a good bobble hunter, Allison, but what good was it for anything else?' If you could see through literally everything, then you could see nothing.
'Oh, there is a very small amount of attenuation. This picture is from a single `exposure,' without any preprocessing. I was astounded to see anything on it. Normally, we'd take a continuous stream of exposures, through varying chords of the Earth's crust, then compute a picture of the target area. The math is pretty much like medical tomography.' She keyed another command string. 'Here's a sixty meter map I built from all our observations.'
Now the display showed intricate detail: A pink surface map of 1997 Livermore lay over the green, blue, and red representation of subsurface densities. Tunnels and other underground installations were obvious lines and rectangles in the picture.
Wili made an involuntary aping sound.
'So if we can figure out which of those things is the secret generator... ' said Mike.
'I think I can narrow it down quite a bit.' Paul stared intently at the display, already trying to identify function in the shapes.
'No need,' said Allison. 'We did a lot of analysis right on the sortie craft. I've got a database on the disk; I can subtract out everything the Air Force knew about.' She typed the commands.
And now the moment we've all been waiting for.' There was an edge of triumph in the flippancy. The rectangles dimmed all but one on the southwest side of the Livermore Valley.
'You did it, Allison!' Paul stood back from the display and grabbed her hands. For an instant she thought he would dance her around the room. But after an awkward moment, he just squeezed her hands.
As he turned back to the display, she asked, 'But can we be sure it's still there? If the Peacers know about this scanning technique-'
'They don't. I'm sure of it,' said Wili.
Paul laughed. 'We can do it, Mike! We can do it. Lord, I'm glad you all had the sense to push. I'd have sat here and let the whole thing die.'
Suddenly the other three were all talking at once.
'Look. I see answers to your objections, and I have a feeling that once we start to take it seriously we can find even better answers. First off, it's not impossible to get ourselves and some equipment up there. One horse-drawn wagon is probably enough. Using back roads, and our `invisibility,' we should be able to get at least to Fremont.'
'And then?' said Allison.
'There are surviving Tinkers in the Bay Area. We all attack, throw in everything we have. If we do it right, they won't guess we control their comm and recon until we have our bobbler right on top of them.'
Mike was grinning now, talking across the conversation at Wili. Allison raised her voice over the others'. 'Paul, this has more holes than-'
'Sure, sure. But it's a start.' The old man waved his hand airily, as if only trivial details remained. It was a typical Paulish gesture, something she remembered from the first day she met him. The 'details' were usually nontrivial, but it was surprising how often his harebrained schemes worked anyway.
THIRTY-THREE
'Eat Vandenberg Bananas. They Can't Be Beat.' The banner was painted in yellow on a purple background. The letters were shaped as though built out of little bananas. Allison said it was the most asinine thing she had ever seen. Below the slogan, smaller letters spelled, 'Andrews Farms, Santa Maria.'
The signs were draped along the sides of their wagons. A light plastic shell was mounted above the green cargo. At every stop Allison and Paul carefully refilled the evap coolers that hung between the shell and the bananas. The two banana wagons were among the largest horse-drawn vehicles on the highway.
Mike and the Santa Maria Tinkers had rigged a hidden chamber in the middle of each wagon. The front wagon carried the bobbler and the storage cells; the other contained Wili, Mike, and most of the electronics.
Wili sat at the front of the cramped chamber and tried to see through the gap in the false cargo. No air was ducted from the coolers while they were stopped. Without it, the heat of the ripening bananas and the summer days could be a killer. Behind him, he felt Mike stir restlessly. They both spent the hottest part of the afternoons trying to nap. They weren't very successful; it was just too hot. Wili suspected they must stink so bad by now that the Peacers would smell them inside.
Paul's stooped figure passed through Wili's narrow field of view. His disguise was pretty good; he didn't look anything like the blurred pictures the Peacers were circulating. A second later he saw Allison — in farmer's-daughter costume — walk by. There was a slight shifting of the load and the monotonous clopclopclop of the team resumed. They pulled out of the rest stop, past a weigh station moldering toward total ruin.
Wili pressed his face against the opening, both for the air and the view. They were hundreds of kilometers from Los Angeles; he had expected something more exciting. After all, the area around Vandenberg was almost a jungle. But no. Except for a misty stretch just after Salinas, everything stayed dry and hot. Through the hole in the bananas, he could see the ground rising gently ahead of them, sometimes golden grass, sometimes covered with chaparral. It looked just like the Basin, except that the ruins were sparse and
