As he eased over the lip of the valley, he saw the caves, or rather, storage areas, cut into the protected side of the face of a lower level canyon cutting through the middle of the valley. There were more buildings down there, too, and some kind of strange pylons, but it was the 'caves' that interested him most. Regular, ovoid holes cut into the earth and rock that were then plugged with something rather like cement, a substance slightly different in color from the surrounding earth and stone. Those nearest him were still sealed; those nearest the building with the appearing/disappearing roof were open.
He worked his way down the valley to the buildings and found to his relief that there was actually a kind of staircase cut into the rock, going down to the second level. Protected from the worst of the weather by the building in front of it, while it was a bit slippery, it wasn't as hazardous as his descent into the valley had been. It was a good thing that the contents of Hank's cabin and the holos the man had taken had prepared him for what he saw.
The wall of the valley where the storage caves had been opened looked like the inside of Ali Baba's cave. The storage caches proved to be much smaller than Alex had thought; the 'window' slits in the nearby building were tiny, as might have been expected in a place with the kind of punishing weather this planet had. That had made the caches themselves appear much larger in the holos. In reality, they were about as tall as his waist and no deeper than two or three meters. That was more than enough to hold a king's ransom in treasure.
Much hadn't even been taken. In one of the nearest, ceramic statuary and pottery had been left behind as worthless, some had been broken by careless handling, and Alex winced.
There were dozens of caches that had been opened and cleaned out; perhaps a dozen more with less- desirable objects still inside. There were dozens more, still sealed, running down the length of the canyon wall.
And one whose entrance had been sealed with some kind of a heat-weapon, a weapon that had been turned on the entrance until the rock slagged and melted metal ran with it, mingling and forming a new, permanent plug.
'Do you think that's where the plague bug came from?' Tia asked in his ear.
'I think it's a good bet, anyway,' he said absently. 'I sure hope so, anyway.'
Suddenly, with the prospect of contamination looming large in his mind, the shine of metal and sheen of priceless ceramic lost its allure. Whether it is or isn't, there is no way I am going to crack this suit, I don't care what is out there. Hank and the other man drifted in his memory like grisly ghosts. The suit, no longer a prison, had just become the most desirable place in the universe. Oh, I just love this suit.
Nevertheless, he moved forward towards the already-opened caches, augmenting the fading light with his suit-lamp. The caches themselves were very old; that much was evident from the weathering and buildup of debris and dirt along the side of the canyon wall. The looters must have opened up one of the caches out of sheer curiosity or by accident while looking for something else. Perhaps they had been exploring the area with an eye to a safe haven. Whatever had led them to uncover the first, they had then cleared away the buildup all along the wall, exposing the rest. And it looked as if the loot of a thousand worlds had been tucked away here.
He began taking careful holos of every thing that had been left behind, Tia recording the tiniest details as he covered every angle, every millimeter. At least this way, if anything more was smashed there would be a record of it. Some things he picked up and stashed in his pack to bring back with him, a curious metal book, for instance.
Alex moved forward again, reaching out for a discarded ceramic statue of some kind of winged biped.
'Alec!' Tia exclaimed urgently. He started back, his hand closing on empty air.
'What?' he snapped. 'I,'
'Alex, you have to get back here now,' she interrupted. 'The alarms just went off. They're back, and they're heading in to land right now!'
'Alex!' Tia cried, as her readouts showed the pirates making their descent burn and Alex moving away from her, not back in. 'Alex, what are you doing?'
Dusk was already making it hard to see out there, even for her. She couldn't imagine what it was like for him.
'I'm going to hide out in the upper level of one of these buildings and watch these clowns,' Alex replied calmly. 'There's a place up on this one where I can get in at about the second-story level, see?'
He was right; the structure of the building gave him easy hand and foot holds up to the window-slits on the second floor. Once there, since the building had fallen in at that point, he would be able to hide himself up above eye-level. And with the way that the blizzard was kicking up, his tracks would be hidden in a matter of moments.
'But,' she protested. 'You're all alone out there!' She tried to keep her mind clear, but a thousand horrible possibilities ran around and around inside her thoughts, making her frantic. 'There's no way I can help you if you're caught!'
