Scully jumped out as the Mercedes pulled up to a halt beside Mulder's battered yellow bug. "Wait here, I wanna check that everything's OK."
"Wait a minute!" Pendrell called to her.
"You're not armed, just wait here!" she said running off towards the slopes.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Just, I don't know, park the car!"
"Ouch!"
"If you'd hold still this would be easier," Rory muttered as she swabbed his forehead with disinfectant.
"How long have you been here?" Mulder asked, looking around at the tent.
"About four weeks or so," she said, unwrapping a bandaid.
"You said you were leaving tomorrow. How long has it taken you to finish your work?" Mulder winced as she applied the bandage.
"For the oil company? Ohhh, I finished that the first five hours after we got here."
Pendrell reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the sunblock. He squeezed some into his palm and pressed it to his neck.
That was why Pendrell didn't see the man in the mirror.
But as he was knocked unconscious, he did feel the pain of the metal impacting his skull.
Briefly.
"I've been doing work for my post doc," Rory explained as she packed away the med kit. "I figured that I might as well since I was out here already."
"But do they know that you are still out here?" Mulder asked as he rifled through some of her folders.
"Uh, no I don't think so. I purchased the ticket myself, they just need the receipt. I sent in the report two weeks ago. Why?"
"I think we might be in big trouble," said Mulder gloomily.
Rory looked over at him. Saw the papers in his hand.
"I was just looking at your reports," he said sheepishly.
"I noticed," she said quietly.
"You have two sets of data. One has exactly the opposite readings of the others. Where this one is positive, that one is negative. They don't correlate."
Rory looked slightly embarrassed. "Heh-heh. The red one is a copy of the report I sent to the oil company. I changed the data slightly. Blame it on crossed wires. They won't be drilling for oil here."
"Isn't that a little unethical?"
"Depends on your point of view. What do you think about the pollution and rape of our planet?"
"I think," he said replacing the files, "that I like how you think. Won't it be tough for you to get a job after this?"
"I was just going to teach anyway, I don't need them again. They might need me, however."
Mulder chuckled slightly, then glanced at his watch. He cast about the tent, beginning to pace furiously. He spied her laptop on the card table.
"Can you pull up a model of this mesa?" he asked, pulling her towards the terminal.
"Ah, sure, I can pull up a cross-section," Rory switched on TROI, her laptop,and a screeching emerged from the computer. "Sorry," she mumbled as she reached for a toggle switch that cut off the Animaniacs theme song.
The screen pulled up a slice of the mesa showing the layer cake rock layers.
"Are there caves anywhere?" Mulder asked cautiously.
"Yeah, there's a layer of limestone. PIEVIH said there were a few caves down there."
"PIEVIH?"
She fiddled with the keyboard. "Oh, Dave. He pissed in every volcano in Hawaii, he wants to discover a brach species and name it after himself. There you go," she said as a number of spots dissolved in a yellow layer.
"I hope I'm not distracting you from your work, Professor," said Mulder as he watched the screen morph and blend.
She turned round to face him. "You have no idea who you're talking to, do you?"
"Shhh," said Mulder. "What was that?" he asked, pointing towards the top of the tent.
He reached over and plunged them into darkness.
Scully had almost circled the mesa and still hadn't found a way in.
What was worse, it was getting dark.
Then she found the body.
