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This would be the hard part. Making sure her back was to Owen Smalls, Nora slid two fingers into her jacket and removed the letter—the letter she had never allowed from her person since she found it, just nightmarish hours before.
“Sorry. That’s something not even Watkins can control.” “Where the hell am I going to get twenty thousand dollars?” Nora exploded. “Look, I’d be arranging an alteration in the orbit of a United States spacecraft for you. That’s bad enough. What else do you want me to do, steal the damn data?” There was a silence. “Now there’s an idea,” said Nora.
Again and again, her mind had turned back to Quivira and what her next step should be. She sensed it was pointless to approach Blakewood again, even with this startling discovery; there was little chance of him changing his mind. She had passed him in a hallway shortly after noon, and his greeting was decidedly cool.
She can't approach him at all anyway without revealing her stolen data from JPL, which gets her busted
“I am right. You wait and see. Black Lagoon, zero. Winchester, one.”
“Anasazi lightning stones,” he said in his quiet voice. “Are they real?” asked Holroyd, taking them from Nora and holding them to the firelight. “Of course,” said Goddard. “They come from a medicine cache found in the great kiva at Keet Seel. We used to believe the Anasazi used them in rain ceremonies to symbolize the generation of lightning. But we aren’t sure anymore. The carved spiral represents the sipapu. But then again, it might represent a water spring. Again, nobody knows for sure.”
“Do you understand?” “Hey, does that hole in your head have an off switch?” Smithback asked. “Because it’s getting a little strident for my tender ears.”
The fear and annoyance subsided, and in their absence came sleep, and dreams of dusty ruins, and nodding columns of sunlight cutting through the murk of an ancient cave, and two dead children draped in flowers.
“Tuber magantum pico,” Bonarotti said, placing it carefully back in the drawer. Smithback shook his head slowly. “You’re looking at about a thousand dollars worth of fungus right there. If we don’t find that huge stash of Indian gold, we can always raid the Cabinet of Doctor Bonarotti.” “You are welcome to try, my friend,” Bonarotti said impassively, pulling open his jacket and patting a monstrous revolver snugged into a holster around his waist.
Sloane let out a husky laugh. “Well, I heard that you’ve never fallen off a horse.” “Any cowboy tells you that is a liar,” said Swire. “My butt and the ground are tolerably well acquainted, thank you.”
O my poor young gelding Do you see yonder mare? Such a lovely young filly One cannot compare. Too bad your equipment Is in disrepair.
Nora unbuckled the hood of her camera and walked gingerly along the facade, photographing the exterior of the dwelling. Although Sloane’s expertise with the large 4x5 Graflex made her the expedition’s official photographer, Nora liked to keep her own record of all the sites she studied.
A 4*5 Graphlex camera is too bulky for this kind of work! it's not a hand holdable camera, HAS to be used on tripod, with hood attached, AND uses sheet film in holders. She'd have to use a roll film camera like a Hasselblad
And you’ve touched it, which means we can’t do bone collagen DNA on it. Worst of all, you didn’t even photograph it in situ.”
No longer being able to test it is BS, and she doesn't know if Sloane photographed it first
Sloane hesitated for a moment. “I didn’t bring a lot of gear along, so you’re going to have to belay me without a harness.”
Every climber should know how to make an improv harness from a section of rope
It was odd, she thought, how they were instinctively staying together. There was something unsettling about the
No, if people have an instinct to stay together when it's creepy out, it would be odd if they DIDN'T stick together!
Anasazi corncobs across the floor. Packrats had built a nest in one corner, a junk heap of sticks and cactus husks thickly laid with dung. The acrid scent of their urine permeated the room. As Nora stepped forward, she saw, hanging on a
Which is when you LEAVE & come back with masks, because packrat feces out there carries hemorrhagic fever virus, which is 99% fatal!!
Aragon looked at him steadily. “We can learn everything we need to know without looting the city.” “Since when is a disciplined archaeological excavation called looting?” Sloane asked mildly. “Today’s archaeology is tomorrow’s plundering,” Aragon replied. “Look what Schliemann did to the site of Troy a hundred years ago, in the name of science. He practically bulldozed the place, destroyed it for future generations. And that, for its day, was a disciplined excavation.”
The difference is back then they WERE looting (Troy)! Back then, instead of be placed in a sponsor museum, objects found were SOLD to whereverthey finder wished for his personal monetary gains! this is highlighted by the destruction, which kept rare finds rare!
“I think we should simply call the police,” Black said. “We have a radio.” Aragon burst out in a sudden, uncharacteristic laugh. “Call the police? What police?” “Why not? We’re still in America, aren’t we?”
All the doctorates and only ONE working brain, AND they ignore that one!!?
Do you suppose these guys are really still after you?” “Why do you think I insisted on taking this little field trip myself? I’m pretty sure that the people who killed our horses, and the ones who attacked me, might be the same. If so, that means they’ve learned where Quivira is.”
This makes no sense: if they were after her to learn the location of Quivera, & theyve since learned where it is, they'd no longer have a reason to be after her.
“This is the greatest find in modern archaeology,” Sloane said, her husky voice now low and urgent. “There’s not one of us here who wasn’t willing to risk his life to make this discovery. And now that somebody has died, are we going to just roll things up and leave? That would cheapen Peter’s sacrifice.” Black, who paled a bit during this speech, still managed to nod his support. “For you, and me, and the rest of the scientific team, that may be true,” Nora said. “But Peter was a civilian.” “He knew the risks,” Sloane said. “You did explain them, didn’t you?” She looked directly at Nora as she
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I don't know what this unspoken comment is supposed to be, but her reply should have been to the irrational "sacrifice"... theyre obviously under attack, &the only way to summon help and help protect to site is to leave. NOT leaving is pointless
Suddenly, a gust of wind caught a pack of the chromatography papers, blowing them toward the back of the cave. He watched as they scattered and disappeared into the darkness. Black swore out loud. The papers were ruined—contaminated—but he couldn’t just leave them. He’d publicly humiliated more than one archaeologist for leaving trash in a ruin. He finished packing the chromatography setup and buckled the case shut. Then he stood up and walked toward the back of the cave, eyes to the ground. The papers had scattered along the very back of the midden heap; he could see some still blowing about
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If the pack has been unsealed so that they could blow out, then it would be to extract on e or more papers, so there wouldn't be twelve anymore
Immediately, the boat took off, roaring through the no-wake zone at full speed, leaving a hundred jetskis bobbing madly in its wake.
Jetskis shouldn't be in the no wake zone either!
fast in his chest. “Do you really think there’s gold in that kiva?” Bonarotti asked. Black turned to see the cook looking over at him. For the first time that he could recall, Black saw animation, even strong emotion, in the man’s face. “Yes, I do,” he replied. “I can’t think of any other conclusion. All the evidence points to it.”
Idiot! All the evidence points to NO gold!
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll do that. I think I’ll check the satellite images instead. And I know what I’ll find: a monstrous storm, centered directly over the Kaiparowits Plateau.” At this, Sloane’s face went dead white. Beads of rain were collecting on her wide cheekbones. “Nora, listen. It’s possible I never looked in that direction. You’ve got to believe me.” “Where’s Black?” Nora asked suddenly. Sloane stopped, surprised by the question. “Up in the city,” she said. “What do you think he’ll say when I confront him? He was up on top of that ridge with you.”
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And nobody with a working brain would have this conversation until AFTER they got back to civilization!!
Grasping the pole ladder, Nora scrambled up to the small second-story rooftop. Sloane followed, kicking the ladder away behind her.
Idiot!! as archaeologists they know that you pull the ladder UP AFTER YOU!! otherwise pursuers just stand the ladder back up!!
She backed away from the parapet, and as she did so she heard the rattling sound of the pole ladder being placed against its flanks. Quickly, she ducked into the nearest set of roomblocks. She pressed herself against the wall, gasping for breath. Whatever she did, wherever she went, she was at a disadvantage.
the advantage is she's able, if she remembers, to just keep pushing the ladder off: he can't climb it if it keeps getting knocked down!!
