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[pg 57] 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[pg 58] 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.[pg 59]

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[pg 60] 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;[pg 61] 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[pg 62] 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[pg 63] 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.