“Are you all right?” Rick demanded. He was missing the right sleeve of his utility shirt.

  “O-kay!” said Kent. “Guess I could make a combat insertion, couldn’t I?”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “But I’m really glad to see you guys. But how did you find me?”

  “Your handheld,” Rick said. “We couldn’t reach you, but we could home on it when Easton’s driver gave us the coordinates.”

  “He did that?” I said in surprise.

  “I talked to him,” said Joss from behind me. I turned more quickly than I should have done, though the brief dizziness passed away when I forced myself to hold completely still. “He wasn’t in shape to come with us, but Menta took care of that.”

  I took a deep breath and backed up along the animal track I’d been following when I was caught.

  To Rick—since he seemed to be in charge—I said, “Do we have an extra gun? I want to leave one here?”

  “Leave one?” Kent said in wonder.

  Rick’s eyes narrowed. Then he said, “Yeah, I guess. We’re getting out of here right away, right?”

  He looked at Kent, who said, “Hell, yeah. I didn’t ding the fans when I brought her in.”

  Rick handed me his weapon, slipping his hand out of the sling. I put it on safe and set the butt on the ground with the barrel leaning against the crotch where a sapling forked near the ground.

  “Let’s go,” I said. Rick followed me as I made a long circuit to where the aircar waited.

  We piled aboard the car. I was in the cab between Kent and Rick. “I’m in!” Menta shouted from the back.

  Kent reached for his controls.

  “How the hell did he do that?” Rick said and gestured past me and Kent, into the jungle.

  The native stood beside one of the large trees within the band of tangled undergrowth near the watercourse. He held the submachine gun I’d left behind. He pointed with it deeper into the forest.

  “He wasn’t supposed to get that till we were gone,” I said, but I put my hand over Kent’s on the throttle and said, “Shut down for now. I want to talk to him.”

  Kent’s hand remained on the controls but he stopped advancing them. He said, “You sure, El-Tee?”

  “If he’d wanted to kill me, he had lots of chances,” I said. “Shut down.”

  The aircar settled. Rick opened the cab door and got out instead of waiting on the plenum chamber. I raised an eyebrow and he said, “I’m coming with you.”

  I unloaded the shotgun and replaced the charge in my vest. I put the weapon in the cab and hopped out to join Rick. We started for where the native had been standing—he’d disappeared as soon as he was sure we’d seen him.

  “Where now?” said Rick. There was nothing but brush before us.

  I smelled the bitter odor of the fluid which released me from the trap. I looked around carefully before I spotted it to my right.

  “Here,” I said, kneeling down. A scrap of fabric hung from the rough surface of a vine. It was actually the pith of a seed pod rather than bark cloth as I’d believed when I watched the native freeing my hand.

  “What is that?” Rick said.

  Instead of answering him, I pushed through the band of reeds in front of me. I went sideways but it was remarkably difficult. Vines like the one I’d found the cloth on raked the skin of my leading forearm. I would have switched to my left, but the reeds held me so tightly that I decided it would be better to push on.

  I hit a hill that I hadn’t noticed till my outstretched hand plunged into loam. It was the first hill we’d seen in this forest.

  There was something very hard under the loam. I raised my eyes to the slope directly above my hand. A hole had been scraped in the overburden. I saw the gleam of crystal at the bottom.

  I straightened and called to Rick, whom I heard trying to follow, “Go on back! We’ve got to go to the ship to get equipment!”

  Then I shouted to my left as loudly as I could, “We’ll be coming back, but just to clear this.”

  Then to my right, “We’re coming back!”

  * * *

  Rick had checked as they flew in that Captain Bolton was in his day office. When the aircar docked in the transport hold, the tech on duty saw Rick and said, “Sir? Captain Bolton’s waiting for you now.”

  “Good luck, Harry,” he said to his friend, who was on the way to Bio Section to explain the situation to Doctor Veil. In all likelihood, Veil would be thrilled beyond words at the news.

  Rick wasn’t as confident about his own mission as he climbed the companionway to the bridge level. Still, there were things in his favor. He hadn’t gone into details over the radio, but he’d said enough to pique the captain’s interest.

  And everything he’d said was true.

  Lieutenant Vermijo greeted him from the bridge hatch and walked through to the day office with him, closing the hatch behind them. Rick started to salute but Bolton grimaced and said, “Just spit it out, Grenville. What’s this about a threat to Lord Harper’s life?”

  “Lieutenant Harper accompanied a hunting party of locals into the jungle,” Rick said. “They were attacked by natives and the surviving hunters abandoned Harry, leaving him for dead. I accompanied members of Bio Section and signals assistant Menta and was able to rescue Harry with pretty much ordinary wear and tear.”

  “Lord Harper is all right then?” Bolton demanded.

  “Lord Harper is fine, because during his wanderings before we picked him up,” Rick said, “he found an Archaic site. He’s delighted with this. It put all thought of the danger he’d undergone out of his mind.”

  “You mean like Elkin?” said Lieutenant Vermijo.

  “Yes, only this one’s covered in jungle instead of being in a desert,” Rick said. “He’ll want a couple techs with chainsaws and probably lifting tackle to get a better look at it. That is, Doctor Veil will.”

  “But what about the locals who abandoned Lieutenant Harper?” Vermijo said.

  “It sounded to me that Harry is too happy about this find to worry about revenge,” Rick said truthfully. “Besides, I gather that the servant who actually laid hands on him has been punished to a considerable degree.”

  “If all he wants is a couple techs to clear jungle,” Bolton said, “I approve. You’ll be in charge of our end, Grenville?”

  “Sir!” Rick said, bracing to attention with a smile. “If you approve it, I certainly will!”

  * * *

  I was in the cab of the aircar between Kent and Doctor Veil. Harry, Joss, and two spacers were in back with Joss and the tools.

  Also with the guns. I wasn’t expecting the natives to be a problem but I didn’t object to the spacers—Rick included—being issued submachine guns, and I’d filled my vest loops with charges of heavy shot.

  For that matter, I thought Joss had brought a gun also though she seemed to prefer her heavy knife.

  “We should be getting close,” Kent said. He was using the log from yesterday when they’d come to rescue me, guided by the signal from my handheld.

  “Lord Harper?” Doctor Veil said. “Would you say that this artifact is the same size as the one on Elkin?”

  “We won’t be able to tell until we’ve uncovered at least one side, sir,” I said. “I’m not even sure that it’s a block of moissanite—I didn’t have any equipment along and just saw crystal at the bottom of a hole six inches deep. It could be glass, for all I could tell. But…”

  I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to pump up Veil’s hopes; but in all honesty, I couldn’t think of a more likely answer to what was under the mass of dirt and leaf mold than an Archaic artifact like the one we’d seen before.

  “…it is about the right size. Regardless, we’ll know soon.”

  “This time we won’t blow it up,” Veil said grimly. She reached into the pocket of the white lab coat that she’d chosen to wear. She had the odd-shaped rod of moissanite that Master Blenkins had given me on Mindoro for identifying his Lourdis seed.

  “This,” she said, “is the key. I’ve compared it with images of the cube’s door on Elkin and it would have fit perfectly. Perfectly!”

  “Ah,” I said as a placeholder. Then I said, “That’s a wonderful deduction, sir.”

  I hoped she was right, but I sure wasn’t going to bet on it.

  “We’re going in!” Kent said. We dropped abruptly. Even with Kent’s warning, I didn’t see the waving line separating the treetops on opposite sides of the creek until we brushed through them. Branch ends flicked against the car’s sides. Doctor Veil hunched closer to me.

  Then we were through and Kent flared us down onto the same spot he had landed to rescue me. The brush was already squished down and didn’t pose as much as risk to our fans as another spot would’ve.

  I felt and heard the spacers decamping from the back, but Doctor Veil didn’t move. I wasn’t quite keyed up enough to reach past her and open the door—but I almost did. I wasn’t exactly afraid, but I really didn’t like sitting here doing nothing.

  When at last Veil stepped onto the plenum chamber, I slipped past and jumped to the ground. The three spacers were facing angles of jungle, thrusting their submachine guns toward the vegetation, as I expected.

  There was no sign of Joss. I expected that too.

  I reached in for my shotgun and loaded a charge of heavy shot rather than a slug. I didn’t expect to need anything, but if I did it was going to be at short range.

  I took the imaging equipment from the back—one pole in either hand—and led Doctor Veil over to the mound in question. The spacers continued to watch the landscape but the edge was off their concern. I think they were feeling pretty silly waving their weapons at the leaves.

  I’d seen the way the native appeared and disappeared through the brush. He was obviously a hunter. No single one of us—well, maybe Joss—would have survived if he’d wanted to attack.

  Veil probed the mound while I calibrated the two projectors. When they were ready to test, she came back and took charge. The combined readout told us what we’d assumed from the beginning: the core of the mound was a seven-foot cube of moissanite. Detailed examination of the scan indicated a discontinuity of the face nearest where we stood. This was consistent with a separate door on that face, like the one on Elkin.

  Also as with the artifact on Elkin, there was a chip out of the top of the door. It certainly might be the same size as the piece Veil was carrying.

  The artifact was covered with wood litter, much of which had already decomposed to loam. The roots of later vegetation ran into and through it but because the moissanite had been cast or molded as one piece, the roots did not prize the blocks apart as they would have done stone. The door fitted so smoothly into its socket that rootlets hadn’t been able to enter though I’d seen them show the penetration of thin oil.

  “Ready now?” Rick said to us. I nodded. Rick turned to the spacers he’d brought and said, “Weems, Willis? Break out the saws and start earning your keep.”

  Rick and I put our weapons in the back of the car along with those of the two spacers. We took out the spades and, while Doctor Veil guided us, began chopping at the soil. Because the moissanite was so refractory, we didn’t have to worry about chipping the surface with the shovel blade or even the vibrating edges of the saws if they sank deep while cutting surface roots. Doctor Veil stayed at the readout, watching the progress as we removed the overburden.

  * * *

  After three hours, Rick and I had the door clear down to the level of the forest floor. We leaned our shovels against a tangle of uncut brush behind us and, working together, dragged a clot of saplings out of the way. Weems and Willis had cut them off near the ground, but vines laced their tops together and they couldn’t be moved individually.

  We were resting for the moment. I took off my gauntlets and worked my fingers to cool my hands, wondering how long Veil intended to keep us at this. Clearing one side of the cube had been heavy work. Clearing all four and perhaps the top as well would be impossible without a larger crew and more time.

  Doctor Veil walked forward with the rod—what she called “the key”—in her hands and held it up, close to the cut in the door edge. The cavity was still packed with loam.

  Rick and I watched her poise there, wondering what next.

  As we waited, Joss—whom I hadn’t seen since we landed, shouted, “Incoming! These aren’t ours!”

  I hadn’t heard the fans, but two heavy aircars came in from the direction of the watercourse. One crushed through on the near side of the vehicle we’d come in; the other was near where Rick and I stood. Brush settled and I heard the shriek of a lift fan which was damaged and coming apart.

  The vehicles were clearly built as troop carriers: their sides flopped down and infantry in the yellow-brown Shining battledress poured out. There were a dozen or more in each truck. They carried automatic carbines.

  Rick had tensed to bolt for his weapon, but it was in the back of our truck—on the other side of the nearer Shining truck. I put my hand on his arm. He relaxed. Shining troops continued to point their weapons at us, but they didn’t seem to be on the tense edge of firing.

  Weems was standing on top of the mound. He laid down his saw and raised his hands. I couldn’t see Willis but I hoped he was also showing good judgment. Doctor Veil turned and looked back at me.

  A Shining official in civilian clothes got out of the cab of the nearer vehicle and walked carefully through the brush to where Doctor Veil stood. I recognized him: Pretsuma, whom I’d met in Prince Seba’s court on Mindoro.

  Pretsuma nodded, perhaps a tiny bow, to Doctor Veil. “I will take the key now, Doctor Veil. If you use indigenous communications systems, you must expect to be overheard by everyone who wishes to do so.”

  * * *

  Doctor Veil held out the key. “Sir,” she said, “you’re welcome to share the knowledge inside. Our purpose is to advance all humans. There was no need to descend like armed bandits to get what I would willingly share with all men.”

  Pretsuma took the key from her with a motion that reminded me of a lizard snapping. He said, “I make allowances for your ignorance, Doctor. You see, we of the Shining Empire are the direct descendants of the Archaic Spacefarers. We are the only persons who have a right to the information in this cell.”

  “No, sir,” Veil said.

  I winced, but Pretsuma didn’t seem to have heard the objection. He continued, “We were the ruling civilization of our time, but we fell into darkness and have only recently started to regain our former situation. Our priests tell us that our ancestors left teachers in crystal cells to speed us back to dominance when we regained star travel. This is the first we’ve found.”

  “That’s all myth,” Veil said, frowning. “The real science is wonderful enough, but the Archaics weren’t human and can’t be your—”

  “Silence!” Pretsuma shouted, his face mottled with fury. He knocked Doctor Veil down with the side of his fist. “How dare you question the ancestry of your superiors?”

  Rick lunged when Pretsuma hit Veil, but a soldier grappled with him and another soldier standing behind struck him with the butt of his carbine. Rick hit the ground on his face.

  I hadn’t moved initially because it was pointless. When I would have gone to support Rick I was already being held from behind by two soldiers. Rick had the right reflexes for this sort of situation. I was an academic.

  He would have a headache in the morning. I would have to remember that I hadn’t run to help my superior, an older woman, when a religious bigot struck her for contradicting when he talked nonsense. I would have preferred the headache.

  Pretsuma called an order to troops on the aircar that he’d arrived in. Two of them ran to the moissanite cube, one holding a bladder of about a gallon of water and the other with a rag. They began scrubbing at the niche, wetting it and the rag—the sleeve of a torn garment—frequently.

  Doctor Veil stood and walked over to me. Her pace was slow and halting. She had no expression but she reached up with her left hand to rub her cheek.

  Rick lay where he’d fallen. I hoped he was just trying not to attract attention, but if he was seriously injured there was nothing I could do. The first-aid kit was in our truck on the other side of the nearer Shining vehicle.

  Maybe it was because I was thinking about Rick that when Pretsuma moved toward the cube with the key held out, I said, “Sir? I was on Elkin when a similar cube was opened. It was a trap. The creature inside was a local species, not intelligent. We’ll show you the imagery.”

  Pretsuma looked at me, then returned his attention to the cube. He set the key in the niche and wriggled it slightly with his fingertips. I heard a click.

  The moissanite suddenly became so transparently clear that it seemed to vanish. Instead of a block of diffraction and reflection, I could see through it to the leaf mold and the growing roots where they pressed against the crystal of the roof and far sides.

  Pretsuma was suddenly within the space, looking startled. Then the moissanite was back, surfaces of distortions and diffractions with occasional flashes of fire where a ray of sunlight had penetrated. Pretsuma had disappeared—he wasn’t standing in front of the cube and I couldn’t see him anywhere else. Guards were shouting in surprise.

  The truck behind us blew up, a bang! When I twisted my head to look, there was a ball of pale blue hydrogen flame from the fuel cells which powered generators for the fan motors. The soldier gripping my left arm suddenly flew backward with a startled expression. He’d been shot through the bridge of his nose.

  I grabbed Doctor Veil and threw her on the ground, covering her with my body. I heard a second aimed shot but I couldn’t tell what the target was.

  Shining soldiers began firing wildly. I doubted they had any more targets than Weems and Willis had when we first landed in the jungle.

  I prayed that Doctor Veil wouldn’t start clawing me to get off her. If we moved, the soldiers would have real targets. And as close as we were, they couldn’t all miss.