When they entered their room, Emcee’s image was smiling in the holographic display. Somehow the computer’s avatar looked pleased.
Brad felt weary, depressed after the high spirits of the bio team’s long celebration. “Found anything?” he asked, steeling himself against a negative reply.
Instead, Emcee said, “Not much.”
Every nerve in Brad’s body quivered like a violin’s strings. “Something?”
The 3-D viewer showed a black-and-white radar return. Brad saw the faint outline of a square structure in the middle of the display, a corner jutting out from the edge of the forest.
“At the highest resolving power,” Emcee answered, “the ground-penetrating radar obtained this image. It appears to be a structure of some sort, buried under twenty meters of alluvial silt.”
Staring at the display, Brad asked, “A structure?”
“Apparently,” was Emcee’s bland reply.
Felicia came up beside Brad. “The city?”
Trying to rein in his hopes, Brad said, “Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s see what Littlejohn thinks.”
He put a call through to Littlejohn, but the head of the anthropology team refused to let himself be seen; he replied to Brad’s call with audio only.
“It’s awfully late,” the anthropologist’s voice complained.
Trying to keep his enthusiasm under control, Brad said, “I think we might have found the ancient city the Gammans have told me about.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“But this could prove that the Gammans’ story about their past isn’t mythology! It’s real!”
“That would be fine, Brad.” Littlejohn’s voice sounded guarded, rather than tired. “Come to my office first thing tomorrow … or, rather, at ten hundred hours. It’s already past midnight.”
“Ten hundred hours,” Brad repeated, feeling sour, almost angry.
“Good night,” said Littlejohn.
Brad turned to Felicia. “You’d think he’d be more excited. After all—”
Smiling knowingly, Felicia interrupted, “Brad, hasn’t it occurred to you that he might not be alone?”
“Littlejohn?”
“He’s still celebrating,” said Felicia.
“But this is important!” Brad insisted.
With a shake of her head, Felicia said, “If what you’ve found is a city, it’s been waiting there for more than a hundred thousand years. A few more hours won’t hurt anything.”
“Maybe,” Brad agreed. Very reluctantly.
* * *
Precisely at ten hundred hours Brad rapped impatiently on Littlejohn’s office door. Within half an hour the anthropologist had called in the rest of the anthro team and put through a call to Kosoff.
“It does look artificial,” Kosoff’s 3-D image admitted cautiously.
“It’s buried under twenty meters of silt,” said Brad.
“We’ll have to build some digging equipment and send it down to you.”
“Good.”
Littlejohn said, “If it is the remains of a city buried there, it means that the Gammans’ story about the Sky Masters isn’t entirely mythological.”
Nodding soberly, Kosoff said, “One step at a time. First let’s see what’s under all that mud.”
* * *
“The old village,” Mnnx breathed. Brad thought his tone sounded reverent, even through the computer’s translation.
The two of them were standing on the edge of a sizeable pit that had been dug by the excavating machines that stood bulky and idle—for the moment—on the far side of the hole.
In the middle of the man-made crater stood the broken remains of a square stone chimney. At least, Brad thought of it as a chimney, poking straight up into the air about four meters, leading farther underground.
The engineer in charge of the machines came up to Brad. “We can start to dig around the edges of the pit, make it wider, deeper.”
“Not yet,” Brad replied, pointing toward the chimney. “I want to see where it leads first.”
The engineer—square-jawed, grizzled, broad shouldered—looked askance. “You intend to go down inside that shaft?”
Nodding, Brad answered, “At least a little bit.”
“I don’t think that’s wise. The safety people will—”
Brad stopped him with an upraised hand. “I want to see where it leads.”
The engineer shrugged. “You’re the boss,” he muttered. But it was clear he didn’t agree.
That’s right, Brad thought. I’m the boss.
* * *
With a buckyball cable tied snugly under his shoulders and a high-intensity lamp clamped to his head, Brad sank slowly down the inside of the shaft. He had offered Mnnx the chance to go down with him, but the Gamman had refused, clearly awed and fearful.
Glancing up as he descended, Brad saw the narrow square of sky getting smaller and smaller. The inside of the shaft had been reamed out with a rotating scrubber, the accumulated dried mud sucked up by a vacuum attachment. The walls looked smooth, despite bits of mud still clinging to the adobe-like bricks.
He flashed his lamp downward. His feet dangled in midair. The lamp’s glow was swallowed in darkness.
No telling how far down this shaft goes, Brad thought.
Suddenly his communicator erupted with, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Kosoff’s voice, angry, imperious.
“Exploring,” Brad replied. “Seeing where this shaft leads.”
“You get yourself back up to the surface. Right now! The safety people absolutely forbid you or anybody else going down until—”
“Hold it!” Brad yelled.
His descent abruptly stopped. Brad dangled in his makeshift harness.
“Now get yourself up to safety,” Kosoff commanded.
But Brad said, “No. Not yet.”
“I gave you an order!”
Brad laughed. His lamp was shining on what looked like a doorway cut into the shaft’s smooth interior. A dozen meters farther down the excavation stopped, and the shaft was choked with dried mud. But there was an unmistakable doorway just below Brad’s dangling feet. And to one side of the shaft were clearly carved symbols.
Writing.