"Probably. Put it here." Salazar spread the mouth of a cloth bag, to which was attached a tag reading: TEST PIT 1, SURFACE.
"Here's something," said Galina, holding up another fingernail-sized fragment in azure and gold. Salazar said:
"Porcelain, glazed. That means it's not Shongo; their technology declined from the days of the Nomoruvian Empire until their recent burst of industrialization. It could be trade goods from the Shongo period, or a piece of old Nomoruvian work grubbed up and redeposited." He held the bag open. "Lend Kara your gloves, Galina."
So it continued for an hour, with Kara sharing the job with Galina. Then Salazar applied his tape to the pit "Ten centimeters," he said. "Let's take this one down another ten, after I scrape it."
Salazar squatted in the shallow excavation and, with sweeping semicircular strokes of his sharpened trowel, began to shave thin slices of brown earth from the high spots along the edge.
"What are all those dark spots?" asked Kara.
"Burrows of worms and other organisms—that is, the Kukulcanian equivalents—which have filled in again," said Salazar. "This dark area might be a burial, but there's no sign of remains yet. Or it might be a post-Nomoruvian trash pit. When you hit something like this but don't know what it is, you call it a 'feature.' "
"No golden idols?" said Kara.
"Kara! You of all people know better than that!"
"Sorry. I was only teasing."
Salazar continued: "That's like joking about bombs at the spaceport. It's the worst thing that could happen. As soon as the rumor got out, half of Henderson would be here with picks and shovels to dig up the site and ruin the stratigraphy. Next thing, there'd be a fed among rich bastards like Bergen to stick ancient Kookish artifacts on their mantlepieces, so that without exact records of discovery, every such object's scientific value would be destroyed. Get some pictures, Galina."
With her tiny camera, the girl took several shots of the now smooth-bottomed excavation. Digging and sieving resumed. More objects came to light and were meticulously placed in another labeled sack. There was half of a broken, rusted iron door key. There were bits of brick, worked stone, glass, copper, and pottery. Frappot exclaimed:
"Aha, Keith! I think we have a remain."
He held up a length of pearl-gray bone. Salazar fingered the piece, saying: "Part of the leg of a domestic tisai, I think. Liu will have to look it over to make sure; and he'll run a sample through the AMS to give us a date—"
"Through the what?" Kara broke in.
"Sorry; the accelerator mass spectrometer. Sometime I'll explain how it works. This bone was cut in two, as with a cleaver, and these nicks were made with the same sort of tool. Evidently from a Kookish butcher shop. This might be the site of such a shop, or again the bone might be from someone's family dinner, or even from a Shongo picnic. I shouldn't expect much Shongo stuff at this level, unless—"
Salazar broke off and straightened up, staring at the far end of the site. There, three Kooks on three copper-scaled jutens paused as they emerged from the scrubby timber beyond. Kara and the assistants rose, looking askance at the newcomers.
"Damn!" muttered Salazar. "Choshas again! That guy we saw yesterday must have gone for reinforcements. Get down, all of you! Take cover!"
"What cover?" asked Frappot. "With all the bushes cleared away ..."
"Lie down in the test pit!"
"But there is not enough room ..."
Salazar threw himself prone between the test pit and the newcomers, who sat their mounts and stared. Craning his neck to observe four human beings trying to fit themselves into a depression only big enough for two, the archaeologist barked:
"Marcel! Go fetch the rifle! Bend low as you run!"
He pointed to the pile of gear at the edge of the field, against which his rifle leaned. As Frappot started on his way, Salazar eased his pistol from its holster.
One of the strange Kooks set its mount into motion. The thump-thump of the juten's bipedal gait resounded across the clearing as it trotted towards the same pile of gear. Salazar thought: That nomad's after my gun. As its mount ran, the Kook rider drew out a firearm, a massive object like a Terran horse pistol of the powdered-wig era. The Kook cocked and raised the weapon, taking aim at the running graduate student.
Since the invader was too distant to be picked off with a pistol while on the move, save for a fantastically lucky shot, Salazar aimed just ahead of the running juten and, as the animal's body came into his sights, squeezed the trigger. The juten pitched forward on its beaked head; its rider flew out of the saddle and turned a somersault as it struck the ground.
The Kook staggered to its feet and peered about. The lance in its saddle boot was broken; but the native found the pistol where it had fallen. It hastily aimed the firearm at Salazar and pulled the trigger. The weapon failed to fire. Knocked the priming out of the pan, thought Salazar.
The Kook set out on foot for Salazar, holding its pistol by the barrel and bounding from side to side. Salazar fired at this difficult target and missed. He fired and missed once more. Beside the pile of gear, Marcel Frappot stood holding the rifle. The youth dared not shoot, since Salazar was in the same line of fire as the Kook.
Salazar fired a third shot. The Kook staggered and squawked. The shot had grazed but not seriously wounded the attacker. Then it hurled itself at the archaeologist, swinging the big flintlock pistol like a hammer at the gun in Salazar's right hand. The butt struck Salazar's barrel and sent his weapon spinning away.
The Kook swung its pistol over its head, aiming it at the Terran's skull. Salazar snatched from his boot the sharpened trowel, stepped quickly inside the Kook's swing, and drove the trowel into the native's painted belly.
The beaked mouth opened in a screech as the Kook clapped a clawed hand over the wound. Another blow with the pistol butt sent Salazar's tropical helmet flying, while Salazar, gripping the trowel in both hands, stabbed again and again. On the fourth stab, the Kook sank, bleeding profusely and gasping incoherent sounds in its own raucous tongue.
"Marcel!" Salazar called. "Cover the others!"
As Frappot sighted along the rifle barrel with his finger on the trigger, the two remaining Kooks turned their mounts and jounced away into the brush. Kara, Galina, and Ito climbed out of the test pit, slapping dirt from their hair and clothes and asking questions.
"Keith!" exclaimed Kara. "Thank goodness you're alive! I thought for a second I saw your head bouncing away, but it was only your hat."
"No credit to me," growled Salazar, picking up his helmet. "Must be losing my grip, missing easy shots like that."
"And me," said Frappot, "I dared not shoot with you in line with this one."
"Who is it who tried to kill you, Professor?" asked Ito.
"A Kampairin," said Salazar, studying the painted gold-and-scarlet symbols on the Kook's scales.
"Isn't that a nomad tribe?" asked Galina.
"Yep; one of old Kampai's boys."
"Are we likely to see more of them?" asked Frappot, as if eager for another chance to show his mettle. His face was flushed.
"Can't tell yet," said Salazar. "This is pretty far outside their normal range. Let's get on with the job."
During the evening at camp, Kara said, "I know dirt archaeology includes a lot of tedious drudgery, but—"
"Any profession does, when you get into it," Salazar interjected.
"I wanted to ask, don't you expect to find anything more exciting than little bits of glass and brick and stone? No golden idols, of course; but something I could at least take a publishable picture of."
Salazar shrugged. "We might come on a statue, or a mosaic, or a cache of copper utensils. No way of telling except to dig. What I dream of finding but probably shan't is King Bembogu's fabled library. If I did, you can bet your ballet slippers I'd keep mum about it until I got the stuff out, or the looters and souvenir hunters might beat me to it."