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"Remember, the buildings here collapsed from age. It could be almost anything. Clear the area around the canister instead of trying to muscle it out."

"Yes, Doctor."

As the two laborers resumed their activity, Edolis sighed silently. He would have preferred to have skilled people doing the excavations, but he was under extreme pressure to find the canister as quickly as possible so he was forced to use all available resources. Even now, when trained people were available to take over the excavation, he had to let the laborers continue at their task. The trained workers would resist a quick removal and would probably take several days to carefully extricate the canister lest they damage other relics in the immediate area. The laborers only had their eyes on the bonuses promised for a speedy recovery.

Despite an intensive effort that ignored possible damage to other relics, it still took another hour to raise the prize. Two large sections of rock, presumably decorative wall sections from the collapsed building, had pinned it solidly in place until an oh-gee crane was brought in to remove the wall rubble.

"At last," Dr. Edolis said as he held the canister in his hands. Turning to address the gathering he said loudly, "Clean your digging tools and store them properly, then take the rest of the day off. The next two days will be paid leave for everyone except food service and other support personnel."

A cheer erupted and everyone raced back to where they had been working so they could wrap up for the day.

"Is that it, doctor?" Edolis' assistant asked, pointing to the canister.

"I believe so, William. I don't want to open it out here to check the contents. Let's take it back to my shelter where we can clean the cylinder first and then examine the contents away from prying eyes."

The canister wasn't really that heavy, but at one hundred twenty-six years, Dr. Edolis no longer had the strength required to carry it all the way back to his shelter. His assistant, just eighty-three years young on his last birthday, was able to handle the sixty-pound container alone and insisted upon doing just that to prevent Edolis from straining himself.

Once in the shelter, Edolis and his assistant washed the canister carefully, then spent the better part of an hour trying to open it. In the end, they had to admit the container had been slightly bent out of round by the weight of the wall sections between which it had been wedged. It wasn't grossly damaged— just enough so that the lid wouldn't unscrew, but that prevented it from being opened. Dr. Edolis finally sent for the labor supervisor, who happened to be one of the last people in the camp, everyone else having washed up and left for town as soon as they could.

"You see the problem, Josef?" Dr. Edolis asked. "The top won't unscrew."

"Yes, Doctor. I see the problem. It's out of round and will never open easily. We'll have to force it. I'll have to get a torch and a few tools. I'll be right back."

Twenty minutes later, Josef returned with the tools he would need to open the canister. He ignited the torch and began applying a low heat evenly around the top, hoping heat expansion would be enough to overcome the slight deformity.

It wasn't. When the processes entailing gentle persuasion didn't work, Josef moved to the more serious tools. He clamped an enormous pipe wrench around the middle of the canister and fastened a long steel bar to the handle on the top. Again he applied heat evenly around the top for several minutes, then turned off the torch and laid the canister on its side on the floor. Placing his foot on the pipe wrench to hold the canister down, he applied as much of his body weight as possible to the steel bar. The top still refused to budge.

"That's the best I can do without damaging the canister," Josef said as he straightened up from the last effort and set the canister back on the table. "We can take it down to Los Aliosis and put it into the hydraulic twisting clamp assembly they have there. It can torque up to five thousand foot-pounds. I'm sure it would have that open in a few seconds."

"We need it open now," Dr. Edolis said. "Cut it, Josef."

"But that will permanently damage the container, Doctor."

"I realize that. Cut it open, Joseph, but only at the end so you don't damage the contents any more than necessary."

"You're the boss, Doctor Edolis," Josef said as he grabbed the laser torch and set the cutting depth.

Josef shook the canister to settle the contents towards the bottom, then began to cut as high around the top as possible. An inrush of air made a hissing noise as the canister was first punctured. It was a good sign; the vacuum had been intact. Josef continued cutting around the top of the container while Dr. Edolis' assistant sprayed the area just cut with a coolant.

When the top was being held on by a mere spec of metal, Josef stopped cutting and waited until the coolant spray and been applied. Slipping on a pair of thick work gloves, he grabbed the top and bent it backwards.

Dr. Edolis immediately rushed forward and pushed Josef away from the canister. "Thank you, Josef. That will be all. You probably want to head to town like the others."

"Someone has to stay and watch the camp so we don't have scavengers ransacking the shelters," Josef said as he picked up the tools. "I don't mind. I sort of like the peace and quiet. Besides, I've lost enough money to those chiseling SOBs in the casinos."

"Then I hope you have a peaceful evening."

"Thanks, Doc. You too. Goodnight, Mr. Portnoy."

"Goodnight, Josef," Portnoy said as he closed the door.

"It's here, Edolis said as he reached into the wrecked contained and withdrew a black cylinder about the size of holo-tube cylinder.

"What's so important about that object?" William asked. "It looks rather useless to me. Does it open?"

"As I understand it, it's a piece to a puzzle that will allow Space Command to open the facility the Loudescott people uncovered. I have no idea how it will do that, but perhaps these symbols etched into the ends provide the necessary clues. In any event, we can return to our previous schedule now and this will get that damn loan-shark off my back."

"How do you figure Cozarro fits into this?"

"No idea, but he said that if we didn't make a maximum effort to find this, he was going to start having his thugs break legs and heads, starting with mine. I've never heard of Space Command employing such tactics before, but I never doubted Cozarro was serious. I wonder how much they paid him to force us into finding this as quickly as possible."

As William returned to his shelter, Edolis relaxed with a double bourbon on the rocks. The liquor warmed his insides and made him feel better than he had in days. Although he'd never tell anyone, the threat from Cozarro had nothing to do with Space Command but arose from Edolis' failure to pay up on his gambling debts. But the gambler
had
promised to wipe the slate clean if Edolis found the cylinder quickly.

* * *

"The sixth cylinder has finally been found and has been sent to Commander Carver at Loudescott," Councilman Ahil Fazid announced as he gave his weekly status report in the Raider Lower Council meeting.

"It's about time," Chairman Strauss said. "It's costing us a small fortune to keep our people hidden in readiness for their attack on Loudescott. What of the cylinder the warehouse misplaced? That's all Carver needs to complete her work, is it not?"

"We've been unable to ascertain exactly how the cylinders fit into the picture," Ahil said. "Carver has told no one at Loudescott, except possibly her assistant, Lt. Carmoody. Since Carmoody is Space Command, there's little chance she'll pass on the information to any of the archeological people.

"But we
have
been able to locate the cylinder that was missing from the warehouse. By pressuring our people who work there, we discovered that one of them had stolen it to sell on the black market. We tracked it down, but the buyer was unwilling to part with it. We were forced to use extreme prejudice with him. Following the recovery, it was returned to the warehouse where it was placed in a box of artifacts scheduled to be examined the next day. When it was identified as having been misfiled, it was sent to the proper section. The people there immediately recognized it and forwarded it to Carver.

"And the employee who stole it for personal profit?" Councilman Bosworth asked.

"He was disciplined, most severely. I doubt he will ever again steal anything from the warehouse without orders or permission."

"While the cylinder was in our possession, did we examine it?" Strauss asked.

"Yes, I've been assured that it's just a solid cylinder of lightweight composite metal with two symbols etched into the end surfaces. Other than its value as an artifact, it's nothing special."

"So Carver has all the pieces now?" Councilwoman Overgaard asked.

"If she doesn't have the sixth cylinder yet, she should have it within hours."

"Very good," Strauss said. "Make sure our people are put on alert. We may need to send them at any time."

* * *

"Our ghost is gone," Gxidescu reported. "We've not seen a single sign of him in eleven days."

"Does the captain agree?" Vejrezzol asked.

"He does. He says that if they were still there, we would have caught sight of their sensor reflection at least once during those days."

"Excellent. It's time to take over the ship. You know what to do."

"Yes. I'll see to it immediately."

* * *

"So, now that we have all six cylinders," Carmoody said, "what do we do with them? There are still eighteen
billion
possible combinations."

"I think we might narrow that down a bit using the letters engraved in the cylinders."

The characters from the ancient alphabet?"

"Yes. I've run them through an un-scrambler and come up with two possibilities in the ancient tongue. One, translated to Amer, means 'rodent hole.'"

"How delightful," Carmoody said facetiously.

"Yes," Christa said with a smile, "but the other means 'heritage.'"

"Heritage? Now we're talking. I'd go with that one."

"The question is: Go where? I agree 'heritage' sounds a lot more appropriate as a key than 'rodent hole,' but how do we apply it? Is it supposed to be stated aloud? Is it part of a popular phrase or saying from that period used to remind everyone which phrase must be read aloud, or is it simply a one-word utterance?"

"Good questions all," Carmoody said. "Here's another suggestion. Since there are six letters in their word for heritage, perhaps that's the order the cylinders should be applied to the circles, left to right."

"That sounds reasonable. Good thinking. If true, it means we've just cut the possible unknown combinations from eighteen billion to just three billion."

Carmoody smiled and said, "Wonderful. The door is practically open."

* * *

Weeks later, the two women seemed no closer to opening the facility than when they first arrived on the planet.

"This is getting us nowhere," Christa said as they sat in the tunnel staring at the door. "There's something we've overlooked in all this, or possibly misinterpreted."

"Let's review what we've tried," Carmoody said. "We've placed the cylinders on the circles in the order required for 'heritage.' We're assuming the thirty-eight positions on the circles represent the twenty-eight letters of the ancient alphabet plus the first ten digits in a base-10 number system and that the numbers follow the letters. Counting from twelve o'clock, we've aligned each cylinder with the position represented by the symbol on that cylinder, then moved the cylinder within each circle, one mark at a time for all circles, until we had tried all thirty-eight marks as the starting position. Then we did the same thing over again assuming that the numbers preceded the letters in the layout. When that didn't work, we tried a progression system where only one circle at a time was altered, and we did that with the numbers and letters in both arrangements. When that failed to produce results, we did it in reverse order. Are you sure of the order they used for their alphabet?"

"Yes. It was used the same way in every reference document found in the files we recovered."

"If the people who possessed the cylinders were the highest ranking people in the Regional Cultural Centers, then it stands to reason they were older officials. How did they see the marks on the door? We're both young and yet we can barely see the etched lines when our noses are practically pressed against the surface."

"That's a good point, Gracie," Christa said. "We're only able to see them when the light is coming from the side and the etched lines create a slight shadow."

"Perhaps there are marks we can't see with the light from the Chembrite panels. Who knows what kind of light source they would have used in this tunnel."

"That's true. What we need is hyperspectral projector capable of projecting the entire range from ultraviolet through infrared. I'd bet they don't have one on the planet and, even if they did, I wouldn't ask to borrow it. We've already told them too much about the leads we're following."

"We had several portable units aboard the Heisenberg, but they're a very long way from here."

"I'll contact Admiral Holt and request that one be sent to us as quickly as possible. In the meantime, let's continue to work on finding the right combination just in case the hyperspectral projector is a bust. Why don't we try reversing the order of the cylinders in the circles?"

"Might as well," Carmoody said. "It might be a month before we get the projector."

* * *

Almost two weeks later, a ship arrived in orbit over the Loudescott location just before sunset and a shuttle immediately began the descent to the surface. The Diplomatic Corps emblem on the Space Command shuttle drew Christa's eyes as she watched the small ship park next to her shuttle. It was another five minutes before the hatch opened and a Space Command Lieutenant emerged. He strode purposefully to where Christa was standing and came to attention. He had been told to report to Lt. Commander Carver, and years of media coverage allowed him to recognize her immediately.