Bond heard the grinding of machinery and readied for trouble, but nothing dangerous happened. The door ahead of him opened. He had solved the puzzle correctly. Many languages have phonetic symbolism. When certain vowels are pronounced, the tongue is high and at the front of the mouth. This creates a small resonance cavity that amplifies higher frequencies, and the resulting vowels like short ‘I’ and long ‘E’ remind people of small things. Thus, mice are miniscule and squeak. With other vowels, such as long “A” and short “O”, the tongue is low and to the back. This creates a larger resonance cavity that amplifies lower frequencies. These vowels remind people of large things. Thus, lions are humongous and roar. Bond didn’t know about all of this, but he was affected by it. As he said the two words, “anlomas” sounded larger than “licimin”.
Bond held his lighter high and walked through the open door. On the other side of it he saw a lever. He could se that someone had recently used it. Bond assumed that the lever would close the door and reset the puzzle. Grimson had pulled it to close his trail behind him. Bond didn’t use the lever. He didn’t want to recluse the door. He didn’t want to cut off his only known escape route.
Bond pressed forward quickly, not knowing how much fuel his lighter had left. He didn’t want to become stranded in a pitch black cave. After several minutes of brisk walking, Bond found himself in front of another pedestal. He did not hesitate to examine it. It was unlike the other pedestal in that there was significantly less writing. There were five stones, each resting on its own lever. There was also a single brief line written in the many languages. Bond read the Latin. “Amovere unum”; “remove one”. Bond assumed that meant he would have to remove one of the stones. “Like the child’s game”, he thought. “Which of these things doesn’t belong?” Bond looked at the stones. Each had a single symbol written on it; “ר”, “R”, “
”, “ز ”, and “
”.
Bond recognized the letter “R” easily. He also recognized “” as Greek rho, which is equivalent to “R”. Also, “ ” was the Egyptian hieroglyph for “R”. That meant that the stones were different versions of the letter “R”. Bond looked at the two other stones. He wasn’t sure which was an “R” and which wasn’t. The first letter looked Hebrew, and the other one looked Arabic.
After several minutes of thought, during which Bond scanned his memory to see if the information was hidden anywhere in his mind, he realized that he only had a fifty/fifty chance. He didn’t know the answer. That meant he would have to guess. Bond took several small explosive charges out of his backpack and held them in his hand. He had two options. He could either place the explosives along the seam of the door and try to blow it open, or he could take a guess and risk being wrong. Time, as well as his lighter fuel, was burning away. He had to make his choice quickly. “Well,” Bond said, “he who hesitates, et cetera, et cetera.”Bond grabbed one of the two stones and lifted it off its lever.
Bond carefully placed the explosive charges along the seam of the door.
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