In the Desert By John Briggs Tricky, digging in the sand. As soon as you got any out, most of your pile slid back in. So when I finally shifted over to the next digging place, I always had the nagging suspicion I'd just missed finding something important. I stopped and glanced at the other diggers scattered around me in the desert. Near me one had unearthed a small device that looked like a half-decayed telephone on which he was trying to place a call. Another was straining to extract a sleek, black crystal, as tall as he was and astonishingly beautiful. We all knew the rule that until you dug up a memento, you wouldn't be allowed to make the journey to meet your father. Others who found mementos were already departing. As usual, I was flogging myself over why I never had any luck, though I knew it was just that kind of thinking always held me back. Then, as I reached the pit of my depression, I hit something that was down a little from the surface. It looked like a piece of curved metal. I stopped digging and stood up. My heart pumping fast, I watched the sand drizzle back around it, thinking that now I just needed to dig it out to start my journey. A few others remained in the desert. I watched them, feeling sympathy for their labors. Then several other diggers discovered things and went off. I bent down and dug quickly, finding my own extended in the sand. The curving metal, if that's it was, was dark and pitted, possibly part of a machine. Kneeling in the hole and throwing sand over my head, I still couldn't figure it out, though I dug for a very long time. Every minute I kept expecting to see it, but whatever it was kept curving under and under. Occasionally, I felt somebody pause over the hole to watch, but my activity never held the observer's attention very long. So far, I had uncovered a series of metal struts or ribs, curved up toward the sky like the ribcage of a gigantic skeleton. There was nobody on the desert now ( I climbed out of my hole to look). I flogged my brain pointlessly over why I hadn't tried another spot, cursing my luck. I returned and dug some more. Finally I could see that my object was shaped like the superstructure of an antique ship. The thing loomed far larger than anything others had taken out-long and high and symmetrical. There in the pit only the tremendous tapered ribs and sleek, towering prow remained. A thing far too big to be moved. I circled around trying to imagine where it came from, what it actually was, and what it had looked like long ago when it was whole. My second time around I saw a chain dangling down from the prow and stretched out for a distance in the sand. Idly, I went to the end. To my amazement, the ship slid forward easily, like a child's toy-rising up out of the hole and following me effortlessly on its keel. Excited and proud to see my luck now changed so completely, I started off, forgetting even to wonder if I still had time to make my journey. But I didn't go very far before I began to feel a drag and turned to see the ribs distorting, at first so little that I tried to convince myself I only imagined it, but then all too clearly straining off balance. I pulled more carefully but with each step the ribs twisted further apart. Then I looked around in time to see them all collapse into a heap, like a pile of decaying bones. By the time I walked back to it, the sand was blowing in, sifting into the spaces and burying it again. I thought at least whoever finds it the next time won't have to worry about having to keep it all in one piece. I stood there picturing myself finding it in this form, huge and twisted under the sand, and the feeling of nervous excitement that would come from wondering what in the universe it was. I knew what it was, however, and I couldn't shut out the knowledge that it would never be that thing again.