cement bags must tie into it, but
Rick couldn't imagine the connection. He thought of a secret uranium
strike and rejected it. Empty bags pointed to something gotten rid of,
not something gained by a discovery.

The thought was intriguing. If he assumed the bags had arrived full,
what had happened to the contents? He tried to think of uses for the
powdered ore and couldn't. Even if he could imagine a secret processing
plant to extract the uranium for some purpose, there wasn't enough. A
sufficient quantity of ore to provide even a gram of uranium metal would
mean literally thousands of bags and they had found less than a dozen.

Of course there was the cart Belsely had seen. Rick couldn't credit the
farmer's notion that the ghost soldiers had been collecting ghost bodies
of the long-dead. But what had the cart been doing? The very idea of a
cart led to the idea of something too heavy to be carried without
mechanical aid. What? Bags of radioactive ore dust?

He was still tossing in his bed and chewing the data fine when the dogs
began to bark. He listened. The barking was far away, probably a mile or
more. There were farms on the road to town, and probably all of them had
dogs.

Scotty spoke in a whisper. "What makes dogs bark at night?"

"Maybe a fox," Rick replied.

"Or a ghost?"

Rick sat bolt upright. "Maybe!"

Scotty swung to a sitting position on the side of his bed. "I've been
listening to you twisting and turning for an hour. If you're going to
keep me awake, it might as well be useful. What say we go look?"

Rick looked at the luminous dial of his watch. It was past midnight. "No
chases ending in quarries?"

Scotty's chuckle was low. "No chases. Listen a minute!"

Rick held his breath, and heard what Scotty's keen ears had detected.
There was the sound of a car somewhere far away. He couldn't tell the
direction, but he was sure it was not the road from town because the
bedroom windows opened on the town side of the farmhouse.

The night was clear and still, and sounds would carry great distances.
The car might even be on the main highway, about five miles away.

"Let's get going," Rick said softly. He fumbled for his clothes on the
chair at the foot of his bed and dressed quietly. Scotty was doing the
same on his own side of the room.

They checked flashlights, then started down the stairs. The treads
creaked noisily, as is the case in old houses, and Dr. Miller's voice
stopped them.

"Going s