 How did Loy Chuk's team find Ned at the bottom of the Pit?
A scream of brakes, the splash into icy waters, a long descent into alkaline depths ... Dazzled, and befuddled by his own rash speed, Ned Vince had only swift young reflexes to rely on to avoid a fearful, telescoping collision. His car hit the white-painted wooden rail sideways, crashed through, tumbled down a steep slope, struck a huge boulder, bounced up a little, and arced outward, falling as gracefully as a swan-diver toward the inky waters of the Pit, fifty feet beneath.... Ned Vince was still dimly conscious when that black, quiet pool geysered around him in a mighty splash. Movement was slower now, as he began to sink, trapped inside his wrecked car. The Pit was a tremendously deep pocket in the ground, spring-fed. The ripples that had ruffled the surface waters in the Pit, quieted again to glassy smoothness. A launching catapult for the last space ships built by the gods in exodus, perhaps it was—half a million years ago. Loy Chuk had flown his geological expedition out from the far lowlands to the east, out from the city of Kar-Rah. Loy Chuk and his fellow workers were gathered, tense and gleeful, around the things their digging had exposed to the daylight. The dry mud that had encased it like an airtight coffin, had by now been chipped away by the tiny investigators; but soiled clothing still clung to it, after perhaps a million years. The final instrument he used to test the mummy, looked like a miniature stereoscope, with complicated details. Medical and biological sciences were far advanced among Loy Chuk's kind. It might move, speak, remember its past! With infinite care it was crated in a metal case, and hauled into the flying machine. Flashing flame, the latter arose, bearing the entire hundred members of the expedition. Beyond the eastern rim of the continent, the plain dipped downward steeply. Loy Chuk's people had built their homes mostly underground, since the beginning of their foggy evolution. The mummy was taken to Loy Chuk's laboratory, a short distance below the surface. Fluids submerged it, slowly soaking from that hardened flesh the alkali that had preserved it for so long. Still submerged in liquid, the corpse was submitted to a flow of restorative energy, passing between complicated electrodes. Loy Chuk put an odd, metal-fabric helmet on its head, and a second, much smaller helmet on his own. At last, eager and ready for whatever might happen now, Loy Chuk pushed another switch.
 The workers found him during an excavation.
 The workers noticed red debris.  The workers noticed a flaky rust formation.  The workers noticed a glint of metal.  The workers found him during an excavation.