ou better pick the men to go with me, Colonel," he continued. "You
know them better than I do. We'll need working equipment, too; I have
no idea what we may have to take out of the way, inside."

"I won't call for volunteers," Zareff said. "I'll pick Home Guards;
they did their volunteering when they joined."

"Let me pick one man, Colonel," Anse Dawes said. "I'll pick me."

X

They sent a snooper in first; it picked up faint radiation leakage
from inactive power units of overhead lights, and nothing else. The
tunnel stretched ahead of it, empty, and dark beyond its infrared
vision. After it had gone a mile without triggering anything, the jeep
followed Anse Dawes piloting and Conn at the snooper controls
watching what it transmitted back. The two lorries followed, loaded
with men and equipment, and another jeep brought up the rear. They had
cut screen-and-radio communication with the outside; they weren't even
using inter-vehicle communication.

At length, the snooper emerged into a big cavern, swinging slowly to
scan it. The walls and ceiling were rough and irregular; it was
natural instead of excavated. Only the floor had been leveled smooth.
There were a lot of things in it, machinery and vehicles, all battered
and in poor condition, dusty and cobwebbed: the spaceport junkheap. A
passage, still large enough for one of the gunboats, led deeper into
the mountain toward the crater. They sent the snooper in and, after a
while, followed.

They came to other rectangular, excavated caverns. On the plans, they
were marked as storerooms. Cases and crates, indeterminate shrouded
objects; some had never been disturbed, but here and there they found
evidence of recent investigation.

Beyond was another passage, almost as wide as the Mall in Litchfield;
even the _Lester Dawes_ could have negotiated it. According to the
plans, it ran straight out to the ship docks and the open crater
beyond. Anse turned the jeep into a side passage, and Conn recalled
the snooper and sent it ahead. On the plan, it led to another natural
cavern, half its width shown as level with the entrance. The other
half was a pit, marked as sixty feet deep; above this and just under
the ceiling, several passages branched out in different directions.

The snooper reported visible light ahead; fluoroelectric light from
one of the upper passages, and firelight from the pit. The
air-analyzer reported woodsmoke and a faint odor of burning oil. He