nnon gingerly approached the ship. It was half buried in the loose
debris and ash that had fallen or blown into the pit during the
centuries it had rested there. It was old--incredibly old. The hull
design was ancient--riveted sheets of millimeter-thick durilium. Ships
hadn't been built like that in over two thousand years. And the ovoid
shape was reminiscent of the even more ancient spindizzy design. A
hyperspace converter like that couldn't be less than four millennia
old. It was a museum piece, but the blue-black hull was as smooth and
unblemished as the day it had left fabrication.

Space travel would have gotten nowhere without durilium, Kennon
reflected. For five thousand years men had used the incredibly tough
synthetic to build their spacecraft. It had given man his empire. Kennon
gave the hull one quick glance. That part of the ship didn't worry him.
It was what he would find inside that bothered him. How much damage had
occurred from two thousand or more years of disuse? How much had the
original travelers cannibalized? How much could be salvaged? What sort
of records remained? There were a thousand questions that the interior
of that enigmatic hull might answer.

The upper segment of the airlock was visible. It was closed, which was a
good sign. A few hours' work with a digger should expose it enough to be
opened.

"Copper," he said, "we're going to have to dig this out. There's a small
excavator in the cargo bed of the jeep. Do you think you can bring it
down here?"

"I think so."

"Good girl!" Kennon turned back to the ship. He was eager to enter it.
There might be things inside that would settle the question of the Lani.
The original crew had probably recognized the value of the hull as
a repository as well as he did. But in the meantime there would be
work--lots of it. And every step must be recorded.

It was the rest of the day's work to expose the emergency airlock. The
little excavator toiled over the loose ash for hours before it displaced
enough to make the port visible, and the ash was not yet cleared away
sufficiently to open the portal when darkness brought a halt to the
work.

It would be impossible to unearth the spaceship with their low-capacity
digger, Kennon decided. It would be difficult enough to clear the
emergency airlock in the nose. But if the tubes and drive were still
all right, by careful handling it should be possible to use the drive to
blast out the loose ash and cinders