My grandpa was a very frugal man.

with light. The colonel shines his flashlight over them, his mouth tight.

“These weren’t here the last time I came down,” he mutters.

We reach the bottom. A massive circular chamber stretches out before us. In the center is a stone pedestal—and hovering above it, suspended in a beam of light, is a small cube, no larger than a baseball, etched with symbols continue reading …