The next morning
Every morning, the team traveled from the lodging to the excavation site in several four-wheel-drive vehicles.
The drive took about ten minutes.
The road was bare reddish-brown earth, with shallow channels carved by rain and ruts left by passing vehicles.
Whenever the convoy reached a rough stretch, it slowed to avoid the worst of the uneven ground.
It had been the same sight every morning since the survey began.
That morning, Ronald was driving the second vehicle in the convoy.
Mercer sat in the passenger seat.
Andrea and two members of the surveying staff were in the back.
Ronald was tall and solidly built.
With his sun-browned skin, he looked more at home in the field than in a laboratory.
Mercer had shoulder-length chestnut hair and fine features.
She and Ronald had worked together in the field many times.
They knew how the other thought and worked.
They had once been a couple.
But by now, neither of them went out of their way to bring it up.
“So, what did NAML find?”
Ronald asked as he steered around a rut.
“The greenish-gray particles are chlorite-group minerals present within the ceramic fabric.
“The analysis suggests they came from chlorite-bearing fragments of hydrothermally altered volcanic rock.”
“Next question is when it got into the clay.”
“Right.
“It may have been present in the raw material to begin with, or it may have been added as temper.
“We still don’t know where the particles came from either.”
Andrea joined the conversation from the back seat.
She was in her late twenties.
Each time the vehicle crossed a rut, her blond ponytail swayed against her shoulder.
She gripped the handle above the door with one hand and used her phone with the other.
The signal fluctuated between two and three bars, but the search results appeared quickly.
Ever since her student days, Andrea had looked things up whenever something caught her attention.
“Chlorite... so it’s a mineral?”
“More precisely, a mineral group,” Mercer said.
“There’s a lot about it online.
“Symbolism, folklore...”
Andrea scrolled through the results as the vehicle rolled over the uneven road.
“Oh, this is interesting.”
She read from the screen.
“‘A stone for remembering which side you belonged to after returning from the land of the dead.’”
“That’s kind of beautiful.
“Like a myth.”
Andrea tended to see things very differently from Mercer.
“Maybe it was used in some kind of ritual,” Ronald said as he turned the wheel again.
“Could be.”
Mercer replied simply.
“You’re not ruling it out?”
Ronald glanced at her.
“It’s possible.
“Why rule it out?”
Mercer smiled.
The lead vehicle slowed ahead of them.
Ronald eased off the accelerator.
Through the trees, the open ground in front of the cave came into view.
Several staff members were already carrying equipment through the entrance.
Voices and the clatter of metal cases echoed around the cave entrance.
--
When the protective sheet was removed from TB-3, irregular, footprint-like impressions were visible inside the test unit.
Andrea got out with her camera already in hand.
Before the sheet was completely folded back, she photographed the whole unit and placed photo scales beside the impressions.
Mercer crouched at the edge of the unit.
Ronald crouched beside her and examined the ground.
A line of small, teardrop-shaped impressions extended across the damp surface at regular intervals.
There were no signs that the soil had been dug up.
No claw marks either.
“If it was a wild boar, I’d expect a lot more damage,” Ronald said.
Mercer looked from one impression to the next.
The edges.
The depth.
The spacing.
She compared them with the staff boot prints around the unit.
“Animal tracks?”
There were no claw marks.
A short distance away, Andrea continued taking photographs.
“Could a person have come in here?” Ronald asked.
Mercer pointed to several of the impressions.
“If those are shoe prints, they’re too small.”
They looked neither like tracks left by a four-legged animal nor like human shoe prints.
Ronald straightened.
“At least something came in here last night.
“Beyond that, we don’t know.”
“Yes.”
Mercer stood as well.
“Record the impressions.
“Then keep going as planned.”
“Okay.”
Andrea placed a numbered marker beside the last impression in the line and took another photograph.
Another staff member passed behind her carrying surveying equipment.
Someone started the generator.
Its familiar low hum returned.
Before long, the usual morning work at TB-3 had resumed.