In a moment the Defense communicator came back, loud as ever. 'You are eleven point four kilometers bearing two eight three degrees from terminator of a restricted area. Proceed with caution. Under Military Regulations One Seven and One Eight, Sections-'
'I know the drill,' I cut in. 'I have my guide's license and have explained the restrictions to the passengers.'
'Acknowledged,' blared the radio. 'We will keep you under surveillance. If you observe vessels or parties on the surface, they are our perimeter teams. Do not interfere with them in any way. Respond at once to any request for identification or information.' The carrier buzz cut off.
'They act nervous,' Cochenour said.
'No. That's how they always are. They're used to seeing people like us around. They've got nothing else to do with their time, that's all.'
Dorrie said hesitantly, 'Audee, you told them you'd explained the restrictions to us. I don't remember that part.'
'Oh, I explained them, all right. We stay out of the restricted area, because if we don't they'll start shooting. That is the Whole of the Law.'
VII
I set a wake-up for four hours, and the others heard me moving around and got up, too. Dorrie fetched us coffee from the warmer,
and we stood drinking it and looking at the patterns the probe computer had traced.
I took several minutes to study them, although the patterns were clear enough at first look. They showed eight major anomalies that could have been Heechee warrens. One was almost right outside our door. We wouldn't have to move the airbody to dig for it.
I showed them the anomalies, one by one. Cochenour just studied them thoughtfully. Dorotha asked, 'You mean all of those blobs are unexplored tunnels?'
'No. Wish they were. But even if they were: One, any or all of them could have been explored by somebody who didn't go to the trouble of recording it. Two, they don't have to be tunnels. They could be fracture faults, or dikes, or little rivers of some kind of molten material that ran out of somewhere and hardened and got covered over a billion years ago. The only thing we know for sure
so far is that there probably aren't any unexplored tunnels in this area except in those eight places.'
'So what do we do?'
'We dig. And then we see what we've got.'
Cochenour asked, 'Where do we dig?'
I pointed right next to the bright delta shape of our airbody. 'Right here.'
'Is that the best bet?'
'Well, not necessarily.' I considered what to tell him and decided to experiment with the truth. 'There are three traces altogether that look like better bets than the others-here, I'll mark them.' I keyed the chart controls, and the three good traces immediately displayed letters: A, B, and C. 'A is the one that runs right under the arroyo here, so we'll dig it first.'
'The brightest ones are best, is that it?'
I nodded.
'But C over here is the brightest of the lot. Why don't we dig that first?'
I chose my words carefully. 'Partly because we'd have to move the airbody. Partly because it's on the outside perimeter of the survey area; that means the results aren't as reliable as right around the ship. But those aren't the most important reasons. The most important reason is that C is on the edge of the line our itchy-fingered Defense friends are telling us to stay away from.'
Cochenour snickered incredulously. 'Are you telling me that if you find a real untouched Heechee tunnel you'll stay out of it just because some soldier tells you it's a no-no?'
I said, 'The problem doesn't arise. We have seven legal anomalies to look at. Also-the military will be checking us from time to time. Particularly in the next day or two.'
'All right,' Cochenour insisted, 'suppose we come up empty on the legal ones. What then?'
'I never borrow trouble.'
'But suppose.'
'Damn it, Boyce! How do I know?'
He gave it up then, but winked at Dorrie and chuckled. 'What did I tell you, honey? He's a bigger bandit than I am!'
But she was looking at me, and what she said was 'Why are you that color?'
I fobbed her off, but when I looked in the mirror I could see that even the whites of my eyes were turning yellowish.
The next few hours we were too busy to talk about theoretical possibilities. We had some concrete facts to worry about.
The biggest concrete fact was an awful lot of high-temperature, high-pressure gas that we had to keep from killing us. That was what the heatsuits were for. My own suit was custom-made, of course, and needed only the fittings and tanks to be checked. Boyce and the girl had rental units. I'd paid top dollar for them, and they were good. But good isn't perfect. I had them in and out of the suits half a dozen times, checking the fit and making adjustments until they were as right as I could get them. The suits were laminated twelve-ply, with nine degrees of freedom at the essential joints, and
their own little fuel batteries. They wouldn't fail. I wasn't worried about failure. What I was worried about was comfort, because a very small itch or rub can get serious when there's no way to stop
