he said.

"Poor Herby," Dotty said.

"Yeah, poor Herby," Herb said with every appearance of tiredness and
defeat. "But--that's that. Sorry to have gotten you all excited about
nothing, Joe. Guess it was too much to expect anything." He turned to
Dotty. "As long as we're out here, let's take a walk by ourselves. Huh?"

That was as obvious a cue as I had ever been handed. Neat. I was
confronted with the alternatives of scramming or calling him a liar.

"Guess I might as well go back to the hotel," I said cheerfully. "See
you in the morning."

I headed back the way we had come until I was sure they couldn't hear me
or see me with their black light pencils. Then, ducking down next to a
marker I waited. After a couple of minutes I heard cautious footsteps.

"It's me, Joe--Steve."

"Good," I grunted. "What are they doing now? They gave me the
brush-off."

"I got the play," Steve said. "Slick. Should we close in now, or wait?"

"I think I'll play my part a little further. Don't want C.I. to think
we're timid."

"Okay," Steve said. "The next funeral we attend may be our own."

"Yeah," I said. "It might."

I moved into the darkness, not using my black light pencil, but keeping
my sensitized glasses on so I could see Herb's if I got close enough.

I reached the spot where we had done the digging. I hesitated, then kept
on, toward the spot where Herb and Dotty had been so engrossed that
afternoon. In my mind's eye I knew exactly where it was.

My hands explored ahead of me, searching out each stone marker along my
path, clinging to it as I passed it, and slipping off as I went on to
the next. They were my only contact with reality in this total
blackness.

I was thinking, too. I was thinking of what Herb had said about this
being a parking area for airsleds back before the earliest known records
of man on Earth when this city was alive. He was probably right about it
at that. Analysis had shown the presence of copper and aluminum in the
top surface of some of the markers that could only be accounted for by
some metallic object setting atop each one long ago, and remaining so
that molecular and atomic creep could set in, carrying such atoms deep
into the surface crystals of the stone.

And I was wondering what it was he hoped to dig up. If it were some sort
of weapon it probably wouldn't work after all this time. It couldn't! Or
could it? A few things had been pieced together about the ancient
Martian civilizat