The sandy-haired man nodded dumbly. He went in search of the Army officer who'd arranged for the use of the bulldozers before the atomic bombs were taken up. Hackett picked up a shovel and began to re-cover what had been exposed to the light. At a curt word from him, Clark's three assistants joined him in hiding from the sunlight what had been revealed.
Outside the grandstands the unparalleled traffic jam continued. One does not move a million and a half people—or any considerable part of them—in minutes, and the crowd present for the leaving of the Greks was even larger than had been anticipated. There was enough dust, now, stirred up by human feet, to make a fog through which it seemed impossible for any movement to take place.
There were collisions between cars fretfully trying to edge their way toward the exits and the complex of temporary highways that had been made for this single day's use. No one dared move faster than a crawl, so casualties were few. But the confusion seemed absolute. Dust-covered pedestrians tried to find the way through the glaring obscurity to their cars. Naturally there were car thieves as work, along with pickpockets and sneak thieves and psychopathic individuals seizing upon this scene of confusion for their private undesirable purposes.
People became separated from one another and considered nothing more important than finding each other again. Children became thirsty and could imagine nothing more important than having something to drink immediately. People lost their wallets and their identifications, and almost their identities, in such a horde of other people as no living man had ever experienced before.
There could be no priorities in such chaos. Police cars could only be used to make barriers by which what traffic did move was forced to move in planned directions. Military vehicles could only try patiently to go where they were ordered, when the crowds permitted it. In the special roofed, glass-enclosed section of grandstand reserved for prime ministers and heads of state and others of high rank, the collapse of minutely detailed plans for their departure had to be acknowledged. It was decided to send helicopters for them.
Then it was realized that the only place where copters could land was where the Grek ship had lain. But that could not be used. The bombs, of course.
The great statesmen of the world graciously accepted the situation, even though the bombs were not referred to. They chatted in the manner appropriate to high officials called on to endure annoyance. And hordes and hordes and hordes of crawling cars inched through miles of stirred-up dust. Some of them emerged with snail-like slowness onto the highways.
Many found it impossible to go where they wanted to, but went anywhere they could, so long as it was away from where they'd been.
But some necessary things did get done. Members of the honor guard protecting the foreign visitors were pulled away from that task and set to guard the re-closed garbage pit. In one place, close to the grandstands, police cars were somehow formed into barriers enclosing an acre or two. The action created even greater confusion, and innumerable dented fenders, but helicopters began to descend into that small space. They multiplied the dust fog around it.
The helicopters brought very curious items of equipment. Canvas and poles to make a huge tent. Refrigerating units. The items needed to equip a biological laboratory for emergency research. Generators. Microscopes. Reagents. Even microtomes and centrifuges.
And there were three large copters which brought already cleared biologists and chemists and nuclear physicists and microscopists to the scene, and went away to bring back personnel tents, cots, food supplies, and such materials as would be needed by men doing highly varied research away from all normal conveniences. There were also FBI men to assist the military in security measures.
By late afternoon the ground was less than completely covered by dust clouds, outside the grandstands. At sundown, limousines previously held back began to carry official visitors away—often only to the nearest available airport. There was still a very great crowd to be moved, but it was possible to move motorcycle-escorted limousines with reasonable celerity. But an unofficial conference had begun in the glassed-in official area, and the prime ministers and/or heads of state a surprising mixture of countries found it possible to discuss certain items of international import under circumstances making for flexibility.
The copter-brought equipment almost seemed to set itself up for use. The lifting of the atomic bombs now rated second in order of importance. A tent spread over the pit. Other tents went up. Equipment joined together. There was power. Generators began to hum, and lights were supplied.
Clark gave instructions on the practices of archaeologists making a dig, but he discovered that much of his information did not apply. It didn't matter how deep these artifacts and other discoveries might be, or how they were placed in the pit. These were matters of great importance in studying ancient cultures. Here they mattered not at all.
Something close to assembly-line expertizing of material brought from the pit established itself. There were nine murdered Aldarians at the top of the pit, including the one Hackett and Lucy had tried to help. They had all been tortured, and all killed, undoubtedly at about the same time. The guess at the weapon which made their wounds was that it was on the order of a laser pistol. Only one Aldarian had the bone fractures which would later make it certain that he was the victim of an accident who had been X-rayed in a human hospital.
Lucy came away from the autopsy tent wringing her hands. "It's probably our fault," she said shakily. "We —made it certain the Greks would have him back. And they tortured and killed him. Why? Was it that—thing —he gave me? Did they suspect—Is it our fault?"
Hackett couldn't guess. He watched the swift and systematic excavation. There were some rags. Some crushed plastic containers which still held traces of foodstuffs. Broken plates, of plastic. Metal oddments— some quite reasonable, like broken knives and the like, and some entirely cryptic. But there were no mechanical items. There was much of the vegetation found at first. It looked as if there had been an excess of green stuff growing to keep the ship's air purified. Probably some part of the ship's food would be grown in the air-purifier tanks, too.
Ten feet down, in deposits of no special informativeness, they found another dead Aldarian. Lucy said evenly, "This is a female."
It was true. The Greks hadn't mentioned that there were Aldarians of both sexes on board the ship. This youthful female had not died naturally, either. She was probably about the same age as the crewmen that men had seen.
Two feet further down was a mass of broken-up crockery. There was also much foodstuff waste. Assorted trash. Three human skeletons, which had been alive when the Grek ship landed. They had been carefully dissected. The dissected-away material was found mixed with assorted culinary wastes. It gave some grisly information. The FBI was angered. The Greks had no right to kill and dissect human beings, however benevolent they might be in other ways. Then there was more vegetable waste, which looked familiar. A botanist immediately pronounced that some of it was terrestrial. They identified tundra grass from the arctic regions. Dwarf willows, also of arctic origin. Kidney ferns. These things did not grow in Ohio. The Greks had made explorations they'd failed to mention to their human hosts. Why?
There was an immature Aldarian, not more than half grown. His head was crushed as if by a violent blow. More trash, more cooking wastes, more broken objects—understandable and otherwise. Almost at the bottom of the garbage pit there were four more Aldarian dead, three male and one female. They'd died violently, too.