The video of the silvery gourds and van was replaced by a typical press conference scene, with a slender, thirtyish man in a brown suit standing behind a clear plastic podium, reading a prepared statement: "We have communicated with these objects, and we can now affirm that they are not living creatures, but robots, representing the builders of the spacecraft—it is now confirmed to be a spacecraft—buried within the rock. While the actual communications are still being analyzed and will not be released immediately, the substance of the information supplied was positive, that is, not threatening or alarming in any fashion."

"Jesus bloody Christ," Hicks said.

The image of the hovering gourds returned. "They're flying," Hicks said. "What's holding them up? Come on, you bastards. Do your job and say what the bloody hell's going on."

"Commentary from world leaders, including the Pope, after these messages—"

Hicks flung his arms out and swore, kicked the cabinet holding the television, and punched the set off. He could spend another three hundred dollars chasing rumors across all the networks and bulletin boards in the world, or—

Or he could stop being a novelist wallah and start being a journalist again by finding the news behind the news. Certainly not in Australia. The Great Victoria Desert, by now, had representatives of the media three-deep, trying to interview every grain of sand.

A faint memory of some obligation suddenly flared into consciousness. He had had an appointment this morning. "Damn." That single word, said almost happily, adequately expressed his slight irritation at having forgotten the local television interview. He should have been at the studio five hours ago. It hardly seemed to matter. He was on to something.

The "Furnace" . . . Where in hell would that be? Somewhere near Vandenberg, apparently. He had visited Vandenberg seven times in his career, twice covering important combined civilian-military shuttle launches to polar orbit. Hicks pulled out his pocket compact disk player from a suitcase and hooked it into the computer. He indexed the World Atlas sector on his reference disk and searched through the F's in the gazetteer. "Furnace, furnace, furnace—"

He quickly found several Furnaces, the first in Argyll County, Scotland. There was also Furnace, Kentucky, and Furnace L ("What is L, lake?") in County Mayo, Ireland. Furnace, Massachusetts . . . And Furnace Creek, California. He entered the map number and coordinates. In less than two seconds, he had a detailed color map of an area a hundred kilometers square. A flashing icon in the lower left-hand corner indicated a comparative satellite photograph was available. His eye searched the map until an arrow appeared, flashing next to a tiny dot.