He was sitting at the end of the table, and stood as Pitt and Pat O'Connell stepped into the room. He stepped forward and greeted Pitt like a son, shaking his hand while gripping a shoulder. "Good to see you."
"Always a pleasure to be back in the fold again," Pitt replied, beaming. The admiral was like a second father to him, and they were very close.
Sandecker turned to Pat. "Please sit down, Doctor. I'm anxious to hear what you and Hiram have for me."
Giordino and Yeager soon joined the others, followed by Dr. John Stevens, a noted historian and author of several books on the study and identification of ancient artifacts. Stevens was an academic and looked the part, complete with a sleeveless sweater under a wool sport coat that had a meerschaum pipe protruding from the breast pocket. He had a way of cocking his head like a robin listening for a worm under the sod. He carried a large plastic ice chest, which he set beside his chair on the carpet.
Sandecker set the sawed-off base of an eight-inch shell casing form a naval gun in front of him as an ashtray and lit up a cigar. He stared at Giordino, half expecting his projects specialist to light up, too.
Giordino decided not to irritate his boss and did his best to look cultured.
Pitt could not help noticing that Yaeger's and Pat's faces seemed unduly strained and tired.
Sandecker opened the discussion by asking if they'd all had a chance to go over the report from Pat and Yaeger. All nodded silently, except Giordino. "I found it interesting reading," he said, "but as science fiction it doesn't measure up to Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury."
Yaeger gave Giordino a steady gaze. "I assure you, this is not science fiction."
"Have you discovered what this race of people called themselves?" asked Pitt. "Did their civilization have a name besides Atlantis?"
Pat opened a file on the desk in front of her and pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and peered at the writing. 'As near as I can decipher and translate into English, they referred to their league of seafaring city-states as Amenes, pronounced 'Ameenees.' "
"Amenes," Pitt repeated slowly. "It sounds Greek."
"I unraveled a number of words that could well be the origins for later Greek and Egyptian-language terms."
Sandecker gestured the end of his cigar at the historian. "Dr. Stevens, I assume you've examined the obsidian skulls?"
"I have." Stevens leaned down, opened the ice chest, lifted out one of the black skulls, and set it upright on a large silk pillow laid on the conference table. The glossy obsidian gleamed under the overhead spotlights. "A truly remarkable piece of work," he said reverently. "Amenes artisans began with a solid block of obsidian-- one that was incredibly pure of imperfections-- a rarity in itself. Over a period of at least ninety to a hundred years, and perhaps more, the head was shaped by hand, using what I believe was obsidian dust as a smoothing agent."
"Why not some type of hardened metal chisels tapped by a mallet?" asked Giordino.
Stevens shook his head. "No tools were wielded. There are no signs of scratches or nicks. Obsidian, though extremely hard, is very prone to fracture. One slip, one misplaced angle of a chisel, and the whole skull would have shattered. No, the shaping and polishing had to be accomplished as if a marble bust had been delicately smoothed by car polish."
"How long would it take to reproduce with modern tools?"
Stevens gave a faint grin. "Technically, it would be next to impossible to create an exact replica. The more I study it, the more I become convinced it shouldn't exist."
"Are there any markings on the base to suggest a source?" asked Sandecker.
"No markings," answered Stevens. "But let me show you something that's truly astonishing." With extreme care he slowly made a twisting motion, as he lifted the upper half of the skull until it came free.
Next he removed a perfectly contoured globe from the skull cavity. Holding it devoutly in both hands, he lowered it onto a specially prepared cushioned base. "I can't begin to imagine the degree of artistic craftsmanship it took to produce such an astonishing object," he said admiringly. "Only while studying the skull under strong magnification did I see a line around the skull plate that was invisible to the naked eye."
"It's absolutely fabulous," murmured Pat in awe.
"Are there carvings on the globe?" Pitt asked Stevens.
"Yes, it's an engraved illustration of the world. If you care to view it more closely, I have a magnifying glass."
He handed the thick glass to Pitt, who peered at the lines inscribed on the globe that was about the size of a baseball. After a minute, he carefully slid the globe across the table in front of Sandecker and passed him the magnifying glass.
While the admiral was examining the globe, Stevens said, "By comparing the photographs taken inside the chamber in Colorado with those from St. Paul Island, I found that the continents perfectly match those of the obsidian globe."
"Meaning?" asked Sandecker.
"If you study the alignment of the continents, and large islands such as Greenland and Mozambique, you'll find they don't match the geography of the world today."
"I observed the differences, too," said Pitt.