"I don't feel like laughing," Kennon said. "I feel the same way."

They approached the edge of the Pit carefully. Kennon kept checking the radiation counter. The needle slowly rose and steadied at one-half roentgen per hour as he thrust the probe over the rim of the depression.

"It's fine, so far," he said encouragingly. "We could take this much for quite a while even without suits." He lowered himself over the edge, sliding down the gentle slope.

"How is it down there?" Copper called. The intercom crackled in his ear.

"Fine--barely over one roentgen per hour. With these suits we could stay here indefinitely." The sigh of relief was music in her ears. "This place is barely lukewarm."

"That's what you think," Copper said.

"I mean radiation warm," Kennon said. "Stay up there and watch me. I may need some things."

"All right." Copper squirmed inside the hot suit. The thing was an oven.

She hoped that Kennon didn't plan to work in the daytime. It would be impossible.

Kennon gingerly approached the ship. It was half buried in the loose debris and ash that had fallen or blown into the pit during the centuries it had rested there. It was old--incredibly old. The hull design was ancient--riveted sheets of millimeter-thick durilium. Ships hadn't been built like that in over two thousand years. And the ovoid shape was reminiscent of the even more ancient spindizzy design. A hypers.p.a.ce converter like that couldn't be less than four millennia old. It was a museum piece, but the blue-black hull was as smooth and unblemished as the day it had left fabrication.

s.p.a.ce travel would have gotten nowhere without durilium, Kennon reflected. For five thousand years men had used the incredibly tough synthetic to build their s.p.a.cecraft. It had given man his empire. Kennon gave the hull one quick glance. That part of the ship didn't worry him.

It was what he would find inside that bothered him. How much damage had occurred from two thousand or more years of disuse? How much had the original travelers cannibalized? How much could be salvaged? What sort of records remained? There were a thousand questions that the interior of that enigmatic hull might answer.

The upper segment of the airlock was visible. It was closed, which was a good sign. A few hours' work with a digger should expose it enough to be opened.

"Copper," he said, "we're going to have to dig this out. There's a small excavator in the cargo bed of the jeep. Do you think you can bring it down here?"

"I think so."

"Good girl!" Kennon turned back to the ship. He was eager to enter it.

There might be things inside that would settle the question of the Lani.

The original crew had probably recognized the value of the hull as a repository as well as he did. But in the meantime there would be work--lots of it. And every step must be recorded.

It was the rest of the day's work to expose the emergency airlock. The little excavator toiled over the loose ash for hours before it displaced enough to make the port visible, and the ash was not yet cleared away sufficiently to open the portal when darkness brought a halt to the work.

It would be impossible to unearth the s.p.a.ceship with their low-capacity digger, Kennon decided. It would be difficult enough to clear the emergency airlock in the nose. But if the tubes and drive were still all right, by careful handling it should be possible to use the drive to blast out the loose ash and cinders which surrounded the hull.

Kennon reluctantly gave up the idea of entering the s.p.a.ceship. That would have to wait until tomorrow. Now they would have to conceal the work and call it a day. A few branches and the big blocks of pumice would suffice for temporary camouflage. Later they could make something better. Anything in the jeep which might be useful was cached along with the radiation suits in the pa.s.sageway through the lava wall--and in a surprisingly short time they were heading homeward.

Kennon was not too displeased. Tomorrow they would be able to enter the ship. Tomorrow they would probably have some of the answers to his questions. He looked ahead into the gathering night. The gray ma.s.s of the abandoned Olympus Station slipped below them as he lined the jeep along the path indicated by the luminous arrow atop the main building, set the controls on automatic, and locked the craft on the guide beacon in Alexandria's tower. In a little less than an hour they would be home.

CHAPTER XIV

Kennon was morally certain that the Lani were of human stock. Evolved, of course. Mutated. Genetic strangers to the rest of humanity. But human. The s.p.a.ceship and the redes proved it as far as he was concerned.

But moral certainty and legal certainty were two different things. What he believed might be good enough to hold up in a Brotherhood court, but he doubted it. Ulf and Lyssa might be the founders of the Lani race, but they had come to Kardon nearly four thousand years ago and no records existed to prove that the Lani weren't here before they came. Redes pa.s.sed by word of mouth through hundreds of generations were not evidence. Even the s.p.a.ceship wasn't the absolute proof that would be needed to overturn the earlier legal decision. Other and better proof was needed--something that would stand up in any court in the Brotherhood. He hoped the s.p.a.ceship would hold that proof.

But Kennon's eagerness to find out what was inside the ancient s.p.a.cer was tempered by hard practicality. Too much depended on what he might find inside that hull. Every step of the work must be doc.u.mented beyond any refutation. Some method of establishing date, time, and location had to be prepared. There must be a record of every action. And that would require equipment and planning. There must be no mistake that could be twisted by the skillful counsel that Alexander undoubtedly retained.

He had no doubt that the Family would fight. Too much money and prestige were involved. To prove the Lani human would destroy Outworld Enterprises on Kardon. Yet this thought did not bother him. To his surprise he had no qualms of conscience. He was perfectly willing to violate his contract, break faith with his employers, and plot their ruin. The higher duty came first--the duty to the human race.

He smiled wryly. It wasn't all higher duty. There were some personal desires that leavened the n.o.bility. To prove Copper human was enough motivation--actually it was better than his sense of duty. Events, Kennon reflected, cause a great deal of change in one's att.i.tude.

Although not by nature a plotter, schemes had been flitting through his mind with machinelike regularity, to be examined and discarded, or to be set aside for future reference.

He rejected the direct approach. It was too dangerous, depended too much on personalities, and had too little chance for success. He considered the possibility of letters to the Brotherhood Council but ultimately rejected it. Not only was the proof legally insufficient to establish humanity in the Lani, but he also remembered Alexander's incredible knowledge of his activities, and there was no reason to suppose that his present didn't receive the same scrutiny as the past. And if he, who hadn't written a letter in over a year, suddenly began to write, the correspondence would undoubtedly be regarded with suspicion and would probably be examined, and Dirac messages would be out for the same reason.

He could take a vacation and while he was away from the island he could inform the Brotherhood. Leaving Flora wouldn't be particularly difficult, but leaving Kardon would be virtually impossible. His contract called for vacations, but it expressly provided that they would be taken on Kardon. And again, there would be no a.s.surance that his activities would not be watched. In fact, it was probable that they would be.

There was nothing that could be done immediately. But there were certain long-range measures that could be started. He could begin preparing a case that could be presented to the Council. And Beta, when it knew, would help him. The situation of the Lani was so close to Beta's own that its obvious merit as a test case simply could not be ignored. If he could get the evidence to Beta, it would be easy to enlist the aid of the entire Medico-Technological Civilization. It would take time and attention to detail; the case, the evidence, everything would have to be prepared with every safeguard and contingency provided, so that there would not be the slightest chance of a slip-up once it came to court.

And perhaps the best method of bringing the evidence would be to transport it under its own power. The thought intrigued him. Actually it wouldn't be too difficult. Externally the Egg wasn't in bad shape. The virtually indestructible durilium hull was still intact. The controls and the engines, hermetically sealed inside the hull, were probably as good as the day they stopped running. The circuitry would undoubtedly be bad but it could be repaired and restored, and new fuel slugs could be obtained for the engine and the converter. But that was a problem for the future.

The immediate problem was to get into the ship in a properly doc.u.mented fashion.

It took nearly two months, but finally, under the impersonal lenses of cameras and recorders, the entrance port of the G.o.d-Egg swung open and revealed the dark interior. Kennon moved carefully, recording every step as he entered the black orifice in the s.p.a.ceship's side. His handtorch gave plenty of light for the recorders as he moved inside--Copper at his heels, both of them physically unrecognizable in antiradiation suits.

"Why are we moving so slowly?" Copper said. "Let's go ahead and find out what's beyond this pa.s.sageway."

"From a superst.i.tious coward you've certainly become a reckless explorer," he said.

"The Egg hasn't hurt us, and we've been around it many times," she said.

"Either the curse has become too old to hurt us, or there never was any in the first place. So let's see what is ahead. I'm curious."

Kennon shook his head. "In this business we must hurry slowly--very slowly. You know why."

"But I want to see."

"Patience, girl. Simmer down. You'll see soon enough," Kennon said. "Now help me set up this camera."

"Oh, all right--but isn't there any excitement in you?"

"I'm bubbling over with it," Kennon admitted, "but I manage to keep it under control."

"You're cold-blooded."

"No--I'm sensible. We want to nail this down. My future, yours, and that of your people depend upon how carefully we work. You wouldn't want to let us all down by being too eager, would you?"

She shook her head. "No--you're right of course. But I still would like to see."

They moved cautiously through the airlock and into the control room.

"Ah!" Kennon said with satisfaction. "I hoped for this, but I didn't dare expect it."

"What?"

"Look around. What do you see?"

"Nothing but an empty room. It's shaped like half an orange, and it has a lot of funny instruments and dials on the walls, and a video screen overhead. But that's all. Why--what's so unusual about it? It looks just like someone had left it."

"That's the point. There's nothing essential that's missing. They didn't cannibalize the instruments--and they didn't come back."