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Vano and Zurab climbed back down into the hole in the floor of the cathedral and carefully slid the tiles back over the hole to seal them selves in. Sitting in the well-lit dirt pit that they cleared out to give themselves more room to work, Vano opened up what looked like a small lap top computer with a keyboard and a video screen.
“What is that for?” Zurab asked.
“This is a geological analyzer. It will detect any wood or stone buried underground in a small area.”
Vano handed Zurab a metal stake that had a reel of wire attached to it.
“Here, take this probe over into that corner and hammer it into the ground as far as you could, and don’t break the wire.”
Zurab cursed under his breath and took the metal electrode that was wired to the test equipment and started crawling, face down across the dirt floor, and unreeling the wire as he went along. He was mad because he was getting his clean work uniform dirtier than he expected, and even madder when he has to fight his way through the cob and spider webs that adorned the outer sections of the crawlspace and stuck to his head as he crawled through them.
After he put the probe in place and crawled back to the work pit, Vano said to him, “Good, now put these in other three corners.” He handed him three more probes and wire spools.
Zurab scowled and cursed under his breath, but diligently went about the task.
When he finished, Vano had to laugh at Zurab’s dirty face and uniform as he turned on the test equipment and said, “Remember my cousin Mikheil had that fish finder, this works the same way, only this will find us wealth and riches.”
Vano typed some commands on the keyboard and started a self- diagnostic test to make sure that the test equipment and the four probes were functioning properly.
“You were always good with electronic equipment, that’s why the old man asked for you,” Zurab said.
When the test came back successful, Vano initiated an operate command.
“The electrode probes are sending signals and telling the main computer what the geologic makeup under the ground is.”
After a few minutes, the processing light went out and the screen on the test equipment showed everything down to a depth of three feet.
“See that, its a large stone, and that looks like a piece of wood,” Vano said before he typed in another command and the picture showed the three dimensional image from another side indicating that it was definitely a stone and a flat piece of wood.
“That’s all there is down to that level,” Vano said as he typed in another command, “Let’s go down another three feet.”
After the analyzer finished processing the new information, the new screen showed more rocks and not much else as Vano adjusted the screen to display all possible angles. Next he set it for a depth of nine feet.
“How deep could it go?” Zurab asked.
“Only twelve feet,” Vano said with a tinge of concern in his voice.
After the analyzer reprocessed for the nine-foot depth and the screen refreshed, the two men stared at the display for a moment as if transfixed by what they saw. In the middle of the screen there was a long coffin-like box, and its metallic nails and latch are clearly evident. Vano adjusted the screen to show the box from side to side and from every possible angle, and the two men were speechless. He typed in one last command that would pinpoint the location of the box with respect to the four probes. The automatic calculation came back on the display, noting that it was very close to the middle of the quadrant on the right side rear section of the cathedral crawlspace. To Zurab’s delight, this meant that it was only about ten feet from their location in the work pit. Zurab crawled out in that general area and started digging like a madman.
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