Cascade Point

I don't know how long I walked. The whole area was hilly and littered with rocks, and I was feeling pretty groggy as well, but I didn't fall over too often, and I always had the energy to get back up again. Still, my reflexes weren't as bad off as I feared, because when I topped that last rise and saw the spacesuited figures not more than half a kilometer away, I managed to crouch down into a shadow without standing in plain sight for more than a couple of seconds.

There were four of them that I could see from my position. They didn't seem to have any mining equipment, but rather were poking at the ground with spades and long probes. I frowned to myself. Stark's men looking for new veins of ore? Or had I stumbled onto the wrong party completely?

There was no point in taking chances. I edged off to the left, intending to circle the group. With most of my attention on the others, it was not particularly surprising that I never saw the metal plate sticking out of the ground until I had tripped over it.

It says a lot for my mental state that I had rolled over and levered myself into a sitting position before it occurred to me to wonder what a metal plate was doing half-buried on the moon. Looking closer, I saw that the corner I had stumbled over was smooth-faced and was coppery silver in color. Only about thirty centimeters of the plate was visible, the rest being under the loose soil, and the edges I could see were ragged, as if the plate had been torn away from something else. Just at the corner was a mark of some kind etched into the surface. An identifying mark, perhaps, except it was like no letter or symbol I had ever seen.

Curiosity overcame my caution. Getting a good grip on the plate, I pried it upwards. It was a good four or five square meters in area, but the gravelly soil was loose and offered little resistance. I never got a real look at the underside of the plate, though, because something underneath it caught my eye. Something light yellow in color, about a meter long; with four arms, two legs, and an incredibly alien face...

"Okay, buddy, lift 'em."

I was halfway through my backward jump before I realized the voice had come through my headphones and not from the alien figure in front of me. Raising my arms, I slowly turned to face the figure striding toward me. His spacesuit held the insignia of a Marine sergeant major, and his gun was holding very steadily on my middle. He gave me an appraising look, glanced at the alien I had uncovered, and nodded inside his helmet. "This is Conlin," his voice said in my ears. "I've got a snooper up on Hill Ten; I'm bringing him in. And we've got another body up here, too."

—

The major at field HQ decided to wait for higher authority to arrive before questioning me, and so I had to sit for an hour in a tiny office with two taciturn guards. They very obviously considered me a spy—my single attempt to ask a question made that quite clear—and I was almost relieved when my interrogators finally came. There were two of them: General Blaine and a grim-looking Colonel Stark. The latter nodded to the guards and waited until they were gone before speaking.

"Well, Morgan, just what in hell are you doing here?"

"What was that thing I saw on the hill?" I asked, ignoring his question.

"Look, mister, you're in enough trouble already," Stark gritted. "Answer my question."

I was too tired to fight him. "I thought you were trying to pull a fast one with the new iridium mine. I was trying to stop you."

"Iridium mine?" Blaine spoke up.

"There was a vein of ore opened up just before we found the wreckage, sir, but we haven't had time to work it at all. It's in my report."

"Oh, yes. Go on, Mr. Morgan."

I told them the whole story, from Louise Holst's first visit, through my contacts with Larry and Stark, to my panicky trip to the Mairan area. When I finished, Blaine turned to Stark.

"I think we'd better get Mrs. Holst up here as soon as possible," he said. "No telling who else she might go to with her fears."

Stark nodded. "I agree, sir." He glared at me. "No telling what kind of nut might listen to her, either."

"That's unfair, Colonel," I complained. "I told you the facts I had. What sort of conclusion did you expect me to come to?"

"No one asked you to draw any conclusions, as I recall," he snapped back. "But you just had to play private eye and stick your nose where it didn't belong. Now we've got to figure out what to do with you."

I didn't like the implications behind that, but curiosity was overriding all considerations of good sense. "You could start maybe by telling me what's going on out there."

"Forget it," Stark said darkly. "You know too much already."

"Look, Colonel, you can't leave me with half an answer like this. Lock me up, threaten me, shoot me if you have to, but tell me what the hell that thing was."

"It was part of the wreckage of an alien spaceship," Blaine said quietly. Stark looked at him in astonishment, but the general shrugged. "He's right, Avram. He has to know the whole story now. It's not like we can lock him away from everyone." To me he continued, "Colonel Stark's men ran across part of the ship and one of the alien bodies near the iridium vein you mentioned. Everyone who was near the site, whether he had actually seen it or not, was immediately sequestered and a security seal was slapped over everything and everyone involved. So far all we've found are bits and pieces that seem to be from the ship's hull and very small chunks of machinery and maybe electronics. Plus some bodies, as you already know."

"So why was Captain Holst so upset when I first contacted him?" I asked. "I remember distinctly the phrase 'he can't get away with it.' "

"Holst was violently opposed to the security measures we were taking," Stark said, clearly not happy at telling me all this but apparently willing to follow Blame's lead. "He thought more damage would be caused by a cover-up than by spilling all of it right away."

"I think he's right," I told him.

"Then think again," Stark shot back. Suddenly, through all his anger, I saw how worried he was. "You don't seem to realize how big a bomb we're sitting on here. If we don't a

"Nuts," I said. "Civilization isn't all that fragile. People aren't going to curl up and die just because you've found some chunks of metal and alien bodies...." I trailed off as an uncomfortable thought struck me. "You did say that's all you found, didn't you?"

Blaine nodded. "You see our problem now. The cultural effects will be bad enough, but the political ones will be even worse. So far we've found nothing that even looks like an alien weapon, let alone one that might still work. But will everyone believe that? I don't think so. And all it would take would be a single doubter, a single preemptive attack, to spark off a major war. Coupled with an unpredictable reaction from the general public over the discovery, that war might become this civilizations last."

It was an overly dramatic speech, but I hardly noticed. What he said made uncomfortable sense.

Blaine continued, "This is why we're asking for your cooperation. We have no idea yet where this ship came from, what it was doing here, or even how it crashed, and we need those answers long before we can start preparing the public—and foreign governments—for this shock. I might point out that Captain Holst came to this same conclusion once he had thought things through."

"We'll have your cooperation, too," Stark added. "Willing or otherwise." "Avram, your threats aren't going to work this time," Blaine said, looking suddenly tired and very old. "Mr. Morgan is a Dreamsender. You can't lock him away in Leavenworth and keep him from talking to anyone. If he won't go along, we've lost the war."