IMHOTEP AWAKENS

Chapter 1 The Crevice

As Bruce Durton peered out the window of a Bell JetRanger helicopter, he noticed a small reddish pinprick of light inside a crevice over Mount Catherine on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. He turned to Fred the pilot, almost yelling over the cockpit noise, "I saw a light coming from that crevice. Could the interference on your radio have been caused by that? Why don't we go down and hover directly above that opening?"

A few minutes ago, when Fred had first entered this area, he noticed something interfering with his radio equipment and told Bruce. Bruce insisted they investigate. Fred wasn't surprised by this. Bruce was a pushy guy and under constant pressure from his employer. Fred didn't want to get on his bad side since he did receive a lot of business from that organization.

This particular mountain didn't attract many tourists. That was usually reserved for Mount Sinai, especially for those who were biblically oriented. Today was an unusually cold winter day with a rare case of snow covering the landscape, and since it was later in the evening, not a single human could be seen.

At first, Bruce thought it was a reflective surface, maybe a piece of ice -- that is, until the helicopter moved closer. As far as he knew, there were no objects lying around that could cause a reddish reflection off that ice. Judging from the view through his binoculars, its initial rosy glow slowly transformed to a whitish luminosity. Neither of them expected to see these emissions, at least not in this area. Very few ice sheets ever formed on the Sinai Peninsula. They were flying over the side of the mountain and not near the peak where you would expect the odd piece of ice to exist in the wintertime. All of Bruce's training and experience as a geologist told him there was no way a varying reddish color like that should happen. He wanted to know what caused it.

"Fred . . . just land near the edge of that crevice," yelled Bruce. "It seems flat enough there." Fred did what he was told.

Bruce worked for Munidane Archeology Institute, a company that rented helicopters from time to time for geological purposes. Even though the 'archeology' part of the name appeared to make it nonprofit, it was definitely a for-profit business; it was even legal (most of the time).

Bruce was the only geologist working for them. The professional people they hired were mostly archeologists. Bruce happened to be good friends with Don Munidane, the president, and loved working in Egypt. Even though he had known Don for a long time, his employment occurred recently, and he had trouble getting used to Don's prickliness. One benefit though, Don had allowed these helicopter flights to become routine -- something he loved.

When the helicopter landed, with the usual debris flying all over the place, Bruce scrambled off and made his way to the crevice's edge. As his 1.8 meter forty-one year old muscular frame peered down, he noticed a white surface about seven meters down; it was probably snow. Because of the cold, Bruce felt compelled to zip up his jacket.

There's no way reflected light from snow or ice could have caused a glow like that. He looked further inwards towards an area where the glow might have originated. When he climbed down about three meters -- almost slipping and falling -- he discovered it was ice. Bruce considered whether the deep part of this crevice prevented the ice and snow from completely melting, and the lack of sunlight entering the area kept it solid for most of the year.

Bruce climbed out, went back to the now turned-off JetRanger, and said to Fred, "I'm going back down with a flashlight. Keep the helicopter here in case the radio waves from my radio are blocked by the crevice's steepness or that interference we discovered."

"Okay," responded Fred. Fred didn't want to be Bruce's exploration accomplice. He was quite content to stay in the helicopter -- bad enough flying with him let alone being around him in a crevice.