“Quality of the return. It almost reads like glass.” Moore tapped her fingers against the top of her work table. “I just can’t imagine what anything like this is doing up here. If we were down on the plain, I’d say it was an abandoned storage facility. It’s big enough. But why would anyone put a storage building up here? It almost looks like a place where people came to sit on the front porch and look out over the valley. Right?” She looked hard at Max. “But this thing doesn’t have a front porch.” Max squirmed under her irritation and was tempted to blurt everything out. But what was he going to tell her? That he thought she’d just found a flying saucer?
They climbed out of the van and stood looking down into the ground as if, by sheer will, they could see what lay beneath. It had snowed during the night, but the wind had been blowing hard all day and had swept the summit clear. It was just after sunset, and the temperature was dropping fast.
The radar tractor crisscrossed the ground at a distance, looking for other objects. The periodic roars of its engine knifed through the still air. Far below, a pair of headlights moved south along Route 32, and a couple of farmhouses lit up the gathering gloom. The landscape was fading, becoming intangible.
April surprised him. She put her arm through his and walked him along the brink, away from Moore. “The channel,” she said. “Are you thinking what I am?”
He nodded. “It was for the boat.”
She shivered with excitement. “I think we’ve hit the jackpot.”
“I think so,” said Max.
Neither spoke for a time. Max was savoring his feelings.
“Do you think,” she said, “the Sioux will agree to our digging up the area?”
“Sure. They stand to profit from this, too.”
They turned their backs to the wind and looked out over the void. “I don’t like the idea,” she said, “of putting this on a profit-and-loss footing. I wish we could just sneak in here and do this without saying anything to anybody. But we’re talking about a major project now.”
Max agreed. “An excavation’s not going to be easy. This thing is a lot bigger than the boat.” The ground crackled beneath his feet. “I wonder whether we shouldn’t wait for spring.”
“No.” April’s jaw tightened. “I am not going to sit on this for six months. We can get a small army of volunteers out here pretty quickly. When we show Lisa what we’ve got, I’m sure she’ll fund us. There’ll be no problem there.” She snuggled down into her coat. “We can post ads at UND and get some student workers. There are a lot of people in Fort Moxie, Cavalier, and Walhalla with not too much to do this time of year. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble assembling a workforce. First thing we need is to get some heavy equipment up here.” Her eyes were shining. “What do you think, Max? Have we got one?”
She was warm and vulnerable. Like Max, she was reluctant to give too much credence to the find until they knew for sure. “I don’t know,” he said.
Toward the east, the Red River Valley stretched away to the stars.
Lisa Yarborough had spent a pleasant evening with a half-dozen friends watching Cats, after which they had retired to the Thai Lounge. At about 1:30 she pulled into her garage. She let herself into the house, bolted the door, and checked her calls.
April’s voice said: “When you can, call me.”
She debated waiting until morning, but there had been a note in the voice that excited her curiosity.
April picked up on the second ring.
“What’ve you got?” said Lisa.
“Something’s buried on the ridge. We don’t know what it is yet, but it shouldn’t be there.”
“Is it connected with the boat?”
“We won’t know until we dig it up. I don’t want to make promises. Maybe somebody started to put a silo in up there. I just don’t know. But it’s big. And round. Lisa, I’m not objective about this anymore. But the present owners have had the property since the 1920s. They say there shouldn’t be anything there.”
“Okay. How much do you need?”
They fell quickly into the habit of creating prosaic explanations for the roundhouse. There were, after all, any number of things it might have been. A sanitarium for people who had needed to get away. A government test facility of one kind or another. A forgotten National Guard training installation. But there was a distinct division between what they said and what they were thinking.
Max took charge of getting a steam shovel up to the site. The night before the Northern Queen Construction Company was to start, Max, April, and the Laskers gathered under Christmas lights at the Prairie Schooner for a celebration that was ostensibly connected with the season but which somehow touched on Max’s hunt for a harbor and its possibly successful conclusion. To add to the mood, which was simultaneously exuberant and tentative, Redfern delivered congratulations from the tribal chairman.
They sat at a corner table, watching couples lit by electric candles moving slowly to Buck Clayton’s “Don’t Kick Me When I’m Down, Baby.” The music caught at Max, made him feel sentimental and lonely and happy. Too much wine, he thought.
A man he had never seen before invited April to dance. She smiled and went off with him. He was blond and good-looking. About thirty. “His name’s Jack,” said Lasker. “He works over at the depot.”
Max was irritated to observe that she seemed to enjoy herself.
The important thing, she said a few minutes later, was that whatever happened up on the ridge, they still had the yacht. They had, in her opinion, indisputable evidence of the presence of an advanced technology. “But,” she added, “I can’t wait to get a close look at the roundhouse.” Her eyes glowed.
When Max asked Lasker almost offhandedly what he intended to do with the boat, the big man looked surprised. “Sell it,” he said. “As soon as I can get a handle on how much it’s worth.”
“It’s priceless,” said April.
“Not for long,” he said. “I’m anxious to be rid of the damned thing.”
This shocked April. “Why?” she asked.
“Because I’m tired of the circus tent and the T-shirts. I’m tired of being made to feel I’m not doing enough for the town. No, I’m going to cash it in at my first reasonable opportunity.”
Max relished the prospect that he might really be instrumental in finding a UFO. He pictured himself showing the president onto its flight deck. This would have been the navigational system, Mr. President. And here, on your right, is the warp drive initiator. No, there would not be a warp drive. It would be, what, hyperlight? Quantum? We estimate Alpha Centauri in eleven days at cruising speed. Yes. That was a line he would like very much to deliver.
He anticipated a TV movie and speculated who would play Max Collingwood. Preferably somebody both vulnerable and tough. He pictured himself among Esquire’s most eligible bachelors. Interviewed by Larry King. (He wondered whether he would get nervous when the TV cameras rolled.) If things went well, he decided, he would keep the Lightning and construct a warbird museum in which it would be the centerpiece.
The Collingwood Memorial Museum.
They were trying not to draw attention to themselves, but as the liquor flowed and spirits picked up, it became more difficult. They drank to one another, to Lisa Yarborough, to the ground-radar crew, to Lake Agassiz, and to Fort Moxie (“the center of American culture west of the Mississippi”).
“I think what we need here,” said Max, “is an archeologist. Seems to me we could hire one to direct the dig. That way we avoid the screwups we’ll make if we try to do it on our own.”
“I disagree,” said April.
“Beg pardon?”
“We don’t want an archeologist.” She studied her glass in the half-light of the electric candles. “We don’t want anybody else involved if we can help it. Bring in an archeologist and he’ll tell us we’re amateurs and try to take over the operation. Eventually he’ll wind up getting the credit.” Her expression suggested she knew about these things and Max should trust her. “You have to understand about academic types. Most of them are predators. They have to be to survive. You let any of them in and they’ll never let go.” She took a deep breath. “Look, let’s be honest. This is not a standard archeological site. Nobody knows any more about this stuff than we do.”