"The dump? You kidding, man?"

"It's moving now."

Gonzalez turned toward the dump slowly, his head tucked between two hunched shoulder blades. "I don't see nothing," he said with relief.

"It stopped."

Gonzalez patted Verbanic on the back. "Well, okay. That's good, pal. Look, man, it's late. We're both tired, and like maybe you're seeing things—"

"It's moving again."

Gonzalez whirled around. The dump was as still as a grave. "I tell you, there ain't nothing moving in there!" he shouted. "See? Not a cockroach. Nothing."

10

A tin can tumbled down the side of the mound. Gonzalez jumped straight into the air. Then the entire hillside of debris began to shiver and rumble, sending an assortment of objects clattering to the earth.

Deep below, in the decomposing rubble of the mound, a bolt maneuvers through the silt and ¦funk, drawn by magnetic impulses toward a metal cube.

"Let's get out of here, man," Gonzalez whispered.

"What if somebody's alive in there?"

"In that? Hah . . ." Gonzalez tried to laugh, but the sound caught and died in this throat.

Another bolt, a microfilm type cylinder, an unbroken anode...

"It's an earthquake, that's what it is," Gonzalez said.

"Then how come the ground isn't shaking?"

With a crack, the casing of the LC 111 flies apart and tears through the dirt, down, down through two years of waste. ... A click, the squeal of rust being stripped from metal threading ...

"We got to go, Lew," Gonzalez said somberly.

Verbanic didn't move.

"I'm serious. We're leaving."

"Why?"

" 'Cause I just peed my pants."

"Whoever it is, we've got to help get them out," Verbanic said.

The form growing larger, more complete, adding to itself as it shudders, buried, waiting to be bom anew...