They returned to the dig that evening. Winter didn't disappear instantly, but everyone's spirits were definitely brighter. Todd was bursting with news of watching spring being made. Not having his energy, Anna was happy let him tell the story to everyone. Several times.
She and two of the students were preparing the camp's dinner (they'd drawn up a roster, and tonight was her turn) when they heard the sound of an approaching helicopter. A few seconds later, it appeared over a hill, flying low. Slung beneath its great belly was a transrover, chained onto a huge platform. Not just any transrover – the transrover.
Anna watched with wonder as the helicopter pilot maneuvered the platform down onto a space which had been cleared that morning. The chain was released, and the pilot made his way back to Chamisa Trail with a wave.
Anna felt a surge of excitement as she watched the transrover arrive. She almost felt like it was coming home, and she wondered if vehicles were alive somehow. Did they act like their owners? Did they remember places? Could they survive for more than they were built for?
It had only been several days since she had wished to lay her hands on the transrover again, but now that she could, she really felt no desire to. It was enough that it was there. She turned her attention back to her duties. She would look over it after a little while.
The committee arrived after dinner.
"Anna, dear!" Mrs. Bowen ran forward to greet her, and before Anna knew what was happening, she had been hugged and smooched. Only Mrs. Bowen would do that.
The rest of the committee only shook her hand, for which she was grateful, but they were no less excited to see her.
"We had the transrover brought to Chamisa Trail by cargo plane, then airlifted in," Mrs. Farmington was saying. "We rode in on the plane, but had to drive out here ourselves, because they said they couldn't land the helicopter."
"No, that's not true," Mrs. Edgeworth said. "We rode out here because helicopters make me airsick. You can say it."
"Well, regardless, we're here!" Mrs. Downing said. "So show us around!"
Anna introduced them to Roger.
"Oh, you're that nice young man who started all this!" Mrs. Carpenter said. "Well done! You know you're on the committee now, of course."
"The Bicentennial Planning Committee?" Roger asked. "Well, I don't think I could possibly-"
"Nonsense." Mrs. Bowen took Roger by the arm and they all walked toward the excavation site. "You and Anna together are uncovering the biodome. The biodome is the site of the bicentennial celebrations. You're mixed up in this too much to leave you out. You're on the committee, whether you like it or not. Now tell us all about it."
Anna smiled at him, giving him a look as if to say, Well, come on!
Roger nodded. "Very well. Follow me."
He led them into the excavation area. The bulldozers had been abandoned to one side temporarily, and about eight people were digging around a white dome that jutted up from the surface by about 15 feet.
"So this is it?" Mrs. Edgeworth asked.
"This is it," Anna said, leading them around the dome until they came to the front door. It was halfway uncovered. Two students were shoveling away dirt from in front of it, while the others were stretched to either side, digging out more dirt so that it wouldn't fall into the hollowed-out area in front of the door. "We expect to have it uncovered and safely accessible by about midnight."
"Incredible!" Mrs. Downing breathed.
"Well!" Mrs. Bowen rolled up her shirtsleeves and turned to Roger. "Are you going to give us shovels, or what?"
About five hours later, the doorway was clear, and the slope leading down to it was gentle enough that no dirt fell down into the cleared space, and it was deemed safe enough to go inside.
Because it was actually a tiny dome, not everyone could go in at once. The news crews, of course, wanted to be first, but Anna and Roger had firmly told them that excavation members had more right. Secretly, they didn't trust the reporters to leave any artifacts they found alone.
They eventually decided that one cameraman from one news crew would accompany Anna and Roger, and all the news crews could patch into that channel. Behind them would come Anna's staff and the students.
Roger and Anna stood at the doorway. They each had their own personal gear sets on and recording.
They looked at each other.
"Ready?" Roger asked.
Anna nodded excitedly, feeling her heart race. For her, this was adventure.
They switched on their lumalights and pulled the doors open.
The air was musty. Before them was a short hallway and two more double doors. They advanced inside and pushed them open. They found themselves in the main dome. Slowly, the others filed in.
Richard was carrying a power cable, attached to a generator outside. He found the circuit board and attached the cable. Most of the dome lights came on.
"Amazing," Anna whispered, looking around her.
"These domes were built to last," Richard said. "Before it was buried, it was on a self-perpetuating cycle."
"Everything gets recorded on gear, then itemized," Roger announced. He did this more for the viewers at home than anyone else, as everyone present knew it already.
On one side of the dome, a doorway which had once led to a cloth-covered walkway was now filled with dirt, but no signs of insect damage or water damage could be seen.
Through another door, they found square beds of potting soil. "This must have been the hydroponics lab," Susan said. Their gear sets were swung wide, recording everything.
After looking around for a while, Anna picked up a small plastic pail out of the dirt, obviously a child's toy. She turned it over, wondering if True or Ulysses had played with it. But on the underside, it said, "Mary."
She went back into the main room, where there were tables and chairs. Daniel was coming down from the loft carrying something.
"There's an old rocking chair up there," he said. "And I found this. Check it out!"
He laid something on one of the tables. It was silvery, and about 14 inches tall. The bottom half was a box, the upper half was a pyramid.
"This looks familiar," Anna said, leaning down and gazing at it. "What is it?"
"It's a perimeter monitor," Daniel said. "It's similar to what Howard brought out here yesterday, but an older model." He smiled at them. "It's petrified."
"Really?" Anna picked it up, and was surprised to find that it didn't feel like metal, although it was obviously made of metal. It felt more like rock.
"It must have been caught inside the geolock which Morgan Martin set off," Roger said, "but it wasn't in the area when the lock was reversed."
Anna sighed. "I can see why geolocks were banned."
They spent another two hours going over the dome, mapping it, showing it to viewers. In the end, however, there really wasn't much to show beyond the dome itself.
"Obviously," Roger told one of the reporters later, "Eden Advance took almost everything with them when they left, which would have been the logical thing to do. None of us really expected to find much in the way of artifacts here."
"Then what did you expect to find, professor?" the reporter asked.
"To be honest, I expected to find a message of some sort. Perhaps a final message left by the Founding Fifteen in the dome's central computer to anyone coming here later, for whatever reason. Or another data chip, dropped and left behind. And we still may find such things, but I'm doubtful."
"Then are you disappointed with the results of this expedition?"
"Not at all. Anytime we can find something to do with our past, and put some closure to it, we've achieved something. And just being here in this dome, knowing that here in this room was where the Founding Fifteen faced some of their most difficult crises, is reward enough."
"All right, thank you, professor."
Over the next several days, the dome was excavated more thoroughly, down to the original surface of the land. The smaller structures which had shown up on the sonograph were small units with hoses attached, designed to extract water from the ground, and to use the ground to cool the dome in the summer.
They also began to feel several tremors, which started the morning after the dome was opened.
True to Roger's word, the camp had been moved to higher ground, even though it made everyone more uncomfortable, and he worked out a roster to limit the number of people working inside the dome to three people and two reporters at any given time.
Anna addressed her concerns to Mrs. Bowen.
"You know, after what the Terrians have warned us about, I'm not so sure we're going to get our money's worth out of this expedition."
"That may be, dear, but life's a risk," Mrs. Bowen said. "I've started talks with the First National Bank of New Pacifica and a contracting company to see if it would be feasible to simply move the entire dome elsewhere. I mean, we can't simply dig it up again every spring."
"That would be quite an undertaking."
"Actually, it wouldn't," Mrs. Bowen replied. "I've been studying these domes, and they were specifically designed to be set up by a minimum of two people. It wouldn't be easy at first, but it could be dismantled and moved much more easily than other structures."
Anna just shook her head. "Mrs. Bowen, you are amazing."
"Some would say so," she nodded. Then she gasped and grabbed Anna's arm. "Oh, Mrs. Farmington and I made the most astonishing discovery last week, and in all the excitement, we forgot to tell you!"
"Tell me what?"
"Well, the Carruthers, one of the oldest families in New Pacifica, have sold their house and are moving inland. Mrs. Carruthers was packing away junk in the attic which had been in her family for generations, and she discovered an old gear recording of the wedding between Devon Adair and John Danziger!"
Anna gasped. "You're kidding! Really?"
"Yes! And what's more, the recording chip had an identity code attached to it! We researched the town archives, and found another branch of the Adair-Danziger family that no one ever knew about before! We traced the genealogy to the present day and visited them!"
Anna quickly led Mrs. Bowen over to one of the collapsible tables they had set up and sat her down on the seat. She sat across from her. "Tell me everything!" she ordered.
"Well, actually, there isn't much to tell. That was the good part. It turns out that the only member of this family who still lives in New Pacifica was a young man who didn't care that he was a descendant of Devon and John."
"He didn't care?!"
"Not. One. Bit. Oh, he was nice enough, and he agreed that it was fascinating, but he just couldn't be bothered about it very much."
"Well, who was it?"
"I don't know. I've already forgotten his name, he was such a disappointment. Some college dropout who spends all of his time in front of a computer screen, talking to people through email and writing silly stories. Self-indulgent ones, I might add."
Anna sighed. "What a waste."
Mrs. Bowen nodded.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, looking at the land around them. The evening was very, very pleasant, very beautiful; the sun was setting, the woods were quiet. The expedition members were catching up on sleep, or reading. The few who weren't were down in the biodome. Todd was down there too, helping out in whatever way he could. Just beyond camp, there were now six vehicles. Most of them were dunerails, but two were transrovers. One belonged to a news crew, the other was the one airlifted from the museum. It all looked so different from the way it did when they'd first arrived, Anna reflected, only a few days before.
She felt a faint vibration, and wondered who was approaching now. But the vibration continued, and the cups on the table began to shake, and suddenly Anna realized she wasn't feeling a vehicle approaching, she was feeling the land move.
Just when she started to say something, the whole world kicked like a newborn and she was thrown off the bench and onto the ground.
Then a tremendous CRACK exploded all around her and inside her head, and the world started to go mad.
She opened her eyes to see a dark sky above her. Panicking, she tried to stand up, only to be thrown down again. The world let loose with another CRACK, and Anna saw why the sky was dark.
Hot ash was spewing into the sky from one of the mountains nearby.
It was beginning to fall, and burn. Around her, people were running. Mrs. Bowen was lying face up on the ground, dazed. Anna quickly crawled over to her and covered her face with her shirt, and tried to get her to stand up. Then she saw people jump into the dunerails.
"Don't leave!" she yelled. "Nobody leaves until we're all present! Nobody gets left behind!" But her voice was drowned out by the thunder of the land, and they didn't hear her.
She saw Roger, and he was wearing his gear set. She activated her own. "Roger! Tell everyone not to leave! Tell them to wait, and have everyone communicate by gear! That's the only way we can talk to each other!"
She saw Roger spin around and fall, and she couldn't even tell if he'd heard. Then she saw him stagger up and run to the vehicles. He frantically stood in front of them, and waved his arms. Once they were stopped, he ran up to the people in the dunerails and spoke with them, and everyone nodded and put on their gear sets.
Anna witnessed it all in a kind of sick slow motion. She couldn't even tell who was inside the rails, her vision was so fuzzy. Students, reporters, staff, committee members. Just how many people were here? She couldn't remember. She couldn't think. She didn't move, but covered Mrs. Bowen with her body, trying to protect her.
Then she heard Roger's voice over her gear. "We're in no immediate danger! Stay inside some of the tents, grouped together, and get out of this ash! As soon as everyone is up here from the dome and accounted for, we'll pull out!"
Anna looked up to see which tents the others were heading for. The two biggest ones. She stood up and frantically dragged Mrs. Bowen towards them, stumbling and falling all the way. She reached one of the tents, and she felt people pulling her inside. Someone started to treat Mrs. Bowen. She didn't know who.
Someone was speaking over the gear channel.
"What's the status up there? Is everyone all right?" It was Richard.
"So far," Roger replied. "How many of you are down there?"
"Just five. We're okay, we've just decided to wait out whatever is happening. It looks a lot more dangerous out there than it does in here."
"Negative," Roger said. "The situation is very dangerous! We're pulling out the moment you join us!"
"Right, we're on our-"
CRACK-OOM!
Anna felt herself screaming, but couldn't hear herself. It was like two ten-mile tunnels had just been drilled into her skull. Everything echoed.
She took a deep breath and looked out of the tent at the biodome, now looking tiny and helpless far below them. Horrified beyond belief, screaming for it not to be true, she saw the landslide 200 meters wide gushing down the opposite mountain slope, saw it smash against the front door and block it completely with 5,000 tons of dirt, saw it cave in the front of the dome like it was nothing more than paper.
"TODD!" She ran from the tent down the mountain, screaming. On the other side of the valley, lava poured down the slope, following the landslide to complete the job it had started.
"Anna!" Roger took off after her. He tackled her to the ground, and held her there, where she beat against him furiously.
"Let me go! Let go of me!"
"Stop it! Please stop! We can't help them! No one can help them!"
"Mom?" It was Todd.
Coughing and choking, with the ash swirling around her, Anna frantically clutched her gear set more tightly to her head. "Todd?"
"We're all right!" Richard said. "Don't worry about us! None of us were near the door, because of the ash coming inside. We're still coming up. In a few minutes, we can bust our way out of the back of the dome."
"Richard!" Anna said. "You don't have a few minutes! Lava's on the way!"
"We don't have a choice!" Richard shot back. "We'll bust out, and Todd's coming up first!"
Roger got off of Anna, and she sat up and twisted around, her eyes stinging from the ash. Only a tiny bit of the biodome was visible, sticking out of the dirt bank. She strained to see it bust open, to see her son emerge safely and run up the slope to her, out of danger. Nothing was happening.
The lava was cruising down the slope. It would be there in less than a minute, and cover the entire bottom of the gap.
She turned her gear off. "They'll never make it in time!" she yelled at Roger.
His reply was cut off by another thunderous crack, and more ash erupted into the air. His eyes squeezed shut, and he fell to the ground. He staggered back up, groping around, unsure if he could even find his way back to the tent. Anna was nowhere near him.
Twin beams struck him right in the eyes. He put his hand up, wondering what it was. He heard the roar of an engine, and he realized he was looking at a transrover. No, he thought, as his eyes widened – not just any transrover.
The transrover.
"FORWARD ROLL!" Anna cried, and with a mighty roar, its wheels spinning, the great beast busted loose of all of its chains. It lurched hard off the platform, smashed one of the dunerails out of the way, swung past Roger, and raced into the valley below.
Roger watched it go, and he couldn't help but smile.
Then he saw Carl run out of one of the tents further down the hillside and swing up onto the transrover's sideboard as it passed him.
Anna looked incredulously at her new passenger.
"I believe I can help," Carl said.
"Whatever!" Anna replied, gritting her teeth and driving on through the ash. She activated her gear again. "Roger! Call for an emergency air lift from Chamisa Trail! And start moving people out! Not everyone has to wait for us!"
Then Carl keyed his own gear set and said, "Richard, please have everyone back away from the rear wall. I have very good aim."
Carl still stood on the passenger sideboard, hanging on by one hand. With his other hand he raised his staff, energy crackling all over it. The power built into a buzzing crescendo, and he let it fly.
The ball of lightning sailed down the mountainside and exploded perfectly against the rear of the biodome, blasting open a hole. Almost immediately, Todd was virtually thrown through it. The other four people frantically crawled through behind him. Just as they started running, the lava poured down on them.
And the transrover roared past them, swung around, and slammed into the lava flow sideways, blocking its path and saving their lives. Lava poured into the cab, burning Anna all down her left side. She screamed. Carl reached in and pulled her out the other side. Todd was there to meet her on the sideboard.
"Run Todd!" Anna yelled at him.
"But Mom! What about the transrover?"
"Let it go!"
They jumped off and started running up the slope. Lava poured around the transrover, through it, then over it. It began to fill up the entire gap. They still ran. Ahead of her, Anna saw a man fall hard, twisting his ankle and hitting his head. She dimly noticed that it was the same reporter who had snapped at her the other day about Dreamers. Carl ran up to him, took him in his arms, and said, "Keep running! I can only take one!"
Then Carl disappeared into the earth, taking the reporter to safety.
They still ran, covering their faces with their shirts to keep out the ash, and began to outpace the lava. If they had been trying to outrun the lava going downhill, they would never have made it. But going uphill, they had the advantage.
Up ahead, they saw lights. Roger had driven the second transrover to the edge of the campsite and shone the bright headlights down into the valley, knowing they wouldn't be able to find their way out without help.
Minutes later, they came stumbling into camp. Carl was already there, laying the dazed reporter on the transrover's sideboard. All the other vehicles were gone.
"Is everyone accounted for?" Anna asked. She saw Roger look at her in horror, and she knew he was seeing the third-degree burns down her face and arm. But he managed to say, "Yes. We're the only ones left."
There was another explosion behind them. Feeling sick, Anna lifted Todd into the transrover's cab. He was wheezing, and could hardly stand. She shut the door, sealing him safely inside, just as a fresh blast of hot ash swept over them all. She found herself lost in a swirling darkness. She had no sense of balance. She reached for the door handle to hold herself up, and found herself clutching a tree root instead. Funny, she thought, I don't feel like I'm lying down.
She tried to stand, but her body just wouldn't respond. Her legs moved feebly. Then the blackness overtook her, and she knew no more.
Anna woke up in a strange bed, staring at a strange wall.
Her chest was tight with fear. After a moment, memories came crashing in on her. Had it all been a nightmare? She put her hand up to her face, and felt the bandages. No. It hadn't been a nightmare.
"Mom?"
She saw Todd sitting in a chair beside the bed, his eyes wide at seeing her awake. Anna gradually realized she was in a hospital. She felt so weak.
"Todd?" she asked. She hated how feeble her voice sounded.
Todd went to her and held her hand.
"What happened?" she asked. "How did we get here?"
"The rescue helicopters arrived and took us away," he said. "Me and Carl were the only two people who were still awake. I was in the transrover, and he's a Dreamer, so he's kind of hard to suffocate."
Anna smiled weakly. "Yes, I suppose he would be."
"I called the helicopters to us from the 'Rover's radio," Todd went on. "They homed in on the signal, and they dropped down with stretchers. They brought us all here."
"And where is here? Are we in New Pacifica?"
"No. We're in Sieraski Hospital in Chamisa Trail."
Anna took a deep breath. "Is everyone okay?"
"Uh huh," Todd nodded. "Everyone made it. And you know what? The chief of police here in Chamisa Trail has listened to the gear logs of everyone. You know – what everyone was saying when the lava was coming down? He says everyone is alive is because you took charge and thought fast. He wants to give you a medal. He says you're a hero."
Anna reached out with one arm to touch him. "Are you all right?" she asked.
Todd turned his shoulder to her and showed her a cut on his arm. "I got scratched when Richard threw me out of the biodome, but other than that, I'm okay."
"Come here," she said with a smile. She pulled him close and hugged him.
"Knock, knock," came a voice from the doorway. Anna looked up to see Roger. He looked much the same as when he'd knocked on her office door back in New Pacifica, only a week ago. "May I come in?" he asked.
Her smile grew even bigger. "Sure. But only if you tell me what day it is, and who did what, and where, and how, and...I don't know."
"Well," Roger said, and took a deep breath. "You took more of a beating than anyone else, and you're the only one still hospitalized. We were all brought here two days ago."
"Two days?" Anna croaked out.
"You needed reconstructive surgery on your face and your left arm," he said. "The doctors put you under to do that. They say the bandages can come off in a couple of days, and your face will be as good as new."
"Huh," Anna said. "Just what I wanted to hear."
Roger sat down on the bed. "Anna, you saved a lot of people's lives out there. You and Todd both, since he kept his head and used the transrover's radio. You saved my life. I can't ever thank you enough for that."
"Don't sell yourself short, Roger," Anna said. "You did just as much."
"Only after you told me to. Until I heard your voice, I was panicking as much as anyone else. Which is why I want to give you this." He pulled out a present from underneath his coat and handed it to her.
"Oh, Roger, you shouldn't have," Anna said, embarrassed.
"I think you'll like it," he said with a smile. "Go on. Open it."
Anna tore open the packaging and opened the box. Inside was a fedora.
"What's this for?" she asked.
"Are you familiar with the great classics from the expansionist period on Earth? Spielberg?"
"Uh...vaguely."
"Well, it occurred to me that anyone who behaved as you did when the volcano erupted is just as fantastic an archaeologist as his legendary character. And I thought maybe we should start calling you Indy-Anna." He smiled.
Anna just looked at him. "Roger, that's awful. You should be ashamed of yourself."
"No doubt, but I'm not."
"Try it on, Mom!"
She did.
"It looks good on you," Roger said. "It really does."
Anna just laughed. "What happened to the biodome?"
"Gone," he said. "And the original transrover. The earth covered it all up, just like Carl said it would. And the lava will have disfigured everything beyond recognition, so there's no point in digging it up again."
Anna sighed. "Well, I guess we're not going to hold the bicentennial celebrations there, are we?"
Roger shook his head, and they both smiled.
"But what if I told you I had a lead on the crash site of the Roanoke, where Eden Advance's escape pod touched down?" he suddenly asked.
Anna looked up in amazement. "You do?"
"No. Not yet." He picked up his coat and stood up. "Next time, though. Next time. For now, I'm heading back to my safe, boring life."
"Will I be seeing you around?" Anna asked him.
He nodded. "If you wish. I was actually wondering if you'd care to join me on staff at HU."
"Oh, really?" Anna asked. "Funny. I was going to ask if you wanted to join me at the NPHM."
Roger smiled. "We'll obviously have to work that out."
Anna just smiled back at him.
"We'll talk again when you're better, Anna. Good-bye."
Anna waved good-bye, and he left.
Two days later, Anna stood in her hospital room one final time, admiring her repaired face in the mirror. It was indistinguishable from the original. Maybe even a little better. Or was that just her? she thought.
She tried on the fedora. Yeah, it did look nice. Kind of stylish. She'd have to watch those movies it had come from. They were action/adventure movies, if she remembered correctly. Maybe she and Todd could sit down some evening and watch them together. Yeah, she thought. That would be nice.
She turned to where Todd was standing beside her suitcase.
"Ready?" she asked.
"If you are."
As Anna did her final checkout, reporters dogged her every step, telling the world she was all right. She and Todd waltzed through them and walked to the parking lot, where Susan was waiting for them. She led them to the car she'd rented and put Anna's bag in the trunk.
As Anna and Todd climbed into the back seat, Todd asked, "Mom, did you ever figure out what it was you came out here looking for?"
"Yes. I came out here looking for a hero."
"Really? Did you find one?"
"I sure did," she said with a smile, and brushed some hair out of his eyes. "And I found her in the unlikeliest place of all."
Susan climbed into the driver's seat and asked, "Where to?"
"Home," Anna said.
"The airfield," Todd clarified.
As they pulled away, Todd took out the gear recording his mother had given him on springday and played it. He looked out at the sunshine and the budding trees and blooming flowers, and listened again to Morgan Martin.
"The temperature rose for days and days. It was far from summer yet, but winter was definitely on the wing. The crew made preparations for an imminent departure, and all of us began to feel the thrill of expectation. We would be living on the horizon once again, and this winter camp would be home only to memories, of things feared, things overcome, and things learned – enough, we hoped, to help us make an impossible journey possible."