"We've all heard about 'em," another marine named Huckle said. "Some guys are full of stories."

"Still," Lake said, "these men aren't prone to seeing things that aren't there. The reports are few, but interesting."

Patricia nodded. "Are there any plans to descend into a well?"

"Not so far," Takahashi said. "We have other problems to face."

She looked down at the plug, rubbing her boot across the surface. "I'd like to see the complete expedition report when we get back," she said.

For the first time, a solution had presented itself—even as they talked—that had survived the first level of criticism. She looked up at the inverted dish, at the minutely active colors.

"Shall we return, then?" Takahashi asked.

"I think so," Patricia said.

The Frant used an adapted pictor to project the objects and landscapes around them and camouflage their activity in and about the tent. The two guards, dressed in black, might hear Olmy if he was especially noisy, but they wouldn't see him. He walked within a few dozen centimeters of one guard on his way to the box that served Patricia Luisa Vasquez as a desk.

He was particularly interested in the young woman; from what he had heard, she was becoming central to the group's endeavors. And if she was the same woman he had heard the Engineer speak of. . .

On the box, notes filled perhaps fifty sheets of paper, arranged in no apparent order. Many of the notes were scribbled over or heavily blacked out; sometimes entire pages, except for a few square centimeters of equations or diagrams, were obscured by hard-pressed pencil marks. He leafed through the sheets quietly, puzzling over Patricia's private notation.

A slate lay on one corner, its silver-gray screen blank. A memory block had been plugged into the aperture in the right side of the slate, just above the small keyboard. Olmy glanced around, checking for the position of the guards, and kneeled beside the slate, turning it on. Learning how to use the antique was not difficult; in a few minutes, he had it rapidly scrolling up the contents of the memory block. He recorded the series of files in his implant for later analysis; this took about four minutes.

From what he could see and understand of her work, she was quite advanced for her century.

He was arranging the papers into their previous order when a guard came around the corner of the tent and stared in his direction. Olmy stood slowly, certain the picted camouflage was still effective.

"You hear anything, Norman?" Sergeant Jack Teague asked his colleague.

"No."

"Puff of wind or something? I could have sworn I heard these papers moving."

"Just another boojum, Jack."