He was right. The road led across a wide shelf, perhaps fifty feet below the top of the mesa. On the far side of the shelf the road dipped again. Scotty let the jeep roll to the edge of the dip and they looked down the roadway which twisted and turned and finally forked a thousand feet below.
Scotty put the jeep in reverse and backed to the center of the shelf. It was about two hundred feet wide, the road hugging the inner cliff. Toward the edge of the shelf the ground was disturbed by vehicle tracks.
"Stop here," Rick said.
Scotty killed the engine, and pointed to a pile of cans near the remains of a fire. "This must be where Mac and Pancho set up their radar gear."
Rick looked around him appreciatively. In the direction of Scarlet Lake there was a clear view for miles. Only the low ridges of intervening hills prevented them from seeing the base itself. A radar outfit could track the rockets from here with no interference at all, once the rocket had risen above the range of low hills.
Scotty indicated the scenery with a wave of his hand. "Plenty to see. But twenty tons of transistors could be in plain sight and we'd never know it. How would you hide stolen goods, if you had to do it?"
Rick turned and surveyed the base of the cliff that led to the top of the mesa. "I'd probably hunt for a space between two big rocks, pack it in, and load rocks on top."
"And that ain't stuff and nonsense," Scotty agreed. "Come on. Let's start moving boulders."
Rick shook his head as his eyes encompassed the more than a hundred yards of strewn rocks at the cliff's bottom. "Shall we move them a ton at a time?"
Scotty grinned helplessly. "At that rate we'd be here six months." He kicked an empty beer can. "Maybe we'd better look in the cans instead."