er alloy one minute
and is stone cold the next. That's disturbing enough, but we don't
want to get that mixed up with what's happening up top. There's dirty
work going on--"

He stopped. His eyes, that had never ceased to search for some mark of
special meaning, had come to rest upon an object half hidden in the
sand. He stooped and picked it up.

"Now what the devil is this?" Smithy began. But Rawson was staring at
the smooth lava block that was in his hand. It was tapered; it was
pierced through with a straight, smooth hole, and its base was round
and ringed as if it had been held in a clamp.

"That," he said at last, "was brought in from outside. Outside,
Smithy--get that."

* * * * *

Dean Rawson's face was wreathed in a sudden smile of pure pleasure. "No, I
don't know what the darn thing is," he admitted. "And I don't care. But I
know that someone, or some bunch of someones--outsiders--are trying to
horn in. I might even go so far as to say that I suspect the power
monopoly gentlemen. I think they have started in on us, plan to run off
our men, interfere in every way and drive me out of the field with the
boring a failure. Smithy, I begin to think I'm going to enjoy this job!"

Again the hot wind, only beginning to cool with the setting of the
sun, swept around the building where they stood and tore at the hill
of sand. "Come on," said Rawson. "It's getting dark. We'll get up to
our lookout--"

"Hold on!" called Smithy sharply.

Rawson turned. Smithy was rubbing his eyes when the whirl of
wind-borne sand had passed; he was staring at the sand dunes.

"I'm seeing things, I guess," he said. "I thought for a minute there
was a hole there, and the sand was slipping. I'm getting as bad as
Riley."

The two went back through the gathering shadows to their waiting car.
And Smithy's involuntary shiver told Rawson that he was not the only
one to feel a sense of relief at the sound of the exhaust as their car
took them away from the dead bones of a dead city in a barren,
trackless waste.

* * * * *

The shoulder of rock, where the mountain road swung out, gave a
comprehensive view of camp and desert and the encircling mountains.
Above in a vault of black was the dazzling array of stars as the
desert lands know them; so low they were, the ragged, broken tops of
the three ancient craters seemed touching the warm velvet of the sky
on which the stars w