The crack along the edge was not wide enough for the gloved fingers of their suits, so Jon inserted his shovel tip in the crack as a prize. Jak did the same and after many attempts--for it was much heavier even than they expected--they managed to lift the edge a bit. "Can you hold it alone a sec?" Jak asked. "Try," Jon threw his whole weight on the end of the shovel handle, while Jak quickly found a small stone and wedged it in the opening. Then, with Jon moving his shovel farther and farther back along the edge, Jak pushed ever larger stones closely behind him, and they finally managed to get the cover high enough so they were able to tip it back, but only after considerable straining and puffing. "What do you suppose is down there?" Jon hopped about, digging at the sand with his boot tip. "Don't know, but it has sure been a long time since anyone used this." Jak spoke slowly. "How can you tell?" "Because of all the sand that's sifted in here, silly. You don't think this is just a box of sand, do you? It could have been here thousands and thousands of years." "You mean ... there were people living here then?" The elder boy shook his head. "Maybe yes, maybe no. It could have been folks who merely visited here. Well, what do we do now?" Jon picked up his shovel. "You're the one that's silly now. We clear it out and look." For some time the two made the sand fly, then Jak's shovel struck metal, and feverishly the two concentrated on that spot. Another few minutes and they could see it was a large metal chest that almost filled this covered, metal-lined pit. When they finally had the top of the box completely exposed, they found its cover fastened with a simple hasp, which was quickly opened. Then they lifted this second lid. Inside, the box was completely filled with thousands of small cubes of some sort of glistening metal. Jak started to reach for one but Jon struck his hand away. "Listen to that detector--it has gone crazy," he yelled. "That stuff's deadly radioactive, I bet." He started to scramble out of the hole after slamming down the lid. "We get out of here, but fast. Then we talk about it." Jak had sense enough to heed his brother's warning, and lost no time in following. Some little distance away, the two stopped to debate what they were to do. "You know what I think?" Jon's eyes gleamed. "I think this was a fuel cache left by people who used to make trips around the galaxy, and not something left by people who once lived here." "You're nuts. Who--and when--and why didn't they ever come to Terra, if they had space-flight? If they came this close, wouldn't they have gone there, too?" "Not necessarily--space is so big and Sol is relatively small, you know. But maybe they did get to Earth, at that." Jon grew more thoughtful. "Remember our reading about all the strange things people reported seeing, hundreds...." "You mean those old 'flying saucer' reports a couple of centuries ago?"