Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

Casagra looked alarmed. "Tapes? Visual records? Does O'Bannon know about this?"

Helton nodded. "He wasn't too thrilled about it at first, but when Gerd offered to let him review the tapes before they left the site and censor out anything he wanted, there wasn't much he could object to."

The stalwart five on the other side of the mountain were having their difficulties. They would chip away enough rock from the sides of the fissure to allow a man through, only to find the passage narrowed again less than a dozen meters further. They labored in shifts; one could only stand about a half-hour's work in the close, oppressive heat of the passage. But they kept at it, because every time they broke through a narrow place they would find a few more sunstones. All of them had the fever by now. Sunstone fever.

"Listen," Dave said. "We better quit till morning. It's almost dark outside."

Squint leaned back, gasping for breath. "So what? It's dark in here all the time. We can keep working with the lights."

"That's not what he means," Morrie said. "The lights in here will show out through the mouth of the fissure."

Dave nodded. "Marine patrol be on us within an hour unless we shut down."

"Aw," Squint said. "We 're a good hundred-fifty meters inside the mountain by now."

Dave frowned. "Yeah," he said, "and you can see a lighted match or a cigarette coal for two kilometers- especially out here where it's really dark, with no city lights or anything."

They made a dark camp in the airboat, squabbled endlessly over how to divide up the sunstones already found, and had an uninspiring dinner of Ex tee-Three.

As each man fell asleep, exhausted, he curled his hand around the pistol he had sneaked under his pillow.

Chapter 28

It was that indeterminate time when it is neither night nor dawn. There was only enough light to discern that light was coming. The dark, gray, humpbacked shapes of Marine vehicles and inflatable tentage were just visible in the paler gray light that was slowly brightening in the east. Lights were on in the kitchen scow, where the mess sergeant and his crew had already been working for about an hour. Lights were on in the communications center, where the duty NCO stood in the aft hatchway, watching the light grow, and scratching himself. Then he yawned and stretched, turned, and went back to his monitor screens.

O'Bannon was pulling on his left sock when his communication screen chimed softly, indicating a routine transmission.

It's starting already, O'Bannon thought. He reached over and tapped the key.

When the image cleared, he said, very simply, "O'Bannon."

The face in the screen was that of an anxious young man. He was wearing field greens, a single bar, and a worried look. "Sir, "he said nervously.

"Lieutenant Crocker reporting."

There was a pause.

O'Bannon rubbed his hand across his forehead. "Well, then, Crocker," he said.

"Report."

"Yes, sir," Crocker said. "The intruder we logged yesterday morning still hasn't turned up. I think they've gone to ground someplace inside the reservation."

O'Bannon grimaced. "Well, then, they'd be sitting still, wouldn't they? If you

're on the move and they 're sitting still, it shouldn't be too hard to spot them, should it, Lieutenant?"

Lieutenant Crocker looked uncomfortable. "No, sir-no, sir; it shouldn't. I'm certain we'll turn them up. In any case, I've taken steps to make sure they don't get out of the area."

"I think that's an excellent approach, Crocker," O'Bannon said, with just the right tone of cynicism in his voice, "because if they do, I think we can find you a somewhat less sensitive job-on Nifflheim, or, perhaps, Yggsdrasil."

The muscles around Crocker's eyes were beginning to tighten. "I understand, Colonel," he said.

"Have you run an inbound spiral search?" O'Bannon asked.

"Uh-no, sir," Crocker said. "We've been doing standard grid."

O 'Bannon softened his expression. Already scared the kid to death, he thought. Time now to prop him up a bit. "Try running an inbound spiral. Five cars. Slideback formation. That should flush 'em if they're down in the brush someplace."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," Crocker said.

"Okay, son," O'Bannon replied. "Report back before evening chow."

Jack Holloway and Gerd van Riebeek missed breakfast by a mile, but they arrived at Fuzzy Valley in time for the mid-morning coffee-break.

Sergeant Beltran motioned them aside. "You guys don't look like you ate yet today," he said. "Huh?"

They both shook their heads.

Beltran nodded in approval of his own sagacity. "Come on over to the kitchen scow. I'll fix you something up. You can't get by till lunch on coffee and pastry."

When they emerged from the kitchen scow, well-fed and still marveling at the meal which Beltran had whipped up on the spur of the moment-using odds and ends-an enormous closed cargo scow was just settling out of the sky. Its landing point was midway between the excavated wreck and the rockslide over the cave-mouth.

Phil Helton was on the ground, talking the lander chief down to the right spot. O'Bannon, Stag well, and Casagra were off to one side, observing the operation.

"Come on, Gerd," Jack said. "Let's see what this is all about."

By the time they had walked to the site the scow had settled to the ground and lurched off contragravity.

After greetings had been exchanged, the flight crew had already secured the scow, the equipment crew had grounded the hatch-ramp, and a man wearing field greens and an orange cap was crunching across the ground toward them.

As the man drew closer, Holloway could see a black stencil on his left shirt pocket; an engineer's hammer, framed by the inverted " V " of a mason's square at the bottom and a spread divider compass at the top. "TFN" was stenciled below the design.

The man stopped, saluted the officers, and said, "Master Chief Construction Mate Lyman Byers reporting, sir. The difficult we do immediately; the impossible may take a whole shift."

O'Bannon returned the salute and looked slightly bilious. These guys from the construction battalion even have their own compliments on the load-list, he thought. He inclined his head toward Helton.

Chief Byers' face brightened as he ambled his lanky frame over to where Helton was standing with Jack and Gerd. "Whatcha" need, Gunnie? Gotta bore a big hole in something, huh?"

Gear was already coming out of the scow, to where the equipment crew was laying it out in precise rows on the ground.

Helton outlined his requirements as Byers listened attentively-with a concentration that was far different from his previous country-boy attitude.

"Take your own soundings," Helton said. "I want the shortest, straightest tunnel you can manage, but I want you to pull out when the headwall is about six inches short of breaking into the cavern. Can you cut it that fine?"

"No problem, Gunnie," Byers said seriously. "If the inside face of the rockfall was perfectly vertical, my operator could cut it fine enough to leave you a windowpane, if'n you wanted one."

Helton smiled. "Okay, get to it, then." By now the terrene itself had come out of the scow, on its own contragravity skid. It had the look of a short, fat torpedo with a snubbed-off nose. Directly behind it came the control cabin, a collapsium-hulled affair of smaller diameter than the terrene head. It housed all the sensors, controls, and pickups, as well as the operator. To the rear of it, it carried a collapsium counterweight, so that when the entire affair was on contragravity and working, the weight of the terrene to the front was balanced to level by the counterweight at the rear. As Byers loped off across the dry soil, his crew was already swarming over the equipment at the complicated task of mating the terrene with its control cabin.