"My soil analyses show doubly, triply, and quad-ionized titanium, together with titanic acid and titanates, leaching down into the valley soil as the runoff water from the mountain percolated through the loose rock and soil covering the thing," Gerd said to Rainsford. "That explains the organic molecule, very much like hokfusine, that we found in the plant samples from the valley."

"I can see that," Rainsford said solemnly. "I have a degree in Xeno^Sciences, you know."

Gerd wasn't certain what that meant, but knowing Ben, it could mean he was either stating the obvious or making fun of the Navy ordnance officers.

As it sank toward the horizon, the sun turned more reddish, touching off the spectacular Zarathustran sunset and sending out long, pastel shadows across the valley floor, shadows that slowly crept over the vehicle park and foretold a comfortable evening after the oppressively hot day that was almost past.

"I think," Commander Bates said,"that we should knock off for the day. We ought to scan the thing thoroughly in the morning, before any additional excavating is done. There is no abnormal radioactivity, but we should proceed cautiously from here on."

In the slanting, orangish light, Phil Helton suddenly exclaimed something that no one heard clearly. He bounded down the "steps," left as the power shovels had reduced the size of the excavation with each successive layer of soil and rock removed, into the large hole, which was by this time several storeys deep.

The others followed curiously-and more slowly.

Helton walked up to the titanium thing, almost as though it might be alive. He ran his hands over the flaking, oxide-encrusted surface, sort of talking to himself. He picked up a square-point shovel that had been left by one of Casagra's Marines when the work had stopped for the day and scaled off a patch of the titanium "rust" until he had exposed a seam in the metallic layer underneath. He banged at it a couple of times with the shovel, then cursed loudly and quite clearly enough for anyone to understand.

He turned to the group standing on the level above. "Toss down a geologist'shammer, someone, will you?" he said. It was not so much a request as a command.

Soon, the specified tool landed in the fresh dirt a few meters from where he stood.

Helton waved, then bent and picked up the hammer. He measured off a distance from the seam with his fingers and then gave the surface a couple of smart, loud whacks.

No one had the slightest idea what he was doing-except Master Gunnery Sergeant of Fleet Marines Philip Helton, who knew exactly what he was doing.

Helton retrieved his shovel and forced it into the seam. Then he drove it in like a wedge, using the hammer. He pried a little, to open the seam. Then he drove the shovel point a bit farther in and repeated the process. Finally, he pried a lot. The others could see the shovel handle bend under the strain of force-applied by Helton.

Laboriously, he forced open a small "hatch," a little over two feet square in the surface of "it." He threw down his tools and stuck his head inside.

Presently, his head popped out. There was a strange smile on his face. "Throw me a light!" he shouted. WhenJie had the light, he stuck his head back inside, wriggled his shoulders into the "hatch," and was still for not more than two minutes. It seemed like an eternity to the watchers.

Helton pulled back out into the light, brushed some dust off his face, and sneezed twice. He stood back, almost reverently, his eyes fixed on the scaly titanium surface of "it."

Finally, he turned his face up to the group on the step. There was still a strange smile on his face. "I know what it is," he said clearly and evenly.

The silence was thick and heavy. A trickle of sweat wandered down Helton's cheek, ran along the line of his jaw, and dripped off his chin onto his shirt.

He took several steps closer to the dirt parapet where Holloway 's group and the two Navy officers stood. Instinctively, they drew back, as though the glitter in Helton's eyes and the strange smile on his face were both some kind of contamination he had acquired when his head and shoulders had been poked inside the "it."

"I know what it is," he repeated.

Holloway wanted to scream "What?" but he was as spellbound as the others by the scene at the bottom of the dig-washed by the eerie sunset shadows of Zarathustra.

Finally, Helton stopped, seemed to regain control of himself, and took a deep breath. He looked up at the group again.

"It's a hyperdrive star ship," he said. Then, his voice broke and wavered a little. "Somewhere," Helton said, "there is another star-traveling race."

Chapter 21.

The Mess Sergeant re-located his cigar at the exact mathematical center of his mouth. "I don't care if they 're all Grand High Poo-Bahs of Shesha," he said.

"They ain't military. I can't feed 'em. I gotta justify everything on my head-count sheet. If they ain't military, there's no square on the form for meto tally their meals."

Helton grimaced, more out of embarrassment than anything else. He had sort of attached himself to this battalion- and "adopted" it while he was kicking around on Xerxes. Of course, he knew all the principal NCOs and the officers and trusted most of them to know their jobs.

"Vee-dahl, dammit," Helton said. "If you look very closely at TFMC Reg 30-1, you will notice that it provides for the feeding of officials of the civilian government at a field mess facility, and that they are to be accorded treatment at a level equivalent to full colonel or above."

Vidal Beltran glared at Helton. "Well, then, why in hell isn't there a space on the form?" he exploded.

Lesser Sergeants Major quailed before the authority of a Master Gunnie. Fleet Admirals and Force Generals were uneasy about his opinions of their operation.

Field grade officers deferred to his judgement. If there was anyone in the armed forces who would never be cowed by a Master Gunnie, it was certain to be a Mess Sergeant. Like the captain of a man-o'-war, his kitchen was his quarterdeck. He held the only authorized command power within the walls of his chow hall-it was written that way in the regulations.

Helton smiled at him. There was nothing so elegantly elemental as a Mess Sergeant in the full flower of a temper tantrum.

"Because," Helton said, "there are perhaps two times per decade when such a notation would be necessary on your Form 3033. There's a supplemental and you foot it out on the 3033. Reg says you can attach a D.F. signed by the commander of the mess-that's you."

Beltran jerked the cigar out of his mouth. "Well, how the hell do you know so much about it, Phil?"

Helton held up the first two fingers of his right hand and ticked off each one of them with his left hand. "Because," he said, "I've audited enough mess halls to cover this planet." His face softened abruptly. "And I ran one for two years; that's how I got my seven," he finished.

"You-?" Beltran said.

"That's right," Helton interrupted.' "There's hope for you yet."

"Well, hell," Beltran said deferentially, "them guys got their own camp set up over there. Why they need to eat with us, anyway?"

Helton held up the same two fingers. "Common courtesy, for one thing. There's something in the hymn about Marines being kind to civilians. For another, if we've found what I think we've found, we're going to have to violate some of their territorial rights; and a man who's sat at your table is easier to talk to about that kind of thing."

Beltran nodded affirmatively. "Yeah, I get you, Phil. You think I should lay on something special?"

"Not a chance," Helton said. "You just run the menu and make sure it's cooked right. Those are a bunch of smart old ducks. If they think we're trying to butter them up we could get a lot of political blowback. Just be nice and don't 'sir' them to death."Beltran clenched his cigar back in his teeth. "Got it," he said. "No D.R.O.s.

Let 'em go through the line."

"Now you 're cooking, Sarge," Helton said. "I have to go collect my two tame officers and join the governor and his friends at their airboat for cocktails.

We'll be wandering back over here around 1800, so start one of your veldbeest roasts a little late."

As the senior officer, Commander Bates preferred the casual invitation after they were all comfortably situated and starting to chat. "By the way, gentlemen; since you will likely be staying over tonight, we would be honored if you could join us in the mess for dinner."

"Why that's very kind of you, Commander," Ben Rainsford said. "I was just thinking about that. I've got to get back to Mallorysport, but there's no point in my starting out this late in the day. Better to arrive early tomorrow."

"We won't know a great deal about this until we get reports from Helton, Bates, and Gaperski," Pancho Ybarra said.

There was a pause of silence, during which the soft clicking sounds of the sunscreens which kept direct radiation out of Space Commodore Alex Napier's domed office could be heard.

"Our own satellite readouts show that they've dug up something pretty big.

It's made of titanium, mostly. But we have no idea yet as to what it is. We'll probably get reports tonight that contain estimates of the situation."

Lieutenant Commander Ybarra was keen on his job--Liaison Officer: Extraterrestrial Life-Forms. He had originally been stuck with deciding for the Navy if Fuzzies were sapient; now he had a chance to get some of the "glory" back from that ghastly job-ghastly because it could have been a career-buster for him if he had made the wrong decision.

Captain Conrad Greibenfeld, the Exec, sighed. "Well, I hope we get something out of it. We have a company of Marines and a heavy equipment section tied up in it."

"Bosh, Connie," Napier said. "There's nothing on the property book about it.

As for Casagra's company, that comes under "Friendly Natives, Policing Safety Of.' "

"What about this Marine enlisted man?" Greibenfeld said. "Bit unusual to put him in charge of auditing the dig, isn't it?"

"Master Gunnies are a bit unusual," Napier remarked drily. "Their job requires abilities of inductive reasoning and intuition that would crack the skull of the best Intelligence officer in The Fleet."

"Steve Aelborg wouldn't be glad to hear that," Greiben-feld remarked.

Ybarra cleared his throat. He sensed one of those little senior officer tiffs coming and felt obliged to try and head it off lest he get hit with a wild shot. "I think what the Captain means, sir, has to do with credibility, or credentials, or experience, or something like that." He looked expectantly at Greibenfeld.

"Yes, Alex," Greibenfeld said. "Is this guy really as good as they say he is?"

Napier carefully knocked the heel out of his pipe and stared into the air fora moment. "He is," he said. "I knew him on Baldur when I was a boot lieutenant and he was a master sergeant. He pulled my butt out of the fire; probably saved my career in the bargain."

Greibenfeld raised his eyebrows. He had the notion that enlisted men had to be watched all the time and that the officer corps was something like a mother hen who had to keep the ratings from injuring themselves. "How in Nifflheim could a Master Sergeant-" he began.

Napier cut him off. "It had to do with some foolishness over a woman, as such matters often do," he said. "Let's leave it at that."

Phil Helton sloshed the inch or so of tepid highball in his glass and stared at it for a moment. "Something like us they are, but not quite the same," he said. "People, though, that we have not met-or at least they were when this thing went down, here. They may have died out while we were trying to land some plumber's nightmare we called a space vehicle on Mars. This thing has been here as long as Homo s. terra has been in space-probably longer."

"On the other hand," Holloway added, "they may not have died out. We may have just been missing connections with them. Space-there's an awful lot of it."

"Oh, poppycock," Ben Rainsford snorted. "We've had the Dillingham Drive and been in hyperspace for nearly five centuries. If there was another star-traveling race, we would have met them by now."

"Not necessarily," Commander Bates remarked. "There was an early theory about that which the textbooks call 'Fogleberg's Folly.' "

"Wasn't he the guy who said 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs'?" Gerd van Riebeek said.

"I thought that was Lenin," Ahmed Khadra said.

"I thought it was Abraham Lincoln," George Lunt said.

"I don't know if he said it or not," Bates said exasperatedly.

Holloway jumped in and broke up the digression. "What was his theory?" he asked. "I'm not familiar with it."

"Most people aren't," Bates said, "-outside the military, that is. Brigadier General Jerome H. Fogleberg, TFMC, had a theory about the distribution of intelligent races throughout the galaxy, which is known as 'Fogleberg's Folly,' a name which, by marking his peculiar position in history, might indicate that Fogleberg was somewhat off the mark in his concept.

"Fogleberg was known affectionately to his troops as 'Ol' Fogey,' and his unusual theory is thought to have arisen from his preoccupation with the reading of romantic literature having to do with the noblesse oblige of the mercenary soldier's trade. His contemporaries often said of him that he thought morale was something that came out of a bass drum."

"Sounds rarified, all right," Rainsford said. "I've never heard of it."

"You're not an astrogator," Bates said. "It falls in the category of don't-let-this-happen-to-you information.

"Fogleberg," he continued, "assumed that the distribution of stars by spectral class was uniform in space-not a bad idea when you're dealing with smallvolumes of galactic space. But, he also assumed they were evenly distributed in temporal terms-that is, in terms of when the novae popped which created them.

"He set out with a two-ship expedition to chart a new volume of space for star distribution. If his distribution theory was correct, then subsequent exploration should turn up a given number of intelligent races."

"Did it work?" Gerd asked.

Bates shook his head. "Fogey was so busy looking for active stars that he missed a black hole."

"What happened?" Jack asked.

"No one knows for sure," Bates replied. "His companion ship saw his ship wink off the screen and they never found a trace. Since the event horizon of a black hole is quite different at hyperspeed, Fogey may now be a coat of paint on the body, or his ship may have dispersed into free atoms floating around space, or himself, ship, and crew may be wandering around in an alternate universe trying to figure out what happened."

"I get it," George Lunt said. " 'Fogleberg's Folly' was that he became the victim of his own thinking."

"You got it," Bates said.

Ben Rainsford jerked his pipe out of his pocket and started to fill it. "What does that have to do with my assertion about random encounter with other star-travelers?" he asked, with faint irritation. "You" comparing me to this Fogleberg fella?"

"Heavens, no!" Commander Bates said.

"Great Ghu's ghost, Ben," Jack said. "Simmer down."

Lieutenant Gaperski slipped smoothly into the fray. "I think what Nels was leading up to was the current Navy Doctrine on such a random encounter, Governor. It's no secret or anything. It's just not widely publicized in the civilian sector."

"We have to have some very specific and uniform idea about it, though," Bates said, "in order to meet our own responsibilities to the Federation."

A look of realization flashed on Jack Holloway's face. "Oh, I know what you mean. It's fairly new, isn't it?"

"Yes," Bates replied, "and it proceeds from Fogleberg's theories, but along less-ah-presumptive lines."

"Somebody's Estimate," Jack said.

"McKettrig's Estimate. You brief them on it, Frank. I don't have my data terminal with me and I can't remember all the numbers."

Gaperski pulled his hand held data terminal from his hip pocket and punched up a code. He read the data as it scrolled.

"We 're pretty sure there are eleven or twelve billion stars in this galaxy that are very much like our own," he said. "I won't bore you with theprobability reductions, but they are very comprehensive.

"Given: a galactic volume of 5.3x10" cubic light years.

"Given: probabilities indication of 1,580 star-traveling races or races with enough technology to have a star-drive if they want it.

"Given: normalized distribution of stars and star-travelers across several drifts and age patterns that draw to a median expression.