Neither could he posit any other explanation.

They walked once again around the base of the mound at midmorning. The sun was already high in the flat, still blue sky. It was going to be a hot day. Red-haired, stocky Reslaw sipped coffee from a green-enameled Thermos bottle, a serviceable antique purchased in a rock-and-junk shop in Shoshone; Edward chewed on a granola bar and sketched details in a small black cloth-bound notebook. Minelli trailed them, idly chipping at boulders with a rock pick, his loose, lanky form, unkempt black hair, and pale skin giving him the appearance of a misplaced urban scrounger.

He stopped ten yards behind Edward. "Hey," he called out. "Did you see this?"

"What?"

"A hole."

Edward turned back. Reslaw glanced back at them, shrugged, and continued around the mound to the north.

The hole was about a meter wide and slanted upward into the mass of the mound. Edward had not seen it because it began in deep shadow, under a ledge illuminated by the warm rays of the sun. "It's not a flow tube. Look how smooth," Minelli said. "No collapse, no patterns."

"Bad geology," Edward commented. If the mound is a fake, then this is the first mistake.

"Hm?"

"It's not natural. Looks like some prospector got here before us."

"Why dig a hole in a cinder cone?"

"Maybe it's an Indian cave," Edward offered lamely. The hole disturbed him.

"Indians with diamond drills? Not likely," Minelli said with a faint edge of scorn. Edward ignored his tone and stepped on a lava boulder to get a better look up into the darkness. He pulled a flashlight from his belt and squeezed it to shine a beam into the depths. Smooth-bored matte-finish lava walls absorbed the light beyond eight or ten meters; to that point, the tunnel was straight and featureless, inclining upward at about thirty degrees.

"Do you smell something?" Minelli asked.

Edward sniffed. "Yeah. What is it?"

"I'm not sure . . ."

The odor was faint and smooth and sweet, slightly acrid. It did not encourage further investigation. "Like a lab smell," Minelli said.

"That's it," Edward agreed. "Iodine. Crystalline iodine."

"Right."

Minelli's forehead wrinkled in a mock fit of manic speculation. "Got it," he said. "This is a junkie rock. A sanitary junkie cinder cone."

Edward ignored him again. Minelli was infamous for a sense of humor so strange it hardly ever produced anything funny. "Needle mark," Minelli explained in an undertone, realizing his failure. "You still think this isn't a map mistake?"

"If you found a street in New York City, not on any map, wouldn't you be suspicious?"

"I'd call up the mapmakers."

"Yeah, well, this place is as crowded as New York City, as far as geologists are concerned."

"All right," Minelli conceded. "So it's new. Just popped up out of nowhere."

"That sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?" Edward said.

"Your idea, not mine."

Edward backed away from the hole and suppressed a shiver. A new mole and it won't go away; a blemish that shouldn't be here.