Desquer urged them toward the square building. “Quick! We can hide here, until we know more about this place. Keep your guns ready.”
The commander’s icy eyes were searching the gloom of the temple as they crossed the threshold. The symbol of Osiris, sign of the horned bull, was carved everywhere. Crumbling, broken pillars made the interior of the temple a labyrinth. The floor was littered with smashed blocks of stone.
It was very dim here, but one ray of red light flamed like a sword-blade through a gap in the wall and fell directly upon the throne that stood on a dais at the farther end of the room. Tony and the others looked down a long aisle toward the throne and the statue upon it—the statue of a man, clad in stylized flowing robes, with the head of a bull upon the human shoulders.
“Come on!” Desquer whispered. He gripped his gun. Tony felt the butt of his own weapon cold against his palm as he walked on. The approach to the dais seemed endless. Incredible journey amid the wreckage of a forgotten civilization! So might a lost soul have journeyed to Osiris . . . A scrap of verse came unbidden to Tony.
“Ten hundred shaven priests did bow to Ammon’s altar day and night,
Ten hundred lamps did wave their light through Ammon’s carven house—and now
Foul snake and speckled adder with their young ones crawl from stone to stone
For ruined is the house and prone the great rose-marble monolith!”
Desquer stopped. His figure stood rock-still for a moment. The gun swung up, aimed at the statue on the throne.
And now Tony saw what the commander had already realized. It was no statue that faced them. The being was alive!