low, dense, gray clouds. The place they _vhad found themselves in was a sort of valley surrounded by high mountains; only it was much too wide.

But none of the four contemplated this picture for long, since their attention was riveted to something that was happening much closer to where they were hiding and which was of much greater importance to them at the moment.

Several hundred people were standing not far from the edge of the forest near a strange object made of branches and twigs. The several hundred men and women were wearing bizzare clothes, their uncommon appearance immediately catching the eye.

The men were wearing high conical felt hats; felted waistcoats of a sort, the backs of which were longer than the front; breeches, long or short, evidently of wool. The long, wide ones were tucked into the men’s boots; leather straps were wound around the legs in the manner of puttees. The men were also brandishing long spears and holding bows and quivers; some of the men had battle axes, the handles stuck into their belts. The men formed an agitated crowd, some shouting, some singing; all of them brandishing their arms, as though threatening someone.

The women were standing in a separate group from the men; they were wearing long linen dresses and were draped in long cloaks with wide folds; their headgear was very tall. Some had what looked to be shawls on their heads. Men and women alike were garbed mainly in linen, but there was also a lot of wool and leather to be seen. The women were singing the same song, but in a more subdued manner. And all of them were looking in the direction of a large procession which was approaching in a cloud of dust. It was difficult to make out any details of the procession through the dust, but it was clear that a big mounted party was approaching with a group of people moving haltingly and tiredly on foot.

Artem felt Lida grasping his hand. He turned to look at her. She was about to ask something, but at that moment, the voice of Dmitro Borisovich, brimming with excitement, could be heard:

“Scythians! My friends, these people are Scythians, real Scythians! What we see in front of,us is a temporary camp of the ancient nomadic Scythians!”

“Not so loud!” Ivan Semenovich cut him short.

For a moment Artem was distracted from the exotic sight. He turned his head to look at Dmitro Borisovich, trying to comprehend the words he had just heard. Scythians?… An ancient Scythian camp? Was Dmitro Borisovich making fun of them? Scythians living in this underground world in the 20th century?

One glance at the archeologist, though, was enough to convince anyone that the man meant what he had said: there was not a trace of frivolity in his demeanor; he had evidently been much taken by the things that were going on in the field. He was panting; his fingers kept nervously picking pieces of bark from the tree; his eyes were feasting on the singing people and the approaching procession. He kept adjusting the spectacles that slithered down his nose periodically.

Artem turned back to Lida. “Did you hear him?” he asked in a very low voice.

Lida nodded without saying anything.

“Scythians?… Can you make any sense of all this?”

Lida shrugged her shoulders: it was clear she understood as little as Artem.

Meanwhile, the procession was getting closer and closer. Apparently, the solemn song was in honor of the procession. It had-already been welcomed by a rain of arrows, shot upward into the gloomy gray sky, accompanied by frenzied shouts. The arrows were landing in the forest; it was probably one of the arrows from a previous volley that had strayed far enough to be picked up by the four explorers.

Several men stepped out of the crowd to meet the procession. They were evidently people of some rank, for their dress was embellished with gold ornaments, and they carried no weapons except for short swords and ceremonial axes. One of them, an old man with gray hair and a long beard wearing a robe very much like a woman’s dress, raised his hands and shouted something in a hoarse voice. The crowd and the procession responded immediately with similar shouts. Then the old man turned around, raised his hand in a salute before the peculiar object of twigs and branches the explorers had noticed earlier.

“It must be their sacrificial altar,” Artem whispered excitedly.

“Yes, it looks like the Scythian altar was made of twigs!” Dmitro Borisovich replied no less excitedly.

The procession was now quite close, and the first rows of riders could be seen in detail. They were well armed, carrying rectangular shields of hide and studded with ornamental bronze figures of animals. The higher ranking riders — which fact could be determined by their more elaborate clothing — carried round shields with an oval cut into the top for a face.

But Artem’s attention had already focused on the strikingly looking horseman.

He was a burly, dignified man with a long gray beard, sitting majestically on his elaborately festooned steed, holding the reins in one hand, the other resting on the golden hilt of his short sword. On his head was a round golden helmet; shining gold ornaments adorned his dress: a heavy pendant of plaited gold wire on his chest; a bracelet on the wrist of the hand holding the reins — everything pointed to his being a man of highest rank. Several younger riders moving right behind him were holding the shiny figures above his head. There were panthers, deer, leaping lions and eagles with their wings spread perched on long spears. The distinguished rider was looking straight ahead, sitting in great dignity and stateliness on his brown mount, not paying attention to anything or anyone around him.

“He must be the chieftain of the tribe… the supreme leader…” Artem heard the voice of Dmitro Borisovich, muffled with excitement. “He’s returning from a raid with his fellow Scythians. It’s incredible to be seeing such a thing with my own eyes!”

“Shh… Shh…” Ivan Semenovich again cut him short. “Be quiet!”

The old man who had earlier stepped out of the crowd, made a few more steps toward the riders, without lowering his raised arms. When there were only a few steps separating him and the chieftain, the latter stopped his horse with an almost imperceptible movement of his hand. All the other riders immediately stopped, too. Only those on foot continued moving, drawing nearer.

The old man with raised hands cried out something in a gutteral voice, probably, words of welcome. The riders responded with shouts of greeting. Axes and swords flashed in the air; the figures of lions, eagles and panthers stirred above the head of the chieftain. The only person who remained immobile and silent was the chieftain who, in the same detached and aloof manner sat astride horse, his hand on the hilt of the sword.

The old man, his arms still raised, cried out something once again, drawing discordant shouting in response from both the riders and the crowd. It was only then that the chieftain seemed to awaken; he made an imperious gesture with his hand as though beckoning someone to come up to him.

A young man, also richly attired, stepped out from the crowd around the altar. His face bore some resemblance to the chieftain’s, but differed in that it was obnoxious, suspicious and insincere. The young man did not walk in a straightforward manner — there was something crablike in his gait. His right shoulder was hunched forward. The mounted chieftain lowered his head a little as though taking a better look at the young man, but his face remained impassive, with no expression of greeting or recognition.

The young man drew closer and made obeisance to the chieftain who stared motionlessly at him. The people around them grew quiet. The young man gave the chieftain a sidelong glance as though he feared a sudden blow. But the chieftain only waved his hand in dismissal and turned away. The young man, as if he had expected this to happen, ran aside and stopped, still looking timidly at the rider in the gold helmet.

Then the chieftain looked back for the first time. A rider immediately rushed to his side — he must have been waiting for this sign all along. The chieftain made a lazy raking movement with his hand; the rider turned his horse around and galloped back, shouting something.

Artem, highly intrigued by these maneuvers, shifted a little to be closer to Dmitro Borisovich, and asked in a barely audible voice:

“What is it they’re shouting? What language is it?” Without turning his head, the archeologist answered, also under his breath:

“It must be Scythian.”

“Do you understand it?”

“Of course not.”

“Why? You don’t know it?”

“No one knows Scythian… but wait, there’s…”

“You two, shut up, will you?” Ivan Semenovich stopped them sharply, giving them a stern look.

About a dozen riders were driving a group of people forward. The folks in this group were very different in appearance from the riders and crowd that had been waiting for the procession.

First, their dress differed; they were wearing various kinds of clothing; some had the same type of waistcoats but wore cloaks on top. Others were bareheaded, whereas all the riders and those in the crowd waiting by the altar had either helmets or hats on.

The group on foot looked exhausted. They were walking slowly, dragging their feet; some were limping, their heads bent. No one dared to raise his head; some glanced back in alarm each time one of the riders prodded them with a spear or simple charged them with their mounts.

“They’re captives, aren’t they?”

They were undoubtedly captives, several dozen of them, captured elsewhere by the cavalry and driven here on foot.

The old man who had been standing all this time before the altar with arms raised, viewed the captives with interest. For a short time, he lost his solemn, dignified air, even turning to the chieftain with some question. But the chieftain did not reply. He probably had not heard for he did not even turn his head in the other’s direction. The old man by the altar made a wry face, and, probably to hide it, he bent over.the altar right away.

Artem heard Dmitro Borisovich say in the voice of a man greatly nonplussed by what he was witnessing:

“He’s a soothsayer! A Scythian soothsayer! He doesn’t look androgyne though… I can’t believe my own eyes!”

The captives were ordered to halt before the altar. The riders, spears and axes ready, pressed the captives, who made no attempt to resist, into a closer huddle. Once again the song of triumph soared to the sky along with another volley of sharp arrows. The captives shrank in fear as the arrows whizzed just above their heads.

The old soothsayer walked away from the altar. He again raised his hands into the air and mumbled something, probably a prayer. Abruptly breaking off in the middle of a word, he addressed the chieftain solemnly, pointing to the captives with his hand. Apparently the soothsayer was demanding something. The chieftain turned to look at him, his face acquiring a sterner expression, his hand gripping the hilt tighter. But the next instant he spoke quietly and imperiously. He said only a few words but that was enough:

he obviously agreed with the soothsayer; he did not contradict him. The soothsayer stood straighter, looking haughty and jubilant.

At the sign of the chieftain, two riders picked two men and one woman from the group of captives, huddled by the altar. They seemed to have deliberately picked the most exhausted captives who could barely stand. The three, prodded by the riders, went submissively and without resistance to the soothsayer; even the way they walked showed that they had stopped caring about anything. The soothsayer, displeased with something, stared at them, his hands curled into fists.

For the first time, an open and frank smile appeared on the face of the chieftain in the gold helmet. His warriors smiled, too. The soothsayer was standing motionless at the altar, staring at the captives in a rage, his dry, angular face twisted into a grimace, his lips moving in nervous jerks. Then he shifted his gaze to the chieftain who seemed to be watching the soothsayer’s every movement. The soothsayer was about to say something, but then changed his mind, and turned back to the altar.

’’What’s going on here?” Artem asked in a low voice. “Are they at war with each other?”

But he fell silent the moment he felt the angry stare of the implacable Ivan Semenovich.

The chieftain let fall a few short phrases, pointing at the old soothsayer, his remarks evoking loud laughter from the warriors. This guffawing was too much for the soothsayer — it drove him into a frenzy. He made a swift step toward the chieftain and began speaking furiously, alternately pointing to himself, at the altar, and at the three captives who had been led up to him. He waved his arms frenziedly. Abruptly he stopped and pointed skywards. There was a menacing edge to his hoarse voice.

“He’s dissatisfied with the captives he’s been given and threatens the wrath of the gods for such a pitiful offering,” Artem heard Lida’s voice. “Is that it, Dmitro Borisovich?”

“Looks like it. But — ssh! Let’s see what happens next.” The archeologist was completely absorbed in what was going on before their eyes.

The soothsayer fell silent, still pointing to the skies. Then the firm voice of the chieftain rang out, which sounded like an imperious command in the utter silence. The chieftain said only a few words, but they were sufficient. The sooth sayer seemed to shrink, his arrogance disappearing almost without a trace. He squeezed out a few indistinct words of reply, listlessly turned to the altar and beckoned to someone to come over to him.

Three burly women, wearing linen dresses embroidered with gold thread, came forward holding daggers in their hands. Bronze ornaments were dangling from their felt hats; the sharp-pointed daggers were drawn. The soothsayer pointed to the captives beside the altar, who could barely stand on their feet. The three armed women immediately approached them, daggers at the ready, and grabbed them by the hands. The next moment they were dragging them to the base of the altar. A desperate wailing rose to the sky. Exhausted as the captives were, they sensed the mortal danger, and began resisting. But what chance did they have against the burly armed women, these haggard, weary captives?

“It’s disgusting!” The indignation broke from Lida. “These women helping the repulsive soothsayer!”

Dmitro Borisovich murmured to himself as though he had never heard Lida’s indignant words.

“Yes, yes, that’s how it should be! Scythian women were the priests! Women, not men, yes, that’s how it was. It’s strange though that the high priest, this soothsayer, is not a woman but an old man, albeit wearing a woman’s dress… Priest he is, but why male?”

“Ssh!” Ivan Semenovich stopped the archeologist once again.

Meanwhile, the chieftain was silently watching the goings on at the altar, his face impassive, wearing no definite expression. His warriors were also silent. The only sounds were those of the captive woman wailing as she was dragged to the altar and the muffled murmur of the crowd.

“They want to kill her!” Lida said heatedly.

“To sacrifice her!” Artem cried out in no lesser state of indignation, quite forgetting the necessity of keeping his voice down.

“Ssh! Shush!” they heard the arresting voice of Ivan Semenovich from behind his tree.

But this time Artem was loath to obey the order as he had done before. He burst into an impassioned plea:

“Ivan Semenovich, we can’t just watch this! We mustn’t! We must interfere, we must help them, save them!”

“But there are only four of us, Artem!”

“It makes no difference! We cannot simply remain detached, impassive observers!” Artem grabbed the handle of his pickaxe in a determined manner.

“It’s insane, Artem! I command you…”

But it was already too late: Artem had sprung forward, his figure standing out boldly against the background of reddish tree trunks. He was noticed immediately. Several riders took off in a gallop toward him, spears held high. Piercing whistling and shouting resounded in the air.

The explorers were surrounded in no time — the archeologist barely had time to move from where he was standing; Lida and Ivan Semenovich had taken but a single step after Artem. One look at the riders sufficed to bring home the realization that any resistance would be futile. The spears were poised to strike, the battle axes held high in the air. But the Scythians did not use their weapons. They exchanged remarks, evidently puzzled by the unusual appearance of the strangers. At last one of the riders said something in a commanding tone. Some of the riders began pushing the explorers forward with the buts of their spears.

“Oh, you, stop it, damn you!” Artem bellowed furiously at them.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to submit, my friends,” Ivan Semenovich said in a low, resigned voice. “Now we’re captives, too.”

“Ivan Semenovich, it’s me who’s to blame! I’m so sorry,” Artem said, turning to the geologist, as the awful realization of what he had done dawned upon him.

“It doesn’t matter now, Artem. Besides, if you hadn’t done it, I would have done it myself,” Ivan Semenovich confessed. Artem saw that the older man was sincere.

The riders began prodding the explorers with the sharp points of their spears. The riders were on all sides, so there was nothing else to do but walk toward the crowd of Scythians, the chieftain, and the captives…