Fifty-two years before, they had come to the mesa in the Badlands and
dug a pit on top of it, a thousand feet in diameter and more than five
hundred deep, and in it they built a duplicate of the headquarters for
Third Fleet-Army Force Command. They built a shaft a hundred feet in
diameter like a chimney at one side, and they ran a tunnel out through
solid rock to the head of a canyon half a mile away. Then they buried
the whole thing. Twelve years later, when the War was over, they
sealed both entrances and went away and left it.
For a month each winter, cold rains from the east lashed the desert;
for the rest of the year, it was swept by windblown sand. Wiregrass
sprouted, and thornbush grew; Nature, the master-camoufleur, completed
the work of hiding the forgotten headquarters. Little things not
unlike rabbits scampered over it, and bigger things, vaguely foxlike,
hunted them. Hunted men came, too, their aircars skimming low. None of
them had the least idea what was underneath.
The mesa-top came suddenly to life, just as the sun edged up out of
the east. Conn and his father and Anse Dawes came in first, in the
recon-car with which they had scouted and photographed the site a few
days before. They circled at a thousand feet, fired a smoke bomb, and
then let down near where Conn's map showed the head of the vertical
shaft. The rest followed, first a couple of combat cars that circled
slowly, scanning the ground, and then the _Lester Dawes_ with her big
guns and her load of equipment, and behind a queue of boats and scows
and heavy engineering equipment on contragravity and troop carriers
full of workmen and guards, flanked by air cavalry, which circled
above while everything else landed, then scattered out over a
fifty-mile radius. Occasionally there was a hammering of machine guns,
either because somebody saw something on the ground that might need
shooting at or simply because it was a beautiful morning to make a
noise.
The ship settled quickly and daintily, while Conn and Anse and Rodney
Maxwell sat in the car and watched. Immediately, she began opening
like a beetle bursting from its shell, large sections of armor
swinging outward. Except for the bridge and the gun turrets, almost
the whole ship could be opened; she had been designed to land in the
middle of a battle and deliver ammunition when seconds could mean the
difference between life and death. Jeeps and lifters and manipulators
and things floated out of her. Scows began landing and unloading
prefab-hut elements. A water tank landed, and the cook-shed began
going up beside it; a lorry came in with scanning and probing
equipment, and a couple of men jumped off and huddled over a
photoprint copy of one of Conn's maps.
Conn lifted the car again and coasted it half a mile to where the
cleft in the mesa started. There were half a dozen claw-armed
manipulators already there, and two giant power shovels. Jerry Rivas
and one of the engineers Kurt Fawzi had hired had gotten out of a jeep
and were looking at another photoprint of the map. Rivas pointed to
the head of the canyon, where a mass of rock had slid down.
"That's it; you can still see where they put off the shots."
The canyon was long enough and wide enough for the _Lester Dawes_
to land in it; she could be loaded directly from the tunnel. The
manipulators began moving in, wrestling with the larger chunks of
rock and dragging or carrying them away. Power shovels began grunting
and clanking and rumbling; dust rose in a thick column. Toward
midmorning, the troop carriers which served as school buses in
Litchfield arrived, loaded with more workmen. A lorry lettered
STORISENDE HERALD-GUARDIAN came in, hovered over the canyon, and
began transmitting audiovisuals. More news-folk put in an appearance.
The earth and rock at the top of the tunnel entrance fell away,
revealing the vitrified stone lintel; everybody cheered and dug
harder. More aircars arrived, getting in each other's and everybody
else's way. Raymond Fitch, Lester Dawes, Lorenzo Menardes and Morgan
Gatworth. Dolf Kellton, playing hookey from school. Kurt Fawzi; he
landed in the canyon and watched every shovelful of rock lifted, as
though trying to help with mental force. Tom Brangwyn, with a score of
the Home Guard to reinforce the Company Police. Klem Zareff called in
his air cavalry to help control the sightseers. Nobody was making
trouble; they were just getting in the way.
At eleven, Rodney Maxwell went aboard the _Lester Dawes_ to use the
radio and telescreen equipment. By then, two time zones west in
Storisende, the Claims Office was opening; he filed preliminary claim
to an underground installation with at least two entrances in
uninhabited country, and claimed a ten-mile radius around it. By that
time, the gang working on top had uncovered a vitrified slab over the
hundred-foot circle of the vertical shaft and were cracking it with
explosives. According to the scanners, it was full of loose rubble for
a hundred feet down. Below that, the microrays hit something
impenetrable.
Toward midafternoon, the tunnel in the canyon was cleared. It had been
vitrified solid; the scanners reported that it was plugged for ten
feet. A contragravity tank let down in front of it, with a solenoid
jackhammer mounted where the gun should have been, and began pounding,
running a hole in for a blast shot. There were more explosions
topside; when Conn took a jeep up to observe progress there, he found
the vitrified rock blown completely off the vertical shaft, exposing
the rubble that had been dumped into it. The gang on the mesa-top had
discovered something else; a grid of auro-copper bussbars buried four
feet underground. Ten to one, radio and telescreen signals would be
transmitted to that from below, and then probably picked up and
rebroadcast from a relay station on one or another of the high buttes
in the neighborhood. Time enough to look for that later. He returned
to the canyon, where the lateral tunnel was now almost completely
open.
When it was clear, they sent a snooper in first. It was a robot,
looking slightly like a short-tailed tadpole, six feet long by three
feet at the thickest. It transmitted a view of the tunnel as it went
slowly in; the air, it found, was breathable, and there were no
harmful radiations or other dangers. According to the plans, there
should be a big room at the other end, slightly curved, a hundred feet
wide by a hundred on either side of the tunnel entrance. The robot
entered this, and in its headlight they could see reconnaissance-cars,
and contragravity tanks with 90-mm guns. It swerved slightly to the
left, and then the screen stopped receiving, the telemetered
instruments went dead and the robot's signal stopped.
"Tom," Rodney Maxwell said, "you keep the crowd back. Klem, stay with
the screens; I'll transmit to you. I'm going in to see what's wrong."
He started to give Conn an argument when he wanted to accompany him.
"No," Conn said. "I'm going along. What do you think I went to Terra
to study robotics for?"
His father snapped on the screen and pickup of the jeep that was
standing nearby. "You getting it, Klem?" he asked. "Okay, Conn. Let's
go."
Half a mile ahead, at the other end of the tunnel, they could see a
flicker of light that grew brighter as they advanced. The snooper
still had its light on and was moving about. Once they caught a
momentary signal from it. As Rodney Maxwell piloted the jeep, Conn
kept talking to Klem Zareff, outside. Then they were at the end of the
tunnel and entering the room ahead; it was full of vehicles, like the
one on the bottom level at Tenth Army HQ. As soon as they were inside,
Klem Zareff's voice in the radio stopped, as though the set had been
shot out.
"Klem! What's wrong? We aren't getting you," his father was saying.
The snooper was drifting aimlessly about, avoiding the parked
vehicles. Conn used the manual control to set it down and deactivate
it, then got out and went to examine it.
"Take the jeep over to the tunnel entrance," he told his father.
"Move out into the tunnel a few feet; relay from me to Klem."
The jeep moved over. A moment later his father cried, "He's getting
me; I'm getting him. What's the matter with the radio in here? The
snooper's all right, isn't it?"
It was. Conn reactivated it and put it up above the tops of the
vehicles.
"Sure. We just can't transmit out."
"But only half a mile of rock; that set's good for more than that.
It'll transmit clear through Snagtooth."
"It won't transmit through collapsium."
His father swore disgustedly, repeating it to Zareff outside. Conn
could hear the old soldier, in the radio, make a similar remark. They
should have all expected that, in the first place. If the Third Force
High Command was expecting to sit out a nuclear bombardment in this
place, they'd armor it against anything.
"Bring the gang in; it's safe as far as we've gotten," his father
said. "We'll just have to string wires out."
Conn used his flashlight and found the power unit for the room lights;
all the overhead lights were wired to one unit, if wired were the word
for gold-leaf circuits cemented to the walls and covered with
insulating paint. For the heavy stuff, like the ventilator fans,
they'd have to find the central power plant. He looked around the big
room, poking into some of the closets that lined it. Radiation-proof
clothing. Tools. Arms and ammunition. First-aid kits. Emergency
rations. All the vehicles were plated in shimmering collapsium.
The crowd started coming in: the work-gangs selected for the first
exploration work, most of them old hands of Rodney Maxwell's; the
engineers they had recruited; Mohammed Matsui--he had a gang of his
own, the same one he had been using in tearing down the converter at
Tenth Army; the stockholders and officials; the press. And everybody
else Tom Brangwyn's police hadn't been able to keep out.
The power plant was at the extreme bottom; Matsui began looking it over
at once. Above it they found the service facilities--air-and-water
plant; pumps for the artesian well; sewage disposal. Then repair ships,
and a laboratory, and laundries and kitchens above that.
"Where do you suppose it is?" Kurt Fawzi was asking. "Up at the very
top, I suppose. Let's go up and work down; I can't wait till we've
found it."
Like a kid on Christmas Eve, Conn thought. And there was no Santa
Claus, and Christmas had been abolished.
The place was built in concentric circles, level above level. Combat
equipment nearest the tunnel exit and nearest the vertical shaft, and
ambulances and decontamination units and equipment for relief and
rebuilding next. Storerooms, mile on circular mile of them. Not the
hasty packrat cramming he'd seen at Tenth Army; everything had been
brought in in order, carefully piled or racked, and then left. More
stores for the next three levels up; then living quarters. Enlisted
men's and women's quarters, no signs of occupancy. Enlisted kitchens
and mess halls, untouched.
Most of the officers' quarters were similarly unused, but here and
there some had been occupied. A sloppily made bed. A used cake of soap
in the bathroom. An empty bottle in a closet. Officers' commissary
stores had been used from and replaced; the officers' mess hall and
kitchen had been in constant use, and the officers' club had a
comfortably scuffed and lived-in look. There had been a few people
there all the time of the War.
"Men and women, all officers or civilians," Klem Zareff said. "Didn't
even have enlisted men to cook for them. And we haven't found a scrap
of paper with writing on it, or an inch of recorded sound-tape or
audiovisual film. Remember those big wire baskets, down at the
mass-energy converters? Before they left, they disintegrated every
scrap of writing or recording. This is where Merlin is; they were the
people who worked with it."
And above, offices. General Staff. War Planning, with an incredibly
complex star-map of the theater of war. Judge Advocate General.
Inspector General. Service of Supply. They were full of computers,
each one firing the hopes of people like Fawzi and Dolf Kellton and
Judge Ledue, but they were only special-purpose machines, the sort to
be found in any big business office. The Storisende Stock Exchange
probably had much bigger ones.
Then they found big ones, rank on rank of cabinets, long consoles
studded with lights and buttons, programming machines.
"It's Merlin!" Fawzi almost screamed. "We've found it!"
One of the reporters who had followed them in snatched his radio
handphone from his belt and jabbered, then, realizing that the
collapsium shielding kept him from getting out with it, he replaced it
and bolted away.
"Hold it!" Conn yelled at the others, who were also becoming
hysterical. "Wait till I take a look at this thing."
They managed to calm themselves. After all, he should know what it
was; wasn't that why he'd gone to school on Terra? They followed him
from machine to machine, first hopefully and then fearfully. Finally
he turned, shaking his head and feeling like the doctor in a film
show, telling the family that there's no hope for Grandpa.
"This is not Merlin. This is the personnel-file machine. It's taped
for the records and data of every man and woman in the Third Force for
the whole War. It's like the student-record machine at the
University."
"Might have known it; this section in here's marked G-1 all over
everything; that's personnel. Wouldn't have Merlin in here," Klem
Zareff was saying.
"Well, we'll just keep on hunting for it till we do find it," Kurt
Fawzi said. "It's here somewhere. It has to be."
The next level up was much smaller. Here were the offices of the top
echelons of the Force Command Staff. They, unlike the ones below, had
been used; from them, too, every scrap of writing or film or
record-tape had vanished.
Finally, they entered the private office of Force-General Foxx Travis.
It had not only been used, it was in disorder. Ashtrays full, many of
the forty-year-old cigarette ends lipstick tinted. Chairs shoved
around at random. Three bottles on the desk, with Terran bourbon
labels; two empty and one with about an inch of whisky left in it. But
no glasses.
That bothered Conn. Somehow, he couldn't quite picture the commander
and staff of the Third Fleet-Army Force passing bottles around and
drinking from the neck. Then he noticed that the wall across the room
was strangely scarred and scratched. Dropping his eye to the floor
under it, he caught the twinkle of broken glass. They had gathered
here, and talked for a long time. Then they had risen, for a final
toast, and when it was drunk, they had hurled their glasses against
the wall and smashed them.
Then they had gone out, leaving the broken glass and the empty
bottles; knowing that they would never return.