Epilog

The man was rather ironically young, actually much younger than I was expecting. We met at the small building I'd had constructed where the old and blocky office had stood. He seemed to take personal offense at the fact that I'd had the new, very small structure put up with my own money on my own property. Of course, like many archeologists, he seemed to take any deliberate change to the landscape as a personal offense.

"This will have to come down, of course," he huffed. "We're going to excavate this entire area. That building was here for over a century, and we need to study everything left."

I wondered how he'd react to the British attitude about history, where buildings which were only a little over a century old were considered new. Where you could have an Elizabethan restoration of a Tudor building on Saxon foundations over Roman ruins erected on an Iron Age fort which was built on a Stone Age butchery. All put there because of the view. With the excavation of any of those prohibited by the presence of modern utilities. Which reminded me...

"Ah, no," I told him. "There's nothing left here. Even the utility connections to this building are new, put in for the public restrooms. I made sure everything was removed from inside the existing poured, concrete foundations of the old building, first thing. It was all put in that big pile you can see in the northwest corner of the park. If you want to sort through that, feel free. However, the only thing currently inside the foundations is fill dirt, brought here from elsewhere."

"You dug it all out?!" said the man, outraged. "That means there's no provenance, no context!"

"Well, at the time I wanted to make sure there was no danger," I pointed out. I actually understood his pain. I had an interest in history and prehistory, after all. "I was already planning to make this area a playground and park. If you wanted to examine what was left of that building - which wasn't much, I assure you, and most of what was inside the foundation had fallen there from outside the old building - you should have said something sooner."

I was in my base form, which was the ID for which I owned the land. Though I could probably have been there as Lorraine, naked, and he would have barely noticed that there was anything unusual about me. He was that focused on his mission. Also, this was California...

"We didn't know anything about the demolition until it was all over!" he said, as if their ignorance was my fault.

"My offer stands," I said, unsympathetically. "Take it or leave it."

In the end, he took it.

* * *

"Bugs?!" said Vic.

"In the phones, the Commissioner's intercom, the walls, the lights... No wonder the bad guys knew about Harmody. The FBI found dozens of listening devices in just the preliminary search. Some had been in place for years. Many probably weren't even working any more. Though some appeared to have been put in place since the new Commissioner took over."

"Well, that explains a lot," said Vic, nodding. "Hopefully, our work will go smoother, now."

"Hopefully."

"Uhm, you did have them check here..."

"Of course. Also, the FBI checked the rest of the federal building. We're clear."

* * *

The new Intrepids' base had some of the best computer facilities in the world. Not only because of the massively parallel system currently housing Bunter but because of its connections to important data centers.

"You've been doing a lot of work on the computer, recently," said Bowman, as he once again came across the Black Mask sitting at a terminal like a cloud of darkness, starting intently at the screen. "What's up?"

"I'm doing research. Do you recall how old were the rocks the Moon Scouts dug into?"

"About 4 billion years. They're part of the Acasta Gneiss of the Slave craton in northwestern Canada."

"Yes. About the same age as that crater where Janos Rukh found that semi-stable transuranic element."

"Well, those rocks were about half as old as the Canadian rocks and the crater was even younger," said Bowman, frowning. "What's your point?"

"You know the Marligt were digging in the Gobi desert, in the Thirties," said the Black Mask. "They were in an area where - according to my research - the oldest rocks are less than three hundred million years old."

"Yeah..."

"The paleontologists thought the extensive excavations were due to the aliens were attempting to create a base for conquest," said the Black Mask. "That they were intended for foundations and underground facilities. What if they were actually looking for something? What if the reason they left was less because the paleontologists caused them so much difficulty, than that they didn't find what they were looking for?"

"Like what?"

"What if aliens with near-miraculous technology were after something we - and even they - might see as actually miraculous?"

"The Marligt were looking in the wrong place."

"Yes. I suspect they were after the same thing as the Moon Scouts and that computer on the Moon which empowered them, but the Marligt picked rocks which were too young. Much too young. Though, thanks to their unfamiliarity with terrestrial geology, they didn't know that. Presumably, they would have learned if they had persisted."

"So what were they after? That semi-stable transuranic Rukh found?"

"Possibly. That element is now believed to be what remains of some sort of advanced power plant, possibly from a spacecraft.

"So, I think we need to examine the hole the Moon Scouts made. We know there have been multiple alien excursions to Earth, and most in retrospect do not appear to have been acts of conquest. What if they were all looking for some remnant of an ancient civilization? Something which fell to Earth long ago?"

"That wouldn't necessarily be in rocks of that age," said Bowman, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I mean, any artifacts would not necessarily be as old as the rocks they wound up in. The crater Rukh found was made in rocks which were already old when the meteorite hit. So maybe whatever they were looking for was caught in our gravity and fell here much later? That would explain why the Marligt were in the central Gobi, and why the Moon Scouts didn't have to dig very deep. Whatever it was would have been in a crater which at the time of the impact was on the surface. Then later that filled in. Also, the Earth has active geology. Things do fill in, and wash downhill, and move around due to plate tectonics. Even glaciers move things, as was recently demonstrated with the t'melk creatures off Greenland."

"Exactly. I have largely exhausted my suitable knowledge in this search and would appreciate your help in further research. Perhaps together we can determine what everyone was after. As well as whether any of it is left."