The news failed to stir any great interest in the burro. "It wasn't there before. That's the place where Roy Rogers caught those rustlers and licked all four of them single handed. There were some rocks, but not any cave." Biddy looked about swiftly and a tiny prickle touched the back of her neck and then was gone. It was so quiet around here; so suddenly still and waiting-like. * * * * * But that was foolish. It was always still up here in the ridges except for a horny toad maybe scraping faintly on a rock or a little dust-devil stirring the dry grass as it stood on its tail and whirled. Always quiet and she was being foolish. Roy or Hoppy or Davey Crockett wouldn't sit there half-afraid. Biddy said, "Let's go, Buck," and urged the burro to the left toward the rocks. The cave was clearly visible from the foot of the big boulders and Biddy waited for some moments before she slid off Buck and began climbing the hill. Her leg brace impeded her progress somewhat and clicked every time she took a step. "No, it couldn't have been here before," she said. "That spot was just a wall in the rock. That was where Roy Rogers fell back and was real groggy for a minute after the bad man smashed a ten-pound boulder right down on his head." But obviously, there was no solid rock wall now; instead, a rectangular opening clean and even as though cut out of soft butter with a sharp knife. Biddy moved resolutely forward. Ten feet from the opening, she stopped and glanced back at Buck for moral support. Buck slapped at a fly with his left ear and closed his eyes and gave all the moral support he had. Biddy stiffened her little chin and went on. It was a cave all right but the fact of its being was over-shadowed by what it contained. There was plenty of light to see without going inside and Biddy stood in the entrance and stared wide-eyed. The main thing inside was a big box with funny knobs and dials on it; a box of some kind of shining metal that almost hurt your eyes when you looked at it. There were other things too--a lot of wires and a funny looking chair and a thing that might have been a loudspeaker of some kind maybe. Biddy's mind raced. The Eastern Bloc? She turned her eyes up into the sky where she could just make out the space station up there a thousand miles away going around the Earth like another moon watching day and night to see to it the people and the children of the Western Bloc were always safe. Maybe this box belonged to the Eastern Bloc. They had their own space station but Biddy was just ready to bet they wanted to do something to ours! Maybe this was some kind of a machine they sneaked in here and built that would blow up our station. A pretty mean thing to do but the Eastern Bloc did all kinds of mean things. * * * * *