Sweet Starfire

Ghosts’ presentation inside the safehold. He had been mentally holding his breath, afraid that the showing he and Cidra had seen had been the final one. If that had been the case, he would have had to take a penalty cut on the contract he’d signed with the company. The safehold, itself, was still valuable but not nearly so valuable as the contents. The mind call itself was no longer functioning. Either that or the conditions weren’t right for activating it. When Severance and the exploration crew had finally located the safehold by a process of quartering all the terrain within an hour’s walk from the river, he had seen at once that the protected circle had shrunk. It was obviously fading, and that meant the valuable scenes inside were probably about to disappear also.
    “I’m not sure we’ll get it to trigger again,” the crew chief announced, “but we’ve got it down on holotape.” He looked pleased. “A hell of a find, Severance. When you stumbled across this, it was really your lucky day. Enough history in here to keep half of Clementia busy for years.”
    Severance stood in the vaulted entrance of the safehold, gazing at the bubbling stream where Cidra had been bathing the morning he’d awakened from the delirium. The stream was still barely inside the protected area. “My lucky day,” he agreed softly. He forced himself out of the reveries as a crew of technicians bustled past. “Any sign of a mechanism to explain how all this operates? We could use the secret of keeping the terrain clear. Whatever the Ghosts used, it’s more efficient than the deflectors.”
    “Nothing so far. We’ve picked up no energy readings and no indications of any hardware hidden in the safehold walls. We may never find the answer. Might not be able to comprehend it if we do find it. This is damn sophisticated stuff, Severance.”
    He nodded thoughtfully. “They had the ability to survive. But in the end they just gave up.”
    “Never even made a try for space travel beyond the local system,” the crew chief said. “Doesn’t make any sense. So much technical expertise gone to waste. Other things became more important, I guess.”
    Severance looked at him. “What could have been more important than the survival of the species?”
    “I don’t know. What’s more, I don’t think I want to know. When are you taking the Vinton crew to the home of the big blue monsters?”
    “Now. Shouldn’t be as hard to find as this was. I got a fix on it with a directional indicator.” He also wanted to try another shard of one of the shells to see if it still had a homing effect.
    The Vinton crew was elated with their find. The shard worked as a directional device but not because of mechanical reasons.
    “The shells are naturally attracted to the metal of the ship,” one technician announced. “Like magnets that work over long distances. No wonder you had trouble with your signal.” He ducked into the floodlit hole in the ship where uniformed men scurried around with great caution. “What the hell happened to that gadget on top of the long case? The damage looks fresh.”
    Severance ambled in after him and scrutinized the results of the pulser on the device that had activated the illusions. “Had a little trouble with that.” He looked into the case. “Going to open it?”
    “No. Not here. It’ll have to be done under controlled atmospheric conditions. Don’t want the skeleton dissolving into dust.”
    “Do you think it’s that old?”
    The technician shook his head. “No. But we don’t know how it will react to the atmosphere once the case is opened.”
    Severance hung around for the rest of the day, assuring that his clients were satisfied. When the teams headed back toward the river to spend the night, he made his decision to leave for the ExcellEx camp in the morning. The sensors were long overdue.
    “Hey, Severance, stop worrying about the mail,” Rand Bantforth said during dinner. “You’re making enough off these discoveries to let you forget whatever ExcellEx was going to pay for the COD delivery.”
    “It’s the principle of the thing,” Severance growled.
    “Yeah, well five hundred thousand is a lot of consolation for a principle.”
    Another man spoke up as he helped himself to ale. “Severance isn’t making five hundred thou off of this. He’s only getting two hundred fifty. His lady gets the other half. That’s one interesting female you left behind in Try Again, Severance. She’s