No one in Haven would give a rip one way or another. They have concerns more pressing than cars buried in gravel pits right now. And if someone from town did happen to find it, calling the police is the last thing they'd do. That would mean outsiders, and we don't want any outsiders in Haven this summer, do we? Perish the thought!

So she wasn't in the trunk. Simple logic. QED.

Maybe the people who did this didn't have your sterling powers of logic, Gard.

That was a crock of shit, too. If he could see a thing from three angles, the Haven Quiz-Kids could see it from twenty-three. They didn't miss a trick.

Gardener backed to the edge of the hood on his knees and jumped down. Now he was aware of his scraped, burning hands. He would have to take a couple of aspirin when he got back and try to conceal the damage from Bobbi in the morning-work-gloves were going to be the order of the day. All day.

Anne wasn't in the car. Where was Anne? In the shed, of course; in the shed. Gardener suddenly understood why he had come out here-not just to confirm a thought he had plucked from Bobbi's head (if that was what he had done; his subconscious mind might simply have fixed on this as the handiest place to get rid of a big car quick), but because he had needed to make sure it was the shed. Needed to. Because he had a decision to make, and he knew now that not even seeing Bobbi change into something which was not human was enough to force him into that decision-so much of him still wanted to dig the ship out, dig it out and put it to use-so much, so very much.

Before he could make the decision, he had to see what was in Bobbi's shed.

Halfway back he stopped in the cold, slippery moonlight, struck by a question -why had they bothered to hide the car? Because the rental people would report it missing and more police would turn up in Haven? No. The Hertz or Avis people might not even know it was missing for days, and it would be longer still before the cops traced Anne's family connection here. At least a week, more like two. And Gardener thought by then Haven would be done worrying about outside interference, one way or another, for good.

So who had the car been hidden from?

From you, Gard. They hid it from you. They still don't want you to know what they're capable of when it comes to protecting themselves. They hid it and Bobbi told you Anne went away.

He went back with this dangerous secret turning in his mind like a jewel.

Chapter 3

The Hatch

It happened two days later, as Haven lay sprawled and sunstruck under the August heat. Dog-days had come, except of course there were no dogs left in Haven -unless maybe there was one in Bobbi Anderson's shed.

Gard and Bobbi were at the bottom of a cut which was now a hundred and seventy feet deep-the hull of the ship formed one side of this excavation, and the other side, behind the silvery mesh crisscrossing it, showed a cutaway view of thin soil, clay, schist, granite, and spongy aquifer. A geologist would have loved it. They were wearing jeans and sweatshirts. It was stiflingly hot on the surface, but down here it was chilly-Gardener felt like a bug crawling on the side of a water cooler. On his head he wore a hard-hat with a flashlight attached to it by silver utility tape. Bobbi had cautioned him to use the light as sparingly as possible -batteries were in limited supply. Both of his ears were stuffed with cotton. He was using a pneumatic drill to shag up big chunks of rock. Bobbi was at the other end of the cut, doing the same thing.

Gardener had asked her that morning why they had to drill. “I liked the radio explosives better, Bobbi old kid,” he said. “Less pain and strain on the American brain, know what I mean?”

Bobbi didn't smile. Bobbi seemed to be losing her sense of humor along with her hair.

“We're too close now,” Bobbi said. “Using an explosive might damage something we don't want to damage.”

“The hatch?”

“The hatch.”

Gardener's shoulders were aching, and the plate in his head was aching as well -that was probably mental, steel couldn't ache, but it always seemed to when he was down here-and he hoped Bobbi would signal soon that it was time for them to knock off for lunch.

He let the drill chatter and bite its way toward the ship again, not bothering too much about grazing that dull silver surface. You had to be careful not to let the tip of the drill walk onto it too hard, he had discovered; it was apt to rebound and tear off your foot if you weren't careful. The ship itself was as invulnerable to the rough kiss of the drill as it had been to the explosives he and his parade of helpers had used. There was at least no danger of damaging the goods.

The drill touched the ship's surface-and suddenly its steady machine-gun thunder turned to a high-pitched squeal. He thought he saw smoke squirt from the pulsing blur of the drill's tip. There was a snap. Something flew past his head. All this happened in less than a second. He shut the drill off and saw the drill-bit was almost entirely gone. All that remained was a jagged stub.

Gardener turned around and saw the part that had gone winging past his face embedded in the rock of the cut. It had sheared a strand of the meshwork neatly in two. Delayed shock hit, making his knees want to come unlocked and spill him to the ground.

Missed me by a whore's hair. No more, no less. Mother!

He tried to pull it out of the rock, and thought at first it wasn't going to come. Then he began to wiggle it back and forth. Like pulling a tooth out of a gum, he thought, and a hysterical titter escaped him.

The chunk of drill-bit came free. It was the size of a. 45 slug, maybe a little bigger.

Suddenly he was on the verge of passing out. He put an arm on the mesh-covered wall of the cut and rested his head on it. He closed his eyes and waited for the world to either go away or come back. He was dimly aware that Bobbi's drill had also cut out.

The world began to come back… and Bobbi was shaking him.

“Gard? Gard, what's wrong?”

There was real concern in her voice. Hearing it made Gardener feel absurdly like weeping. Of course, he was very tired.

“I almost got shot in the head by a forty-five-caliber drill-bit,” Gardener said. “On second thought, make that a. 357 Magnum.”

“What are you talking about?”

Gardener handed her the fragment he had worked out of the wall. Bobbi looked at it and whistled. “Jesus!”

“I think He and I just missed connections. That's the second time I've almost gotten killed down in this shithole. The first time was when your friend Enders almost forgot to send down the sling after I'd set one of those radio explosives.”

“He's no friend of mine,” Bobbi said absently. “I think he's a dork… Gard, what did you hit? What made it happen?”

“What do you mean? A rock! What else is there down here to hit?”

“Were you near the ship?” All of a sudden Bobbi looked excited. No; more than that. Nearly feverish.

“Yes, but I've grazed the ship with the drill before. It just bounces b

But Bobbi wasn't listening anymore. She was at the ship, down on her knees, digging into the rubble with her fingers.

It looked like it was steaming, Gardener thought. It

It's here, Gard! Finally here!

He had joined her before he realized that she hadn't spoken the conclusion of her thoughts aloud; Gardener had heard her in his head.

Something, all right, Gardener thought.

Pulling aside the rock Gardener's drill had chunked up just before it exploded, Bobbi had revealed, finally, a line in the ship's surface-one single line in all of that huge, featureless expanse. Looking at it, Gardener understood Bobbi's excitement. He stretched out his hand to touch it.