“Much obliged,” said Morwood. “I’ll sign it back in directly after showing it to Eastchester.”
Garcia, who had said nothing, nodded approvingly.
Morwood looked at Corrie. “You’re doing a fine job, Agent Swanson. And thank you, Dr. Lathrop, for your invaluable contribution. This is a most peculiar case.” He shook his head. “I wonder what Dr. Eastchester will have to say about it.”
16
THE DAY HAD dawned, as usual, without a cloud in the sky. But what had started out fine had quickly been spoiled by a wind that kicked up early, and as the day wore on, it increased. Nora found working unpleasant, the wind scouring up billows of dust and blowing it across the excavation site. There were no trees to slow it down. The dust accumulated in her hair and face and clothes and got into her eyes, and she could feel it crunch between her teeth.
Mitty, who normally spent the day next to Skip, finally got so irritated that he abandoned the dig and retreated under one of the trailers.
Despite the dust, the dig was progressing apace. It was, as Vigil had said, some of the easiest excavation terrain she’d worked in—flat, soft ground, with no roots and few stones to deal with, and just enough caliche in the soil to hold it in place. She and Vigil methodically worked the quads, going down layer by layer, while Skip ran the screening operation, putting the sand first through a coarse screen, then a fine one. Kuznetsov and Cecilia Toth had used ground-penetrating radar to provide high-resolution charts of each quad, showing what might lie under the surface. But the shadows that appeared on the GPR, once they uncovered them, turned out to be of little interest.
Tappan had spent the morning watching the excavation, undeterred by wind or boredom. He was always about, asking questions, offering suggestions, and otherwise making his presence felt—but not, Nora thought, in a bad way. She wondered how he was running his other businesses remotely.
Nora carefully took the dirt samples from each quad Banks had asked for, one hundred grams at a time, sealing them in glass containers, labeled and set into a tray. When the tray was full, Skip carried them to the Three Engineers’ lab in Quonset 1.
Nora was relieved beyond measure when lunchtime rolled around. They all retreated to the shelter of Quonset 1, where a lunch had been laid out, with a variety of sandwiches, salads, tea, and coffee.
Nora helped herself to a cup of coffee and a sandwich as everyone sat down, tired and dusty. Nobody said much. They had now uncovered the beginning of the long groove in the sand, and she was curious to follow that to its endpoint, which went too deep for GPR or the magnetometer to reach. There might still be something there, she thought; fragments or pieces of whatever had plowed into the ground.
Just as she was finishing her sandwich and starting to dread going back out—she could hear the wind buffeting the Quonset hut roof—Greg Banks came into the room. He had been absent at lunch. He paused and held up his hands, a broad smile on his face. “Everybody,” he said, “I have a little surprise.”
He tried to sound casual, but his voice was tense with excitement.
“What is it?” Tappan asked.
Banks smiled mysteriously. “You shall see. Please follow me.”
Everyone followed Banks into the next hut, where Skip was already waiting. There, the few artifacts they had recovered that morning lay spread out on a large table, each one tagged and labeled. Nora had seen most of it already, except for the stuff recovered in the screening, and it was a pretty miserable collection of midcentury garbage: old cigarette butts, bottle caps, some pieces of glass, a broken whiskey pint flask, a withered pencil stub, a frozen penknife, several buttons, and a rivet from a pair of jeans. They had also found several pennies, a nickel, and a quarter—all dating to 1947 or prior—and a couple of prehistoric Indian flint chips, along with the base of a broken arrowhead. All very terrestrial. At the far end of the table lay a row of Banks’s glass dishes full of dirt, next to a stereo zoom microscope.
“Now, there’s an impressive collection of alien artifacts!” Tappan said with a laugh, scanning the table.
“If so, then aliens are as prone to littering as human beings,” Banks said. “But that’s not what I brought you to see.” He led them to the stereo microscope. “I’ve spread some grains of dirt on the glass slide that’s currently on the stage plate. I want you each to take a look, saying nothing. And then we will go around the group and you’ll each tell me what you saw.”
For a seemingly quiet guy, Banks had a flair for drama. Nora’s curiosity was aroused.