Even though Eilish had explained to him what to expect, the shock of the blinding light and the buzzing noise, which was so loud it threatened to burst his eardrums, was more than he could handle. He couldn’t see anything, and only feeling Eilish’s warm body pressed to his side made it bearable. The endless seconds passed and, finally, his foot came down on sandstone; the light was gone and he could see clearly the darkened cavern in which they now stood.
Eilish hustled him forward down a series of stone stairs onto a marble floor dimly lit by strings of embedded lights that undulated like waves across the floor and up the rocky walls. This was Start Point Cavern; he knew. This was the ancient temple of the Atlantean people that had been taken over by the advanced technology of the New Atlanteans for their time-travel experiments.
As Eilish ushered him forward with the rest of the crowd, he glanced back over his shoulder. He saw a massive, post-and-lintel doorway covered in ancient letters and symbols standing on the dais they had just stepped down from. The stone gateway was lit up and humming. This was what they had just passed through, then. He saw the red-haired woman with an olive-skinned man at her side step out of the light at that moment. She seemed very distraught and the man was trying to comfort her.
Then he had to turn back to see where he was going next.
There was a little queue waiting at the far end of the cavern and the children were no longer hushed. They were speaking in their various languages in excited voices, asking questions, pointing out the sights to each other in wonder.
And it was wonderful. He had never seen anything like it. Fanning out from the dais like spokes of a wheel were tables with strange devices on them that Eilish had called “computers.” These devices were dark now, as the cavern was dark. Eilish had told him that normally the whole space was lit up like midday, and images played above all those boxes, displaying huge quantities of information for their human operators to decipher. He couldn’t wait to see that.
A fast-moving lift arrived and the next load of children was led into it. With excited squeals, the lift took off upward again.
‘I thought Micky was “aving us on,” said a little boy who had appeared at Max’s side. ‘But it’s all true! What a ‘venture this is!’
‘Yes,’ Max said to the lad with the same excitement in own his voice. ‘This is quite an adventure indeed!’