'No, there isn't,' I agreed, folding the paper and putting it in my pocket. 'That trace is as bare as your bank account. But we're not going to dig there. What we're going to do is go back and dig Site C.'
I lit another cigarette-lung cancer was the least of my worries just then-and thought for a minute while they waited, watching me. I was wondering how much to tell them of what I had spent five years finding out and figuring out, schooling myself not even to hint at it to anyone else. I was sure in my mind that nothing I said would make a difference anymore. Even so, the habits of years were strong. The words didn't want to say themselves.
It took a real effort for me to make myself start.
'You remember Subhash Vastra, the fellow who ran the trap where I met you? Sub came to Venus during his hitch with the military. He was a weapons specialist. There isn't any civilian career for a weapons specialist, especially on Venus, so he went into the cafй business with most of his termination bonus when he got out. Then he sent for his wives with the rest of it. But he was supposed to be pretty good at weaponry while he was in the service.'
'What are you saying, Audee?' Dornie asked. 'I never heard of any Heechee weapons.'
'No. Nobody has ever found a Heechee weapon. But Sub thinks they found targets.'
It was actually physically difficult for me to force my lips to speak the next part, but I got it out. 'Anyway, Sub Vastra thought they were targets. He said the higher brass didn't believe him, and I think the matter has been pigeonholed on the reservation now. But what they found was triangular pieces of Heechee wall material-that blue, light-emitting stuff they lined the tunnels with. There were dozens of the things. They all had a pattern of radiating lines; Sub says they looked like targets to him. And they had been drilled through, by something that left the holes as chalky as talcum powder. Do you happen to know of anything that will do that to Heechee wall material?'
Dornie was about to say she didn't, but Cochenour said it for her. 'That's impossible,' he said flatly.
'Right, that's what the brass told Sub Vastra. They decided that the holes were made in the process of fabrication, for some Heechee purpose we'll never know. Vastra doesn't believe that. Vastra says he figured they were just about the same as the paper targets soldiers use on the firing range. The holes weren't all in the same place. The lines looked to him like scoring markers. That's all the evidence there is that Vastra's right. Not proof. Even Vastra doesn't think it's proof. But it's evidence, anyway.'
'And you think you can find the gun that made those holes where we located Site C?' Cochenour asked.
I hesitated. 'I wouldn't put it that strongly. Call it a hope. Maybe even a very outside hope. But there's one more thing.
'These targets, or whatever they are, were turned up by a prospector nearly forty years ago. There wasn't any military reservation then. He turned them in to see if anybody would buy them, and nobody was very interested. Then he went out looking for something better, and after a while he got himself killed. That happened a lot in those days. No one paid much attention to the things until some military types got a look at them, and then somebody had the same idea Vastra had years later. So they got serious. They identified the site where he'd reported finding them, near the South Pole. They staked off everything for a thousand kilometers around and labeled it off limits: that's how come the reservation is where it is. And they dug and dug. They turned up about a dozen Heechee tunnels, but most of them were bare and the rest were cracked and spoiled. They didn't find anything like a weapon.'
'Then there's nothing there,' Cochenour growled, looking perplexed.
'There's nothing they found,' I corrected him. 'Remember, this was forty years ago.'
Cochenour looked at me, puzzled, then his expression cleared. 'Oh,' he said. 'The location of the find.'
I nodded. 'That's right. In those days prospectors lied a lot-if they found something good, they didn't want other people horning
in. So he gave the wrong location for his tunnel. At that time, he was shacked up with a young lady who later married a man named Allemang-her son, Booker, is a friend of mine. BeeGee. You met him. And he had a map.'
Cochenour was looking openly skeptical now. 'Oh, right,' he said sourly. 'The famous treasure map. And he just gave it to you out of friendship.'
'He sold it to me,' I said.
'Wonderful. How many copies do you suppose he sold other suckers.'
'Not many.' I didn't blame Cochenour for doubting the story, but he was rubbing me the wrong way. 'I got him right when he came back from trying to find it on his own; he didn't have time to try anybody else.' I saw Cochenour opening his mouth and went ahead to forestall him. 'No, he didn't find anything. Yes, he thought he followed the map. That's why I didn't have to pay much. But you see I think he missed the right place. The right location on the map, as near as I can figure-the navigation systems then weren't what they are now-is right about where we set down the first time, give or take some. I saw some digging marks a couple of times. I think they were pretty old.' I slipped the little private magnetofiche out of my pocket while I was talking and put it into the virtual map display. It showed one central mark, an orange X. 'That's where I think we might find the right tunnel, somewhere near that X. And, as you can see, that's pretty close to our old Site C.'
Silence for a minute. I listened to the distant outside rumble of the winds, waiting for the others to say something.
Dorrie was looking troubled. 'I don't know if I like the idea of trying to find a new weapon,' she said. 'It's-it's like bringing back the bad old days.'
I shrugged.
Cochenour was beginning to look more like himself again. 'The point isn't whether we really want to find a weapon, is it? The point is that we want to find an untapped Heechee dig for whatever's in
it. But the soldiers think there might be a weapon somewhere around, so they aren't going to let us dig, right?'
'Not 'think.' 'Thought.' I doubt any of them believe it anymore.
'All the same, they'll shoot us first and ask questions later. Isn't that what you said?'
'That's what I said. Nobody's ever allowed on the reservation without clearance. Not because of Heechee weapons; they've got lots of their own stuff there that they don't want people seeing.'
He nodded. 'So how do you propose to get around that little problem?' he asked.
If I were a completely truthful man I probably should have said that I wasn't sure I would get around it. Looked at honestly, the odds were pretty poor. We could easily get caught and, although I didn't think it was certain, very
