Rick had turned his attention to the more mysterious-looking mechanisms, when he heard Con call out his name. She was standing barefoot at the edge of the cliff with an exultant expression on her face. It reminded him of the look she had after they encountered the Tyranno-saurs.
'Wow!' she said. 'What's that?'
'Con!' yelled Rick. He did not know whether he felt more startled, annoyed, worried, or impressed, and his voice reflected his uncertainty. 'What are you doing here?'
Con walked over to the rim of the circular depression. 'Never keep a woman waiting,' she said by way of ex- planation. Then she turned her attention back to the ma-chine. 'This is really incredible!'
'Your foot's bleeding,' said Rick with as much au-thority as he could muster.
'Just a scrape. Stop being my nursemaid.'
'You could have been killed!'
'But I wasn't,' said Con with a note of finality. 'Now . . . What do you think this is?' Rick started to say something, but stopped. After a mo-ment's silence he said, 'It's a time machine. I'm sure of it. See the cylinder in the column?'
Con stepped on the black-paneled slope to walk down to the machine. She quickly pulled back her foot.
'It's cold!' she said with surprise. As she watched, her dusty footprint blurred, then flowed off the black surface like water, leaving it perfectly clean.
'The black stuff is some form of energy collector, like a solar panel,' said Rick. 'It won't hurt you.' Con walked quickly down to the machine. 'Look at my footprints,' she told Rick. 'This place cleans itself.'
Rick watched the prints disappear. 'Everything only looks new. This machine could have been here for years.'
Con circled the saucer, peering inside with excited fas-cination. A lensed device swiveled as she passed. Con made a short hop backward. 'It's watching me!'
'Yeah. Let's hope Joe isn't also.'
'You still worrying about him?'
'How can't I?' asked Rick. 'He said there was only one time machine. What else did he lie about?
Every-thing?'
Con looked concerned. 'You're not planning some-thing crazy?'
'What do you mean by 'crazy'?'
'You know perfectly well,' replied Con. 'You were talking about killing and sabotage earlier. Don't do any-thing drastic. Promise you won't.'
'What if my suspicions are true?'
'If they are, I'll help you stop them. I will. Just don't be hasty. We have time to figure things out.'
'I won't do anything rash,' said Rick.
Con appeared satisfied by Rick's promise, for she turned her attention back to the time machine. She walked around it slowly, minutely examining each part. After several minutes of silence, she pronounced,
'I think it's an observatory, but not just for the stars. It seems to observe everything.'
'Maybe it's one of those probes Joe told me about,' said Rick.
'See?' said Con triumphantly. 'He wasn't lying. You were worried about nothing.' She turned and began making faces at a lens, while Rick watched in amusement. In a mechanical voice he said, 'This probe reports it found no intelligent life.' Con stuck out her tongue at him. The time machine did not yield any further informa-tion, and Rick wandered off to explore the rest of the mesa top. Con joined him. The view from the cliff top was spectacular, but Rick scarcely noticed it. He had a more pressing concern—he hoped to find a different route down. Descending a chimney was considerably more difficult than ascending one, and he was concerned that Con would not be up to it. He said nothing about this to her. It was too late for that. Besides, he wanted her to remain confident; panicked climbers make mis-takes.
