Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

But the boat: The rain fountained off the hull and was shot through with rainbow colors. It was almost as if the water was being repelled .

An hour later the P—38J rolled down the runway at Fort Moxie International Airport and lifted into a gray, wet sky. Max watched the airstrip fall away. The wind sock atop the lone hangar was around to the southeast at about twenty knots. North of the airport, frame houses and picket fences and unpaved streets mingled with stands of trees and broad lawns. The water tower, emblazoned with the town’s name and motto, A Good Place to Live , rose proudly above the rooftops. The Red River looked cold.

He followed Route 11 west, into the rain, flying over wide fields of wilted sunflowers waiting to be plowed under. Only a farm truck, and a flock of late geese headed south, moved in all that vast landscape. He cruised over Tom’s place. The driveway was almost empty now, and the barn was shut against the elements. He turned south.

The rain beat on his canopy; the sky was gray and soupy. He looked over at his starboard tail boom, prosaic and solid. The power plant consisted of two 1,425-horsepower liquid-cooled Allison engines. White Lightning had been manufactured sixty years ago by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation of Seattle. It was magic, too, like the boat. But this was real ; it was magic held aloft by physics. There was no room in the same world for a P—38J and a buried yacht with working lights.

None at all.

He climbed to seventeen thousand feet, his assigned altitude, and set course for Fargo.

Max dropped the fragment of sail off at Colson Laboratories, asking that they determine the composition of the material and, if possible, where it might have been manufactured. They promised to get the results back to him within a week.

Stell Weatherspoon was his executive assistant. She was an overweight, bright-eyed, matronly type with three kids in high school and an ex who was constantly delinquent with his payments. Her prime responsibility at Sundown was to handle the administrative details of the operation. She wrote contracts, scheduled maintenance, hired subcontractors. She was also a born conservative who understood the difference between risks and gambles, and who thereby exercised a restraining influence on Max’s occasional capricious tendencies. Had she been along, Kerr would have had his Lockheed Lightning, no questions asked. “Don’t get emotionally involved with the planes,” she warned him now and then. “These are business ventures, not women.”

She greeted him on his arrival at the Sundown offices with a disapproving stare. “Hello, Max.”

“He wasn’t the right guy for the P—38,” he said.

Her eyes drifted shut. “Our business is to restore and sell airplanes. Not find homes for them.”

“He was a jerk,” Max said. “No good comes from that kind of money.”

“Yeah, right. Max, the world is full of jerks. If you’re not going to sell to them, we are going to eliminate most of the population.”

“The male population,” said Max.

“ You said it; I didn’t.”

Max picked up his mail. “I was up on the border last night.”

“Really?” she said. “Doing what?”

“I’m not sure. Tom Lasker dug up a yacht on his farm.”

“I saw it on TV,” she said. “That’s Lasker’s place? I didn’t realize that.”

“It is. I spent the night up there.” Max drew a chair over beside her and sat down. “I need your help, Stell.” He opened his briefcase. “Ginny gave me some pictures.” He handed over six nine-by-twelve glossies.

“It’s in pretty good condition,” she said, “for something that was buried.”

“You noticed that, huh? Okay, look, what I’d like you to do is find out who made the damned thing. There’s no ID on it of any kind. Fax these around. Try the manufacturers, boat dealers, importers. And the Coast Guard. Somebody’ll be able to tell us something.”

“Why do we care?” she asked.

“Because we’re snoops. Because your boss would like to know what the hell’s going on. Okay?”

“Sure. When do you want it?”

“Forthwith. Let me know what you find out.” He went into his office and tried to call Morley Clark at Moorhead State.

“Professor Clark is in class,” said his recorded voice. “Please feel free to leave a message at the beep.”

“This is Max Collingwood. Morley, I’m going to fax you some photos. They’re of a yacht, and there’s a piece of writing on the hull. If you can identify the language, or better yet get a translation, I’d be grateful.”

Everett Crandall came out personally to usher Lasker into his office. “I saw your boat the other day, Tom. You’re a lucky man, looks like to me.” Ev was more or less permanently rumpled—both he and his clothes.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Lasker.

“What’s going on? Whose boat is it?”

“Don’t know.”

“Come on, Tom. You must have some idea.”

Ev’s office was packed with old law books, framed certificates, and photos, most of which had been taken during his tenure as county prosecutor. Prominently displayed on his desk was a picture of Ev and Senator Byron Glass at last year’s Fourth of July celebration.

Lasker sat down. “Ev,” he said, “I’ve got a prospective buyer.”

“For the boat?”

“Yes. Is it mine to sell?”

Ev nodded, but his dark eyes said no. He took off his glasses, wiping them with a wrinkled handkerchief. “Hard to say,” he said.

“It’s on my property. That should make it mine, right?”

Ev’s hands were in his lap. He looked down at them. “Tom, if I left my RV over at your place, would it be yours?”

“No. But this was buried .”

“Yeah.” Ev considered that. “If I chose to hide my family silver by burying it out back of your house, would it be yours?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom. “I don’t guess it would.”

“Have you heard from anyone? I mean, has anybody put in a claim for the boat?”

“No. Nobody.”

“Have you exhausted reasonable means to establish ownership?”

“Is that my responsibility?”

“Who else’s? Listen, for all we know it could be stolen. The thieves hid it in your ground. For whatever reason. In that case, it would belong to the original owner.” Ev was a careful man, a model of caution. He took pride in not committing to a view until all the facts were in. Which meant, of course, that he was never quite on board. Or in opposition. “The question here, as I see it, is one of intent. Was the property abandoned? If so, then I think your claim to ownership would be valid. And I believe that claim would be substantiated in court, if need be. If someone challenged it.”

“Who would challenge it?”

“Oh, hard to say. A relative might claim the owner was not competent when he, or she, abandoned the boat. Burying it might constitute a sound argument in that direction.”

“So how do I establish ownership?”

“Let me research it, Tom. Meantime, it would help if we could find out how it came to be where it was.”

Stell pursued her mission for three days. No one could identify a manufacturer. There were two more or less similar models of yachts, but nothing identical. Max asked her to keep at it.

Morley Clark had no idea whatever about the symbols on the hull. In fact, Max found it impossible to convince him he was serious. “These characters,” Clark told Max, “are not part of any language of any industrialized society.” There were eleven of them, presumably the name of the craft. They were cursive, rendering it difficult to be sure of the exact shape of an individual character. Max recognized an O but nothing else.