Midnight Ch. 07

Diana introduced us the man in charge, "Guys this is Arnold Hendrik, he heads our Geophys at York. Arnold this is Nathan Smethwick and Manni Mwenye from Hull Uni."

We shook hands and then moved back to our work, whilst Diana instructed Arnold where to direct his search.

The two teams moved to the top of the slope with their equipment and started scanning the top field in straight line back and forth to about 100 metres north from the edge. Our little group carried on working on our grid, whilst Diana sat in a folding chair outside her tent. She was waiting for the Geophys team to provide her with some results before she could do anything. Her students were standing around chatting quietly and one or two came over to watch us work.

A couple of hours later, Arnold called Diana into his tent, then a few minutes after that she came out wearing a dejected expression. She flopped down back in her chair and took a nip from her hipflask.

I tapped Nathan's arm and then nodded towards her. We stood up and made our way over.

Nathan asked, "Bad news?"

Diana took another sip from her hip flask and then put it back in her pocket before she replied dully, "Complete bust. Absolutely no trace of anything," she rubbed her mouth, "If there was a settlement here, then it must have run south... Right where they fucking blew it up!"

She sat in silence for a moment and then spat,"Bollocks!"

I patted her on the shoulder, "I'm sorry. I know you really wanted to find something. But you still have the skeleton... That's something at least."

She sighed, "Yeah. I suppose."

Nathan asked, "So what now?"

"Now? We pack up and go home. I've already asked Arnold to scan your bit down here... May as well hang about and see if he finds something before we go, though."

Then she lapsed back into silence. We decided to leave her in peace and headed back to Alice.

It was getting to the point where I would need to stop digging her out. Her bones weren't connected together because connective tissue doesn't fossilise, and as I dug more soil away, there was a danger of them sliding about and possibly getting broken, mixed up or lost. I wasn't happy, but I knew that it was near the time when the experts had to take over.

Still, I thought happily, not yet. I could scrape away a bit more before Nathan pulled me away.

The Geophys teams started scanning our area. They started next to us and moved away to the west to the far edge of the slope about 400 metres away, walking backwards and forwards until they had covered the entire area.

Then they all returned to their tent. A minute or so later, they came back out and hurried past us wearing excited faces. We watched them scurry off to the far western slope.

Nathan and I exchanged a glance and then headed over to the Geophys tent. As we neared it, we heard an exclamation of surprise, "I don't believe it!"

We hurried over and as we stood at the flap of the tent, we stared at the Arnold as he appeared to vibrate with nervous energy. Yet again we heard him shout, "I don't believe this!"

Hearing the commotion, Diana came across and asked, "What's going on?"

Nathan said, "Don't know. But something's set Arnold off."

Realising that he had an audience, Arnold looked up from his computer screen and said, "Come here. You have to see this!"

All three of us entered the tent and crowded around his screen. I had no clue what I was looking at, but Nathan and Diana were very interested in the display.

Diana said, "Come on then, Arnold. Give us a clue."

He picked up a pen and pointed to various dark shapes on the screen, "As you can see there's lots of traces here. We can't move for them."

Nathan murmured, "So we've got a few more fossils down there."

His eyes sparkled as Arnold said, "I don't think you understand. Here, look!"

He clicked his mouse a few times and displayed several more screens of results. I'll be honest, it still meant very little to me, just blobs of black and varying shades of grey. But it was clearly starting to excite Nathan and Diana.

Diana whispered, "This is big."

"How big?" I asked.

Arnold was sweating now, "Huge."

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN