Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

If you have lied, our relationship will terminate and Mr. Grego will receive some distressing news."

Christiana got to her feet. "See you Friday," she said.

The man rose as she did, and doffed his hat. "It will be a pleasure to see one so lovely as yourself again at that time," he said.

She turned and left, anxious to get out on the esplanade, into the sunlight, and into the fresh air.

Helton and Sergeant Chin had just placed the last of the shaped-charge Pattycake mines, neatly arranged at sixty-degree intervals around the periphery of the head wall.

"Give 'em thirty seconds," Helton said, as he prepared to set fuse timers.

"Two-second decension. We'll start on the top two. Go."

They each quickly set the fuses-30-28-26-on three of the six mines, figuring two seconds to move to the next one and set it, so all six would go off at once. Then they jumped up and sprinted back down the tunnel. All seven of them flopped down on the tunnel floor and pressed the heels of their hands over their ears.

With a deafening roar, the entire headwall of the tunnel blew inward. The Marines were already up and running toward it.

Helton, in the lead, was thinking, I sure hope the inside mouth of the tunnel isn't five feet off the deck of the cavern, or something. A guy could break his leg that way.

Through the smoke and dust, Dave could see the ghostly figures charging at them just before the first one leaped into the cavern. "Stand and fight!" he shouted. "It's our only chance."

Squint didn't even listen. His pockets laden with sunstones, he was squeezing

through the narrow opening of the fissure. "You stay!" he shouted as he waddled heavily down the passage.

The three crouched and opened up with their pistols. One Marine went down.

They might have a chance, after all. They began dodging around, to find a little cover and not be stationary targets. Jimmy drew down on the last Marine to jump into the cavern. The shot caught him and spun him around. He dropped his rifle, flopped on his belly, and lobbed a sleep-gas grenade with his good arm.

All the other Marines were spread out on the cavern floor, lying prone, propped on their elbows, and drenching the far corner of the cavern with automatic fire.

Dave was the last one they got, because he was the smartest and the quickest.

As he broke cover to get to a better position, a burst stitched him up the right side. The impact threw him against the cavern wall, with his arms spread wide. His pistol flew out of his hand and skittered across the floor as he sagged down into a sitting position. As he died, he smiled at the Marine who had come up close to look at him.

Those outside heard the gunfire and shouts. It seemed like a year, but it was actually less than three minutes from the time the headwall blew until Helton came walking back out through the wisps of sleep-gas that were beginning to drift from the tunnel mouth. His men were close behind. One had his rifle at sling arms and with one hand was holding pressure on the wound in his other arm. Another had a knotted tourniquet on one leg and was hopping on the other, with his arms across the shoulders of the man on each side of him.

Helton stripped off his breathing gear. "You guys get over to the battalion surgeon," he said to the two wounded men and the two that were helping. "The other two; take an air-scrubber in there and start it up. Then you get over to the doc, too. Have him check you over."

"What happened?" Hollo way put the inevitable question. Helton looked down at the front of his body armor. With his thumb and index finger, he extracted a bullet from the chest area, held it up to the sunlight, smiled, and put it in his pants pocket. "Three tried to put up a fight, "he said. "The other one made a run for it."

In the far distance there was the pop-pop-pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons fire, followed by a muffled explosion.

"I see they found the transportation and someone there tried to get away,"

Holloway said drily.

Helton smiled and nodded. "Might be our lost sheep. Maybe he had someone waiting for him. We may still have to flush him out."

Helton posted two guards at the tunnel mouth. "Nobody, but nobody has access to this place except myself and Commissioner Holloway. That includes the Captain and the Colonel and the Corporal of the Guard. I'm in charge of the dig, and this is part of the dig."

"What about Colonel O'Bannon?" one of the guards asked timidly.

"It includes Colonel O'Bannon, too. Nobody. Understand?"

They both looked unhappy and nodded.

Helton motioned to Holloway to follow him. "Come on, Jack. I want your opinion about something."

Gerd began to follow. Helton turned. "Nobody but Jack or myself, I said.

Sorry, Gerd." Gerd protested.

"Put it in writing," Helton said. "What I said stands until I say different."

Inside, the cavern was warm and large, with a high roof structure. It was also light inside-all the time. The roof and walls were studded with sunstones, excited to thermofluoresence by the geothermal heat of the mountain.

Jack's mouth fell open. "There must be millions of them," he said as he slowly looked at the glowing lights. "I see it, but I can't believe it. You did the right thing to clap the lid on this, Phil. If word of this gets put, it won't just start a Sunstone Rush-it'll start a Sunstone War."

"Well, Ingermann's boys won't be telling anyone. That's probably who they were working for," Helton said. "How would you go about explaining this place geologically?"

"For one thing," Hollo way said, "it's the answer to my speculations about

'the dying-place of the jellyfish,' and why the sunstone deposits get richer close to Fuzzy Divide." Jack kicked his toe in the rock powder on the cavern floor. "This was the original dying-place of the jellyfish. If I were going to speculate, I'd say a bunch of the jellyfish died here, for whatever reason, and sank into what used to be a mud layer." He pointed to the roof of the cavern. "Apparently North Beta and South Beta were once separate continents and this place was a shallow sea between them. As the tectonic plates drifted together, they pushed up this formation while the mud layer was still hardening into flint. Ground water ^slowly dissolved the limestone layer beneath the flint and made this cavern." He reached down and picked up a handful of the rock dust. "That's what this stuff looks like to me- decomposed limestone.

"You did the right thing to put the lid on this, Phil," he repeated.

"That's not the real reason, though," Helton said. "Come over here."

Against one wall of the cavern was a row of instrument racks, like computer consoles, perhaps, but totally alien-looking. There were pieces of furniture, desks and chairs- all about Fuzzy size. There were some Fuzzies there, as well, mummified by the warm, dry air of the cave and much better preserved than the remains that had been found in the wrecked starship. A recent earthquake had apparently opened the fissure through which Ingermann's stooges had entered the cavern, and the outside air was making the mummies start to deteriorate.

"Great Ghu," Jack said softly as he looked over the scene. "More Fuzzy bones."

Chapter 30

"This is incredible!" Holloway said. "They must have been here at a time close to the crashing of the ship-at least before the rockslide that buried it. Why would they drag all this stuff up here from the wreck? Just to have something to play with?"

"Perhaps," Helton said. "The ones in here were trapped by the rockslide that closed the cavern. We'll have to date it out and see if both events were caused by the same rockslide."

"That might explain the Fuzzy bones in the ship. Gerd and Ruth will be able to date the remains. That will help tell you if there were two separate rockslides."