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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.
"Don't babble like a fool!" Kennon said with disgust. "How could I land a spacer here without being spotted? You sound like a two-credit novel. And even if I did would it be a can like this?" Kennon played the torch over the blue-black durilium protruding from the ashes. Douglas' eyes widened as he took in the details of construction. "What an antique!" he blurted. "Where did you get this can?"
Copper exclaimed. "Egg ha! that's a spacer! I thought it would be. I'd recognize durilium anywhere. Let's go down and look this over, but first we want a couple of pictures." He pointed a camera at the crater and snapped the shutter. "There now let's have a closer look at our baby." "Do you expect me to get into that thing?"
Ashes and pumice heated to incandescence were blown through the air. Molten drops of radioactive lava skittered across the durilium hull as Kennon advanced the power. The whole stem of the ship was immersed in a seething lake of bolling rock as the Egg lifted slowly with ponderous dignity into the night sky. "Hang on!" Kennon said. "I'm going to hyper."
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.
In fact, he could see the building from his window, a tall functional block of durilium and plastic, soaring above the others on the street, the sunlight gleaming off its clean square lines. He eyed it curiously, wondering what he would find inside. The receptionist took his I.D. and the letter, scanned them briefly, and slipped them into one of the message tubes beside her desk.
It was a Class II Fortalice built on the efficient star-shaped plan of half a millennium ago an ugly spiky pile of durilium, squat and massive with defensive shields and weapons which could still withstand hours of assault by the most modern forces. "Why did he build a thing like that?" Kennon asked.
Beside him, the long metal doors of a missile launcher made a rectangular trace on the smooth surface of the roof. Behind him the central tower poked its gaunt ferromorph and durilium outline into the darkening sky bearing its crown of spiderweb radar antennae turning steadily on their gimbals covering a vast hemisphere from horizon to zenith with endless inspection.
And perhaps the best method of bringing the evidence would be to transport it under its own power. The thought intrigued him. Actually it wouldn't be too difficult. Externally the Egg wasn't in bad shape. The virtually indestructible durilium hull was still intact. The controls and the engines, hermetically sealed inside the hull, were probably as good as the day they stopped running.
"Who is she?" "None of your business," Kennon snapped, hoping that his outburst covered Copper's gasp of surprise and fear, and knowing that it didn't. "I'm making it my business. There's something funny going on around here." Kennon blinked. Could it be that Douglas didn't know? Had he been watching them on radar? Durilium was radar-transparent.
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