"Well I don't want to look at pictures! Inform task mission when they show up that I'm coming out for a look around--and I'll have their hides if they go unnailing things before I get there. You got any Bond with you, Southard?" "Yes sir." "All right, you get my point? Don't drink it all! This is Command, _Whale_, out!" Joel broke the circuit just as the admittance buzzer went off; he thumbed a stud and the narrow bulkhead door slid back, admitting Carruthers and Dobermann. "Was wondering when you two were going to report. Sent a T-M to Southard--says he's found a space ship two hundred feet under the desert. Sometimes I think that kid works too hard. All right, got the 'copter ready?" "Warming up on the waist ramp now," Dobermann said. Joel stood up, reached for his guns and belt and strapped them around his thick middle. He gave Carruthers a quick look. The thin face was taut, almost expressionless, but there was an excitement smouldering in the dark eyes; the old excitement Joel had seen in them so many times before. "No objections to the artillery this time, I take it, Sam?" Joel grunted as he clasped the big buckle, let the weight of the blasters sag their holsters down into position on his thighs. "Damn good of you! And I'm glad you understand these people so well--while we're on our way maybe you can tell me why they bury space ships." "Maybe we ought to ask them, Skipper," Sam said with a half-smile on his thin lips. "I get your point. But maybe they should've told us! Come on." * * * * * On Joel's order, the task mission's guns had been reversed; drawn about the area where Southard's servounits were noisily sucking up sand, they no longer were concentrated on the excavation site, but instead defended it, slender snouts commanding an immense circular field of fire. "You don't trust them at that, do you, Nicholas?" Carruthers said above the racket of the servounits. "Lord, you could slaughter an army--" "This is what it says to do in the goddamn books!" Joel snapped. "You're the guys who were so glad to make a strike." The heavy, tracked machinery with its towering drill-housings and down-thrust vacuum-scoops whined and growled in a nerve-wrenching discord of power. Men sweated under the mild sun with a silent hurry, with a disciplined excitement. Southard was fast and efficient. Dobermann was silent, watching, analyzing. Carruthers had the hungry look in his eyes that Joel did not understand. And Joel was impatient. It was a tableau of men and machines that he had watched before, and always, at the end of it, there was something big for him to handle--frustrating if not dangerous, a mind and bone-wearying struggle if not an outright battle. They never came smooth, never. "Forehull clear, sir!" It was Southard, calling from the lip of the immense hole his machines had excavated. "Cut your servos!"