He flipped a binocular in place as he talked, scanned the riven landscape. "Hey!" he said. "Over there!"
Retief followed Sam's pointing glove. He studied the dark patch against a smooth expanse of eroded rock.
"A friend of mine came across a chunk of the old planetary surface two years ago," Sam said thoughtfully. "Had a tunnel in it that'd been used as a storage depot by the Bodeans. Took out over two ton of hardware. Course, nobody's discovered how the stuff works yet, but it brings top prices."
"Looks like water erosion," Retief said.
"Yep. This could be another piece of surface, all right. Could be a cave over there. The Bodeans liked caves, too. Must have been some war—but then, if it hadn't been, they wouldn't have tucked so much stuff away underground where it could weather the planetary breakup."
They descended, crossed the jumbled rocks with light, thirty-foot leaps.
"It's a cave, all right," Sam said, stooping to peer into the five-foot bore. Retief followed him inside.
"Let's get some light in here." Mancziewicz flipped on a beam. It glinted back from dull polished surfaces of Bodean synthetic. Sam's low whistle sounded in Retief's headset.
"That's funny," Retief said.
"Funny, hell! It's hilarious. General Minerals trying to sell off a worthless rock to a tenderfoot—and it's loaded with Bodean artifacts. No telling how much is here; the tunnel seems to go quite a ways back."