The Northern Queen Construction Company supplied a baby steam shovel and a crew. The steam shovel had trouble negotiating the switchback that ran up the escarpment, but once it arrived its operators went to work single-mindedly.

“You’re sure you guys won’t damage this thing, right?” asked Max.

“We’ll be careful,” said the crew chief, a gray-haired, thickset man bundled inside a heavy coat. He’d been told the object was an old grain storage facility in which several major works of art were thought to be hidden. (Max was becoming creative.) “Of course,” he continued, “you understand we only get you close to the thing. Afterward there’ll be a lot of digging to do, and that’s going to be up to you.”

They used stakes and string with pieces of white cloth fluttering in the wind to mark out the target area. Peggy Moore was standing just outside the radar van, her arms folded over a Boston Red Sox jacket (the weather had warmed up), while the Northern Queen crew moved into position. A few yards away, Charlie was posted on the radar tractor.

In the van, the atmosphere was electric. April had assumed a post near the main screen (the rule that noncompany people had to stay out of the van had been long since forgotten), from which she was directing the excavation. Max was losing confidence now that the moment of truth was near and had become convinced that they were going to unearth a silo or a long-forgotten Native-American habitation. April’s Martians were light-years away.

The steam shovel lined itself up just outside the markers and stopped. The man in the cab looked at a clipboard, got on his walkie-talkie, and then rolled the engine forward a few yards. The jaws rose, opened, and paused. They plunged into the earth, and the ground shook.

The operator moved levers and the jaws rose, trailing pebbles and loose dirt, and dumped their load off to the side. Then they swung back. The plan was to dig a broad trench around the target. Tomorrow April’s volunteers, who were mostly farmers without too much to do at this time of year, would begin the actual work of uncovering the roundhouse.

A few snowflakes drifted down from an overcast sky.

Peggy Moore had a video camera and was recording the operation. The woman was no dummy. Max realized he should have thought of it himself. The videos might be worth a lot of money before this was over.

In fact, they were going to have to break down soon and call a press conference. How long would it take before the media figured out something was happening on Johnson’s Ridge? But there was a problem with a press conference: What did you tell them? You couldn’t talk about UFOs and then dig up an old outhouse.

By sundown a twelve-foot-wide, thirty-foot-deep trench had been driven into the promontory. Like the canyon, it was shaped like a horseshoe, enclosing the target area on three sides, within about fifteen feet of the object. They laid ladders and planking in the ditch and threw wooden bridges across. “You’ll want to be careful,” the crew chief explained. “There’s a potential for cave-ins, and if you dig around the bridges, which you will probably have to, you’ll want to make adjustments so they don’t collapse. I suggest you get a professional in, somebody that knows what they’re doing.”

“Thanks,” said April. “We’ll be careful.”

He held out a document for her to sign.

April looked at it.

“It explains about hazards, safety precautions, recommends you get somebody.”

“It’s also a release,” said April.

“Yeah. That, too.” He produced a clipboard.

She glanced across the document and signed it. The crew chief handed her a copy. She folded it several times and slid it into a pocket.

The steam shovel began to move away, rolling toward the access road through a light wind that blew a steady stream of snow over the summit. The crew chief surveyed his work with satisfaction. “Good night, folks,” he said. “Be careful.”

When he had left, they walked slowly around the trench, poking flashlight beams down into it. “That’s going to be a lot of digging,” said Max.

April nodded. “We’ve got a lot of people.”

10

Shopkeepers, students, government officials, farmers,

Ordinary men and women, they came,

And were forever changed…

—Walter Asquith, Ancient Shores

In the morning, a horde of volunteer workers crowded into the auditorium at the Fort Moxie City Hall. The press was represented by Jim Stuyvesant, the town’s gray eminence and the editor and publisher of the weekly Fort Moxie News. Stuyvesant didn’t know much about why there had been a call for workers, other than that there was going to be an excavation on Johnson’s Ridge, but in a town where the news was perpetually slow, this was front-page stuff.

At eight sharp April tapped her microphone, waited for the crowd to quiet, and thanked everyone for coming. “We don’t know much about this structure,” she said. “We don’t know how durable it is, and we don’t know how valuable it is. Please be careful not to damage anything. We aren’t in a hurry.” Stuyvesant, who was his own photographer, took some pictures. “If you find anything that’s not rock and dirt, please call a supervisor over.”

“Is it Indian stuff?” asked a man in a red-checked jacket up front.

“We don’t know what it is.” April smiled. “After you help us find out, we’ll let you know. Please stay with your team. Tomorrow you can report directly to the work site. Or come here if you prefer. We’ll have a bus leaving at eight and every hour after that, on the hour, until two P.M. We’ll quit at four-thirty. You can quit when you want, but please check out with your team leader. Unless you don’t care whether you get paid.”

The audience laughed. They were in a good mood—unexpected Christmas money was coming, and the weather was holding.

“Any questions?”

“Yeah.” One of the students. “Is there going to be something hot to drink out there?”

“We’ll have a van dispensing coffee, hot chocolate, sandwiches, and hamburgers. Hot chocolate and coffee are on the house. Please be careful about refuse. There’ll be containers; use them. Anyone caught littering will be asked to leave. Anything else?”

People began buttoning parkas, moving toward the doors.

They poured out of the old frame building and piled into buses and cars and pickups. Stuyvesant took more pictures and waited for April. “Dr. Cannon,” he said, “what actually is on the ridge?”

“Jim,” she said, “I honestly don’t know, and I don’t want to speculate. It’s probably just an old storage facility from the early part of the century. Give me a few days and you can come look at it.”

Stuyvesant nodded. The Fort Moxie News traditionally reported stories that people wanted to see printed: trips to Arizona, family reunions, church card parties. He was therefore not accustomed to people who dodged his questions. He had an additional problem that daily newspapers did not: a three-day lead time before the News hit the street. He was already past the deadline for the next edition. “I can’t believe anybody would put a storage shed on top of a ridge. It’s a little inconvenient, don’t you think?”

“Jim, I really have to go.”

“Please bear with me a minute, Dr. Cannon. You’re a chemist, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why is a chemist interested in an archeological site?”

April had not expected to be put under the gun. “It’s my hobby,” she said.

“Is there an archeologist here somewhere? A real one? Directing things?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, no. Not really.”

“Dr. Cannon, several weeks ago somebody dug up a yacht in the area. Is this project connected with the yacht?”

“I just don’t know,” April said, aware that she was approaching incoherence. “Jim, I’m sorry. I have to go.” She saw Max, waved, and started toward him.

But Stuyvesant kept pace. “There’s a rumor it’s a UFO,” he said.