Something went *squish* in the darkness beneath her foot. "Oh, NO!" she thought in contrition, "Have I flattened poor Arthur?" But...no..it was not Arthur. It was something that had NEVER been Welsh! It was...

******************************************************

......a hot water bottle filled with apple cider. Ando discovered this from the fact that her step had caused it to split open and a fountain of the cider shot up into her face. Together, she and her smarfflizard licked it off her chin. Hmmmm? "A mixture of Golden Delicious and Red Rome... 1996... Washington State, I would say, " she remarked to SmarffO. It was a little known fact in Peepdom that Ando was a connoisseur of fine ciders, a skill developed after the Swansea coal mine had collapsed, trapping her for some months with a mound of rotting apples. Her taste buds were, in fact, so skilled in cider discrimination that even the BBC had tapped her for an exciting hour-long series in which she sat in St. James Park each Wednesday at 3, tasting gallons of various blends as the pigeons watched. Had it not been so hard to keep sponsors, one presumes the show might have been renewed for another season or two. Alas, it had been replaced by scenes of paint drying in southern Portugal.

"Hmmm? I wonder WHY this hot water bottle filled with apple cider is lying on the 93rd step of this tomb?" she rhetorically asked SmarffO, not really, you know, expecting much of an answer. SmarffO's long tongue just kept flicking in and out, in and out. It was a habit he had developed in the concrete underpasses of Melbourne and it seemed equally correct in the tombs of backwater Egypt.

"ANDO!" called down Joimus from the top of the steps. "What are you DOING down there?"

Ando decided not to share the discovery of the cider lest others should dash down into the tomb for a taste....so greatly did she overestimate the desires in general to dash down into coal black tombs. She seemed to forget that not ALL of them had grown up in Welsh coal mines. "I heard a strange wail!" she called back up.

"WHAT?" replied Amanda. "There are WHALES in this tomb?"

"Now, now," comforted BertiVet. "I'm quite sure that any whales in the tomb are safely mummified." Wanda just shook her head, knowing as she did from her extensive Egyptological studies that whales had ONLY been mummified by wandering Etruscans and never, ever, ever by Egyptians, who always left their pet whales to desiccate naturally atop the dunes 50 miles due west of Heliopolis.

Just then Ando heard the wail again, though sounding further away than before and accompanied by soft tones played on a small pan flute. "Guys!" she called, "I think you should come on down here now. Lucilla may have gotten herself in trouble of some sort."

Joimus recalled the second BIG FISH they had discovered, the one near the cave entrance with something in its mouth. They had not had a chance to determine just what that might have been before Sid pulled the lever, causing the giant slab to block the door and the blue lights to turn all the males into smarfflizards. There were, admittedly, times when it paid to be female. Once again she stroked her fingertip down MaxiSmarff's snout, musing that, yes, there WERE times when being female was, indeed, good....especially when the General of the Armies of the North was not quite so lizardly in face and form. Needing both hands free to negotiate the darkness of the steps and having no pockets in her gossamer Fuegan gown, she had to tuck MaxiSmarff into her bodice, where the Commander of the Felix Legions nestled with rather a smile on his scaly face.

Very carefully the 1598 women at the top of the steps started their descent into the velvet blackness.The beam from Zack's flashlight was steadily dimming and the darkness was growing ever darker. She counted the steps so as not to pass by Ando unseen, fearing that the Londoner might not notice the passage of 1598 women in the two-foot-wide stairwell. When she got to step 92, she paused, calling softly, "Ando? Are you there?"

Ando was, frequently, not ALL there, as Sue well knew, but this time she happened to be. "Yesssss," Ando hissed back, tucking the now-limp hot water bottle out of sight under her left armpit.

"I heard the wail again," she continued, as Amanda shuddered, wondering if it were an Orca or a Humpback. Let them laugh! Let them make fun of her! They, unlike her, had not once been kidnapped by a large pod as she swam off Catalina and taken across the far reaches of the Pacific where it was a good 5 years before she could escape the East Australian Current and make her way home on a passing lobster trawler from Maine that had gotten a bit off course. No, they hadn't!

"What did it sound like?" Joimus asked Ando. Just then the wail rose up from the depths again, cold and shuddering, filled with a strange mixture of agony and longing.

"Like THAT!" Ando snapped back.

Joimus cocked her head, listening, rather as a robin does for worm-sounds under the turf. She was glad that her left inner ear had been replaced with bionic parts back there in Utah that day when in her attempts to rescue the Apache chief from the top of the bluff they had both fallen onto the jagged remnants of the abandoned grand piano. Her left ear had cushioned the fall, but did need some repair, and as she had once provided the head scientist of the Bionic Institute of Georgetowne (BIG, for short) with the missing element of his unsolved equation, he had happily performed the bionic implant. ( Nearly all of the women, if it be known, had very interesting back-stories) "Have you heard any Lucilla-sounds of late?" she queried, hoping against all hope that the Fuegan hostess was not the source of the wail.

"Nary a one, " Ando responded, "though there WAS that noise that sounded suspiciously like a heavy stone lid being slid off a sarcophagus." Let them wonder, she figured, just HOW she knew so well what that sound was. Never would she tell any of them of her nights spent amusing herself in the British Museum, sliding the stone lids back and forth, back and forth on various and sundry sarcophagi. It was, indeed, how she had first met her Significant non-Hando Other. The foot of his bed had been taken away for an ingrown toenail operation and, thusly, having no other place to sleep, he had snuck into the British Museum and was resting comfortably inside a sarcophagus when, lo and behold, Ando had slid back the lid, her eyes closed the better to enjoy the lovely rasping, grating sound of stone sliding over stone, when a hand had reached up and grasped her collar. It was love at first grasp and they had been inseparable ever since. Well, except for the times when she went off on adventures with her fellows, which amounted to no more than 337 days of the year.

Where WERE we? Oh, yes...the wail! Joimus bionically discerned that the wail originated exactly 421 steps further down and had come from a passageway 35 feet long off to the right. Together now with their Ando, the 1599 women descended. On the 312th step of the remaining 421, the pink bunny inside the flashlight died. Joimus narrowed her eyes. It must be Beth's fault. Something wet and slimey brushed Amanda's cheek. She shrieked, "SEAWEED!" She had no doubt now that there were whales ahead!

Juditha, ever considerate, took Amanda's hand in the darkness, pressing a small aerosol can of hairspray into her palm. "Here, dear," she said kindly. "You can hold my whale-repellent." Amanda was quite grateful and felt somewhat more secure after that.

Feeling their way even more carefully now, they turned right at the 421st step. The air felt colder...thicker now. In a way, it was good that it was pitch black. That way they were not bothered by the fact that the walls of the passage were alive with large spiders. The passageway sloped downward in a gentle spiral, ending in a small, square chamber. "Lucilla?" Joimus whispered. "Lucilla, are you in here?"

All was silent....except for the occasional hiss of Amanda's whale repellent. She was taking NO chances! Wanda began to feel the walls in an attempt to locate possible clues carved into the hieroglyphics, but thought the better of it when her probing fingertips encountered moving fur. She HAD, however, managed to feel just enough of the carvings to feel shaken to her core. The carvings were NOT hieroglyphic....they were ancient Etruscan! "Great gobs of goober peas!" she exclaimed in the darkness. "Amanda may just be RIGHT!"

Shocked, the can of whale repellent fell from Amanda's numbed fingers. "WHAT???" she shrieked. "WHAT did you say???"

Wanda gulped, sorry that all those thousands of hours spent atop her bush hog under the Mississippi summer sun had not taught her more self-control. "Er...." she stammered, "well, Amanda, er.....from what I can tell....er....two dozen wandering Etruscans somehow made their way through the Valley of the Kings and, despite the weight of many large whales, managed to scale the 75 feet up to the entrance of the cave....and...." But she did not get to finish her explanation just then as Amanda, who had been steadily backing away from Wanda as the full import of what was being said registered in her brainpan, backed into something very, very large in the darkness. Knowing that Terry's equipment was now proportionally correct to lizardhood, she also knew that it could, therefore, NOT be that. The only thing larger than his equipment could only be.....she turned, her hands stretched tremblingly out in the pitch blackness.....and rested them on the gentle curve of...of...something way, way too familiar in form. "Beluga....beluga" she gasped, falling to her knees.

Annette poked Phyllis in the ribs, "Is she chanting some ancient invocation?"

Phyllis, who was quite well-read, did not think so. The women, being as they were completely unaware of each other's back-stories until they read them in epis, had no idea of the sheer horror of the moment for their beloved Amanda. And so it was with some surprise they heard Eryn, who quickly tied ColinSmarff around her wrist by his sideburns, leap forward and grasp the beluga mummy in her arms, carry it to a shaft in the floor she had become aware of from the downdraft of cooler air, and drop it. "There!" she said, brushing her palms together, "It's gone, Amanda."

Eryn, you see, had spent her teenaged years as a bead trader with various remote Inuit tribes and had learnt their ways of whale wrestling while blindfolded, which enabled her to perform her whale removal deed in the darkness of the tomb. Juditha, meanwhile, had felt around the floor and recovered the can of whale repellent to give back to Amanda. In the process, though, her fingertips had become coated with some strange sticky substance. Smelling the end of her pinkie, she caught the unmistakable scent of crushed raspberries, knowing then, for sure, that the missing Lucilla had, indeed, passed this way.

(Backstory...Lucilla had baked poison raspberry pies to feed various cast members back in Tierra del Fuego in the ElderEpi,

Lucilla's Party.)

She informed Joimus of this fact, and, together, all of them felt around the chamber, hoping to find more clues. If only the walls would hold still and not keep moving about like they did! Susan Guildford, who had trained tarantulas in the rural circuses of Latvia during the time of the Great Rutabaga Famine that had caused many in southern England to leave their homeland and take refuge across the seas, finally discovered the secret of the chamber. She had scooped the large wall spiders into her backpack, clearing an area sufficiently for Wanda to read the ancient carvings.

"Ah HA!" exclaimed Wanda, "NOW I understand!" And she proceeded to explain to the listening folk how, after the wandering Etruscans had deposited their beluga mummies in various chambers of the enormous tomb, they had been attacked by disgruntled Egyptian teamsters and forced to complete the shaft that would eventually lead to the hidden burial chamber of Russenaten. She then walked to the edge of the very shaft down which Eryn had dropped the beluga. "I suspect, " she continued gravely (well, she WAS in a tomb, now wasn't she??) "that we will find what remains of Lucilla....down THERE!"

Joimus thought back over what she knew of the history of the famed Pharoah Russenaten. He had been married to the beauteous Neferdanidani, left Thebes and founded a whole new city called Tell el Phona. She recalled how the chief sculpturess, Joan Riverchepsut, had distorted his statues, making him seem ungainly and a fashion victim. No one knew what actually had befallen Russenaten. His city had been disconnected and his mummy never found.

She licked her lips in anticipation. She was not the adopted daughter of Professor Jones for nothing! "Well, then," she began but was cut off by a unanimous cry of, "We know....We KNOW!"

If only they still had the good captain's keepsake anchor rope. They had not counted on Susan Guildford's great ingenuity, however, for she had already woven 75,000 spider legs together into a very passable rope. Susan tied the spider rope about her waist, bracing herself as the other 1598 Peeps made their way down into the blackness of the shaft. Of course, alas, a spider rope is only as strong as its weakest leg, and as the last Peep grasped the rope and dangled above the abyss with her fellows, the rope broke, sending them plummeting into the darkness below. Luckily for them, the shaft ended in an enormous chamber piled high with beluga mummies and so they bounced upon impact.

Susan, having just completed that course in freefall parachuting, jumped bravely after them. All the women were reunited...well, except for the still-missing Lucilla, of course. (They being all unaware at this juncture that their Cyd was not with them, you know.) Once they had managed to get the trembling Amanda off the whale heap and onto dry tomb floor, they began to feel about.

Ando's hand encountered a cylindrical object in the darkness and, after determining that it was not just that SmarffO was glad to see her, she gave it a bit of a tug and was instantly rewarded with the delightful sounds of stone scraping over stone. "Ahhhhhhhhh...." she murmured contentedly until she realized that the walls of the chamber were closing in on them. Quickly piling beluga mummies into a makeshift ladder, our intrepid band escaped through the small opening, revealed by the dim light shining through it. This passage was so small that they had to make their way down its long, curving slope on hands and knees.

After 12 hours, they arrived in another chamber, this one brightly lit by several wall torches. Their Fuegan gowns were in tatters by then and many a fingernail had been damaged. Such were the ravages of tomb crawling! Once their eyes had adjusted to the light, they gazed in wonder at the marvelous colors of the wall paintings. At last the secret whereabouts of Leonardo da Vinci during those months he had been kidnapped by unemployed Brazilian locksmiths had been revealed!

Joimus sighed. If only the women of Seville had not ALL sold their hair to pay his ransom, the great work of art before her eyes might have been completed! But such were the vagaries of history. One must just learn to live with them. And, adding insult to injury, the indentured wandering Etruscans had cut a large opening right through the center of it.

BugDogPugMom, who had spent her 20's suspended in a small basket from the ceiling of the capitol dome of the state of Florida, cleaning the faded artwork with a q-tip dipped in manatee urine, was especially disturbed.

Joimus patted her arm consolingly. "The Etruscans didn't do it willingly, " she comforted. "The disgruntled Egyptian teamsters FORCED them to do this, remember."

This chamber proved to be empty, except for the crust of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, tossed heedlessly in a corner by some ancient worker. "DON'T!" said BertiGood, laying a restraining hand on Joimus' shoulder, knowing as she did the Pittsburgher's addiction to the low-fat, creamy variety of the stuff. "I'm SURE it wouldn't be low-fat," she added as a final dissuasion, not to mention the fact that it had lain there for 3000 years and doubtlessly had become somewhat stale.

Joimus pressed her lips tightly together in a firm line, and resisting temptation, turned towards the artily-destructive doorway. The low, mournful notes of a small pan flute echoed out from within it. There was not a moment to lose, but she refrained from saying it aloud....thank heavens! Instead, she turned to the gathering and delivered Henry V's St. Crispin's Day speech with great feeling and even a bit of verve.

"Sheesh!" murmured Ando, "At least Jack's was more compact." Debs frowned at the Londoner, knowing as she did that there was NOTHING compact about the captain. Joimus, feeling a bit of movement in her bodice, added, "....and if we stay together, we survive."

Juditha was not so sure about that, however, as she noted the glow from the blue plasma ball that had formed in the center of the chamber they were about to enter, and the strange way it was......