Bothering to proceed with only 2000 horsepower worth of tractive effort was a waste of time, and it would mainly result in the train killing its last ...raction anyway.James brought his train to a halt, then picked up his radio, "Matt, could you come up here? We have a small problem, over." Roger, on my way," Matt said.After informing dispatch that they were dead on the tracks, James had little to do but sit and wait.Finally, Matt climbed into the engines cab. "What's the issue, Cap'n Kirk?"His. Kim Mc Nee, the afternoonshift welder, entered the room as soon as the couple were gone. She checked and patched the inside wall of the room. Her fix didn’t do a lot for the paint job, but the whole room was going to have to be stripped anyways so Kim wasn’t too concerned.Anita’s team took another hour to get the other repairs completed on this side of the ship and were finally able to vacate the bladders. They were all glad that they were fit and healthy as it had been a mammoth task.They. ’ ‘I’ll do that, Francine,’ Matt said as he turned into the sun-drenched street. Matt Raines stumbled through the winding streets toward the lower part of the compound. The still intense late afternoon heat throbbed into his brain, magnifying the shock and seething anger he felt toward the anonymous engineer and his deceiving wife. Halfway home he stopped and considered finding out who the engineer was, to con front him about it, then realized he was being foolish. He stood in a shadow, looking. .. oreven before Columbus had stumbled across the new world."Well I'll be," Ray muttered, realizing that if this stone was that old,then it might be worth quite a bit.Ray stared at the slab for a minute more, his curiosity about the slaband what might be under it growing with every breath. Then he finallydecided that he was damn well going to find out. A part of him suggestedthat he might want to call an archeologist, but he shrugged that off. Itwas his property and his find... and he wasn't.