diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-8.txt | 2303 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 45301 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 422101 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h/19445-h.htm | 2401 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h/images/001.png | bin | 0 -> 80246 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h/images/002.png | bin | 0 -> 31732 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h/images/010.png | bin | 0 -> 63177 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h/images/017.png | bin | 0 -> 94406 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h/images/025.png | bin | 0 -> 42304 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445-h/images/034.png | bin | 0 -> 61559 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445.txt | 2303 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19445.zip | bin | 0 -> 45284 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
15 files changed, 7023 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19445-8.txt b/19445-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..451637f --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2303 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Omnilingual + +Author: H. Beam Piper + +Illustrator: Freas + +Release Date: October 2, 2006 [EBook #19445] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OMNILINGUAL *** + + + + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Greg Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + Transcriber's Note: + +This etext was produced from "Astounding Science Fiction," February, +1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. +copyright on this publication was renewed. + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +OMNILINGUAL + + + _To translate writings, you need a key to the code--and + if the last writer of Martian died forty thousand years + before the first writer of Earth was born ... how could + the Martian be translated...?_ + +BY H. BEAM PIPER + +Illustrated by Freas + + * * * * * + +[Illustration] + + +Martha Dane paused, looking up at the purple-tinged copper sky. The wind +had shifted since noon, while she had been inside, and the dust storm +that was sweeping the high deserts to the east was now blowing out over +Syrtis. The sun, magnified by the haze, was a gorgeous magenta ball, as +large as the sun of Terra, at which she could look directly. Tonight, +some of that dust would come sifting down from the upper atmosphere to +add another film to what had been burying the city for the last fifty +thousand years. + +The red loess lay over everything, covering the streets and the open +spaces of park and plaza, hiding the small houses that had been crushed +and pressed flat under it and the rubble that had come down from the +tall buildings when roofs had caved in and walls had toppled outward. +Here, where she stood, the ancient streets were a hundred to a hundred +and fifty feet below the surface; the breach they had made in the wall +of the building behind her had opened into the sixth story. She could +look down on the cluster of prefabricated huts and sheds, on the +brush-grown flat that had been the waterfront when this place had been a +seaport on the ocean that was now Syrtis Depression; already, the bright +metal was thinly coated with red dust. She thought, again, of what +clearing this city would mean, in terms of time and labor, of people and +supplies and equipment brought across fifty million miles of space. +They'd have to use machinery; there was no other way it could be done. +Bulldozers and power shovels and draglines; they were fast, but they +were rough and indiscriminate. She remembered the digs around Harappa +and Mohenjo-Daro, in the Indus Valley, and the careful, patient native +laborers--the painstaking foremen, the pickmen and spademen, the long +files of basketmen carrying away the earth. Slow and primitive as the +civilization whose ruins they were uncovering, yes, but she could count +on the fingers of one hand the times one of her pickmen had damaged a +valuable object in the ground. If it hadn't been for the underpaid and +uncomplaining native laborer, archaeology would still be back where +Wincklemann had found it. But on Mars there was no native labor; the +last Martian had died five hundred centuries ago. + +Something started banging like a machine gun, four or five hundred yards +to her left. A solenoid jack-hammer; Tony Lattimer must have decided +which building he wanted to break into next. She became conscious, then, +of the awkward weight of her equipment, and began redistributing it, +shifting the straps of her oxy-tank pack, slinging the camera from one +shoulder and the board and drafting tools from the other, gathering the +notebooks and sketchbooks under her left arm. She started walking down +the road, over hillocks of buried rubble, around snags of wall jutting +up out of the loess, past buildings still standing, some of them already +breached and explored, and across the brush-grown flat to the huts. + + * * * * * + +There were ten people in the main office room of Hut One when she +entered. As soon as she had disposed of her oxygen equipment, she lit a +cigarette, her first since noon, then looked from one to another of +them. Old Selim von Ohlmhorst, the Turco-German, one of her two fellow +archaeologists, sitting at the end of the long table against the farther +wall, smoking his big curved pipe and going through a looseleaf +notebook. The girl ordnance officer, Sachiko Koremitsu, between two +droplights at the other end of the table, her head bent over her work. +Colonel Hubert Penrose, the Space Force CO, and Captain Field, the +intelligence officer, listening to the report of one of the airdyne +pilots, returned from his afternoon survey flight. A couple of girl +lieutenants from Signals, going over the script of the evening telecast, +to be transmitted to the _Cyrano_, on orbit five thousand miles off +planet and relayed from thence to Terra via Lunar. Sid Chamberlain, the +Trans-Space News Service man, was with them. Like Selim and herself, he +was a civilian; he was advertising the fact with a white shirt and a +sleeveless blue sweater. And Major Lindemann, the engineer officer, and +one of his assistants, arguing over some plans on a drafting board. She +hoped, drawing a pint of hot water to wash her hands and sponge off her +face, that they were doing something about the pipeline. + +She started to carry the notebooks and sketchbooks over to where Selim +von Ohlmhorst was sitting, and then, as she always did, she turned aside +and stopped to watch Sachiko. The Japanese girl was restoring what had +been a book, fifty thousand years ago; her eyes were masked by a +binocular loup, the black headband invisible against her glossy black +hair, and she was picking delicately at the crumbled page with a +hair-fine wire set in a handle of copper tubing. Finally, loosening a +particle as tiny as a snowflake, she grasped it with tweezers, placed it +on the sheet of transparent plastic on which she was reconstructing the +page, and set it with a mist of fixative from a little spraygun. It was +a sheer joy to watch her; every movement was as graceful and precise as +though done to music after being rehearsed a hundred times. + +"Hello, Martha. It isn't cocktail-time yet, is it?" The girl at the +table spoke without raising her head, almost without moving her lips, as +though she were afraid that the slightest breath would disturb the flaky +stuff in front of her. + +"No, it's only fifteen-thirty. I finished my work, over there. I didn't +find any more books, if that's good news for you." + +Sachiko took off the loup and leaned back in her chair, her palms cupped +over her eyes. + +"No, I like doing this. I call it micro-jigsaw puzzles. This book, here, +really is a mess. Selim found it lying open, with some heavy stuff on +top of it; the pages were simply crushed." She hesitated briefly. "If +only it would mean something, after I did it." + +There could be a faintly critical overtone to that. As she replied, +Martha realized that she was being defensive. + +"It will, some day. Look how long it took to read Egyptian +hieroglyphics, even after they had the Rosetta Stone." + +Sachiko smiled. "Yes. I know. But they did have the Rosetta Stone." + +"And we don't. There is no Rosetta Stone, not anywhere on Mars. A whole +race, a whole species, died while the first Crò-Magnon cave-artist was +daubing pictures of reindeer and bison, and across fifty thousand years +and fifty million miles there was no bridge of understanding. + +"We'll find one. There must be something, somewhere, that will give us +the meaning of a few words, and we'll use them to pry meaning out of +more words, and so on. We may not live to learn this language, but we'll +make a start, and some day somebody will." + +Sachiko took her hands from her eyes, being careful not to look toward +the unshaded light, and smiled again. This time Martha was sure that it +was not the Japanese smile of politeness, but the universally human +smile of friendship. + +"I hope so, Martha: really I do. It would be wonderful for you to be the +first to do it, and it would be wonderful for all of us to be able to +read what these people wrote. It would really bring this dead city to +life again." The smile faded slowly. "But it seems so hopeless." + +"You haven't found any more pictures?" + +Sachiko shook her head. Not that it would have meant much if she had. +They had found hundreds of pictures with captions; they had never been +able to establish a positive relationship between any pictured object +and any printed word. Neither of them said anything more, and after a +moment Sachiko replaced the loup and bent her head forward over the +book. + + * * * * * + +Selim von Ohlmhorst looked up from his notebook, taking his pipe out of +his mouth. + +"Everything finished, over there?" he asked, releasing a puff of smoke. + +"Such as it was." She laid the notebooks and sketches on the table. +"Captain Gicquel's started airsealing the building from the fifth floor +down, with an entrance on the sixth; he'll start putting in oxygen +generators as soon as that's done. I have everything cleared up where +he'll be working." + +Colonel Penrose looked up quickly, as though making a mental note to +attend to something later. Then he returned his attention to the pilot, +who was pointing something out on a map. + +Von Ohlmhorst nodded. "There wasn't much to it, at that," he agreed. "Do +you know which building Tony has decided to enter next?" + +"The tall one with the conical thing like a candle extinguisher on top, +I think. I heard him drilling for the blasting shots over that way." + +"Well, I hope it turns out to be one that was occupied up to the end." + +The last one hadn't. It had been stripped of its contents and fittings, +a piece of this and a bit of that, haphazardly, apparently over a long +period of time, until it had been almost gutted. For centuries, as it +had died, this city had been consuming itself by a process of +auto-cannibalism. She said something to that effect. + +"Yes. We always find that--except, of course, at places like Pompeii. +Have you seen any of the other Roman cities in Italy?" he asked. +"Minturnae, for instance? First the inhabitants tore down this to repair +that, and then, after they had vacated the city, other people came along +and tore down what was left, and burned the stones for lime, or crushed +them to mend roads, till there was nothing left but the foundation +traces. That's where we are fortunate; this is one of the places where +the Martian race perished, and there were no barbarians to come later +and destroy what they had left." He puffed slowly at his pipe. "Some of +these days, Martha, we are going to break into one of these buildings +and find that it was one in which the last of these people died. Then we +will learn the story of the end of this civilization." + +And if we learn to read their language, we'll learn the whole story, not +just the obituary. She hesitated, not putting the thought into words. +"We'll find that, sometime, Selim," she said, then looked at her watch. +"I'm going to get some more work done on my lists, before dinner." + +For an instant, the old man's face stiffened in disapproval; he started +to say something, thought better of it, and put his pipe back into his +mouth. The brief wrinkling around his mouth and the twitch of his white +mustache had been enough, however; she knew what he was thinking. She +was wasting time and effort, he believed; time and effort belonging not +to herself but to the expedition. He could be right, too, she realized. +But he had to be wrong; there had to be a way to do it. She turned from +him silently and went to her own packing-case seat, at the middle of the +table. + + * * * * * + +Photographs, and photostats of restored pages of books, and transcripts +of inscriptions, were piled in front of her, and the notebooks in which +she was compiling her lists. She sat down, lighting a fresh cigarette, +and reached over to a stack of unexamined material, taking off the top +sheet. It was a photostat of what looked like the title page and +contents of some sort of a periodical. She remembered it; she had found +it herself, two days before, in a closet in the basement of the building +she had just finished examining. + +She sat for a moment, looking at it. It was readable, in the sense that +she had set up a purely arbitrary but consistently pronounceable system +of phonetic values for the letters. The long vertical symbols were +vowels. There were only ten of them; not too many, allowing separate +characters for long and short sounds. There were twenty of the short +horizontal letters, which meant that sounds like -ng or -ch or -sh were +single letters. The odds were millions to one against her system being +anything like the original sound of the language, but she had listed +several thousand Martian words, and she could pronounce all of them. + +And that was as far as it went. She could pronounce between three and +four thousand Martian words, and she couldn't assign a meaning to one of +them. Selim von Ohlmhorst believed that she never would. So did Tony +Lattimer, and he was a great deal less reticent about saying so. So, she +was sure, did Sachiko Koremitsu. There were times, now and then, when +she began to be afraid that they were right. + +The letters on the page in front of her began squirming and dancing, +slender vowels with fat little consonants. They did that, now, every +night in her dreams. And there were other dreams, in which she read them +as easily as English; waking, she would try desperately and vainly to +remember. She blinked, and looked away from the photostatted page; when +she looked back, the letters were behaving themselves again. There were +three words at the top of the page, over-and-underlined, which seemed to +be the Martian method of capitalization. _Mastharnorvod Tadavas +Sornhulva_. She pronounced them mentally, leafing through her notebooks +to see if she had encountered them before, and in what contexts. All +three were listed. In addition, _masthar_ was a fairly common word, and +so was _norvod_, and so was _nor_, but _-vod_ was a suffix and nothing +but a suffix. _Davas_, was a word, too, and _ta-_ was a common prefix; +_sorn_ and _hulva_ were both common words. This language, she had long +ago decided, must be something like German; when the Martians had needed +a new word, they had just pasted a couple of existing words together. It +would probably turn out to be a grammatical horror. Well, they had +published magazines, and one of them had been called _Mastharnorvod +Tadavas Sornhulva_. She wondered if it had been something like the +_Quarterly Archaeological Review_, or something more on the order of +_Sexy Stories_. + +A smaller line, under the title, was plainly the issue number and date; +enough things had been found numbered in series to enable her to +identify the numerals and determine that a decimal system of numeration +had been used. This was the one thousand and seven hundred and +fifty-fourth issue, for Doma, 14837; then Doma must be the name of one +of the Martian months. The word had turned up several times before. She +found herself puffing furiously on her cigarette as she leafed through +notebooks and piles of already examined material. + + * * * * * + +Sachiko was speaking to somebody, and a chair scraped at the end of the +table. She raised her head, to see a big man with red hair and a red +face, in Space Force green, with the single star of a major on his +shoulder, sitting down. Ivan Fitzgerald, the medic. He was lifting +weights from a book similar to the one the girl ordnance officer was +restoring. + +"Haven't had time, lately," he was saying, in reply to Sachiko's +question. "The Finchley girl's still down with whatever it is she has, +and it's something I haven't been able to diagnose yet. And I've been +checking on bacteria cultures, and in what spare time I have, I've been +dissecting specimens for Bill Chandler. Bill's finally found a mammal. +Looks like a lizard, and it's only four inches long, but it's a real +warm-blooded, gamogenetic, placental, viviparous mammal. Burrows, and +seems to live on what pass for insects here." + +"Is there enough oxygen for anything like that?" Sachiko was asking. + +"Seems to be, close to the ground." Fitzgerald got the headband of his +loup adjusted, and pulled it down over his eyes. "He found this thing in +a ravine down on the sea bottom--Ha, this page seems to be intact; now, +if I can get it out all in one piece--" + +He went on talking inaudibly to himself, lifting the page a little at a +time and sliding one of the transparent plastic sheets under it, working +with minute delicacy. Not the delicacy of the Japanese girl's small +hands, moving like the paws of a cat washing her face, but like a +steam-hammer cracking a peanut. Field archaeology requires a certain +delicacy of touch, too, but Martha watched the pair of them with envious +admiration. Then she turned back to her own work, finishing the table of +contents. + +The next page was the beginning of the first article listed; many of the +words were unfamiliar. She had the impression that this must be some +kind of scientific or technical journal; that could be because such +publications made up the bulk of her own periodical reading. She doubted +if it were fiction; the paragraphs had a solid, factual look. + +At length, Ivan Fitzgerald gave a short, explosive grunt. + +"Ha! Got it!" + +She looked up. He had detached the page and was cementing another +plastic sheet onto it. + +"Any pictures?" she asked. + +"None on this side. Wait a moment." He turned the sheet. "None on this +side, either." He sprayed another sheet of plastic to sandwich the page, +then picked up his pipe and relighted it. + +"I get fun out of this, and it's good practice for my hands, so don't +think I'm complaining," he said, "but, Martha, do you honestly think +anybody's ever going to get anything out of this?" + +Sachiko held up a scrap of the silicone plastic the Martians had used +for paper with her tweezers. It was almost an inch square. + +"Look; three whole words on this piece," she crowed. "Ivan, you took the +easy book." + +Fitzgerald wasn't being sidetracked. "This stuff's absolutely +meaningless," he continued. "It had a meaning fifty thousand years ago, +when it was written, but it has none at all now." + +She shook her head. "Meaning isn't something that evaporates with time," +she argued. "It has just as much meaning now as it ever had. We just +haven't learned how to decipher it." + +"That seems like a pretty pointless distinction," Selim von Ohlmhorst +joined the conversation. "There no longer exists a means of deciphering +it." + +"We'll find one." She was speaking, she realized, more in +self-encouragement than in controversy. + +"How? From pictures and captions? We've found captioned pictures, and +what have they given us? A caption is intended to explain the picture, +not the picture to explain the caption. Suppose some alien to our +culture found a picture of a man with a white beard and mustache sawing +a billet from a log. He would think the caption meant, 'Man Sawing +Wood.' How would he know that it was really 'Wilhelm II in Exile at +Doorn?'" + +Sachiko had taken off her loup and was lighting a cigarette. + +"I can think of pictures intended to explain their captions," she said. +"These picture language-books, the sort we use in the Service--little +line drawings, with a word or phrase under them." + +"Well, of course, if we found something like that," von Ohlmhorst began. + + * * * * * + +"Michael Ventris found something like that, back in the Fifties," Hubert +Penrose's voice broke in from directly behind her. + +She turned her head. The colonel was standing by the archaeologists' +table; Captain Field and the airdyne pilot had gone out. + +"He found a lot of Greek inventories of military stores," Penrose +continued. "They were in Cretan Linear B script, and at the head of each +list was a little picture, a sword or a helmet or a cooking tripod or a +chariot wheel. That's what gave him the key to the script." + +"Colonel's getting to be quite an archaeologist," Fitzgerald commented. +"We're all learning each others' specialties, on this expedition." + +"I heard about that long before this expedition was even contemplated." +Penrose was tapping a cigarette on his gold case. "I heard about that +back before the Thirty Days' War, at Intelligence School, when I was a +lieutenant. As a feat of cryptanalysis, not an archaeological +discovery." + +"Yes, cryptanalysis," von Ohlmhorst pounced. "The reading of a known +language in an unknown form of writing. Ventris' lists were in the known +language, Greek. Neither he nor anybody else ever read a word of the +Cretan language until the finding of the Greek-Cretan bilingual in 1963, +because only with a bilingual text, one language already known, can an +unknown ancient language be learned. And what hope, I ask you, have we +of finding anything like that here? Martha, you've been working on these +Martian texts ever since we landed here--for the last six months. Tell +me, have you found a single word to which you can positively assign a +meaning?" + +"Yes, I think I have one." She was trying hard not to sound too +exultant. "_Doma._ It's the name of one of the months of the Martian +calendar." + +"Where did you find that?" von Ohlmhorst asked. "And how did you +establish--?" + +"Here." She picked up the photostat and handed it along the table to +him. "I'd call this the title page of a magazine." + +He was silent for a moment, looking at it. "Yes. I would say so, too. +Have you any of the rest of it?" + +"I'm working on the first page of the first article, listed there. Wait +till I see; yes, here's all I found, together, here." She told him where +she had gotten it. "I just gathered it up, at the time, and gave it to +Geoffrey and Rosita to photostat; this is the first I've really examined +it." + +The old man got to his feet, brushing tobacco ashes from the front of +his jacket, and came to where she was sitting, laying the title page on +the table and leafing quickly through the stack of photostats. + +[Illustration] + +"Yes, and here is the second article, on page eight, and here's the next +one." He finished the pile of photostats. "A couple of pages missing at +the end of the last article. This is remarkable; surprising that a thing +like a magazine would have survived so long." + +"Well, this silicone stuff the Martians used for paper is pretty +durable," Hubert Penrose said. "There doesn't seem to have been any +water or any other fluid in it originally, so it wouldn't dry out with +time." + +"Oh, it's not remarkable that the material would have survived. We've +found a good many books and papers in excellent condition. But only a +really vital culture, an organized culture, will publish magazines, and +this civilization had been dying for hundreds of years before the end. +It might have been a thousand years before the time they died out +completely that such activities as publishing ended." + +"Well, look where I found it; in a closet in a cellar. Tossed in there +and forgotten, and then ignored when they were stripping the building. +Things like that happen." + +Penrose had picked up the title page and was looking at it. + +"I don't think there's any doubt about this being a magazine, at all." +He looked again at the title, his lips moving silently. "_Mastharnorvod +Tadavas Sornhulva_. Wonder what it means. But you're right about the +date--_Doma_ seems to be the name of a month. Yes, you have a word, Dr. +Dane." + +Sid Chamberlain, seeing that something unusual was going on, had come +over from the table at which he was working. After examining the title +page and some of the inside pages, he began whispering into the +stenophone he had taken from his belt. + +"Don't try to blow this up to anything big, Sid," she cautioned. "All we +have is the name of a month, and Lord only knows how long it'll be till +we even find out which month it was." + +"Well, it's a start, isn't it?" Penrose argued. "Grotefend only had the +word for 'king' when he started reading Persian cuneiform." + +"But I don't have the word for month; just the name of a month. +Everybody knew the names of the Persian kings, long before Grotefend." + +"That's not the story," Chamberlain said. "What the public back on Terra +will be interested in is finding out that the Martians published +magazines, just like we do. Something familiar; make the Martians seem +more real. More human." + + * * * * * + +Three men had come in, and were removing their masks and helmets and +oxy-tanks, and peeling out of their quilted coveralls. Two were Space +Force lieutenants; the third was a youngish civilian with close-cropped +blond hair, in a checked woolen shirt. Tony Lattimer and his helpers. + +"Don't tell me Martha finally got something out of that stuff?" he +asked, approaching the table. He might have been commenting on the +antics of the village half-wit, from his tone. + +"Yes; the name of one of the Martian months." Hubert Penrose went on to +explain, showing the photostat. + +Tony Lattimer took it, glanced at it, and dropped it on the table. + +"Sounds plausible, of course, but just an assumption. That word may not +be the name of a month, at all--could mean 'published' or 'authorized' +or 'copyrighted' or anything like that. Fact is, I don't think it's more +than a wild guess that that thing's anything like a periodical." He +dismissed the subject and turned to Penrose. "I picked out the next +building to enter; that tall one with the conical thing on top. It ought +to be in pretty good shape inside; the conical top wouldn't allow dust +to accumulate, and from the outside nothing seems to be caved in or +crushed. Ground level's higher than the other one, about the seventh +floor. I found a good place and drilled for the shots; tomorrow I'll +blast a hole in it, and if you can spare some people to help, we can +start exploring it right away." + +"Yes, of course, Dr. Lattimer. I can spare about a dozen, and I suppose +you can find a few civilian volunteers," Penrose told him. "What will +you need in the way of equipment?" + +"Oh, about six demolition-packets; they can all be shot together. And +the usual thing in the way of lights, and breaking and digging tools, +and climbing equipment in case we run into broken or doubtful stairways. +We'll divide into two parties. Nothing ought to be entered for the first +time without a qualified archaeologist along. Three parties, if Martha +can tear herself away from this catalogue of systematized +incomprehensibilities she's making long enough to do some real work." + +She felt her chest tighten and her face become stiff. She was pressing +her lips together to lock in a furious retort when Hubert Penrose +answered for her. + +"Dr. Dane's been doing as much work, and as important work, as you +have," he said brusquely. "More important work, I'd be inclined to say." + +Von Ohlmhorst was visibly distressed; he glanced once toward Sid +Chamberlain, then looked hastily away from him. Afraid of a story of +dissension among archaeologists getting out. + +"Working out a system of pronunciation by which the Martian language +could be transliterated was a most important contribution," he said. +"And Martha did that almost unassisted." + +"Unassisted by Dr. Lattimer, anyway," Penrose added. "Captain Field and +Lieutenant Koremitsu did some work, and I helped out a little, but +nine-tenths of it she did herself." + +"Purely arbitrary," Lattimer disdained. "Why, we don't even know that +the Martians could make the same kind of vocal sounds we do." + +"Oh, yes, we do," Ivan Fitzgerald contradicted, safe on his own ground. +"I haven't seen any actual Martian skulls--these people seem to have +been very tidy about disposing of their dead--but from statues and busts +and pictures I've seen. I'd say that their vocal organs were identical +with our own." + +"Well, grant that. And grant that it's going to be impressive to rattle +off the names of Martian notables whose statues we find, and that if +we're ever able to attribute any placenames, they'll sound a lot better +than this horse-doctors' Latin the old astronomers splashed all over the +map of Mars," Lattimer said. "What I object to is her wasting time on +this stuff, of which nobody will ever be able to read a word if she +fiddles around with those lists till there's another hundred feet of +loess on this city, when there's so much real work to be done and we're +as shorthanded as we are." + +That was the first time that had come out in just so many words. She was +glad Lattimer had said it and not Selim von Ohlmhorst. + +"What you mean," she retorted, "is that it doesn't have the publicity +value that digging up statues has." + +For an instant, she could see that the shot had scored. Then Lattimer, +with a side glance at Chamberlain, answered: + +"What I mean is that you're trying to find something that any +archaeologist, yourself included, should know doesn't exist. I don't +object to your gambling your professional reputation and making a +laughing stock of yourself; what I object to is that the blunders of one +archaeologist discredit the whole subject in the eyes of the public." + +That seemed to be what worried Lattimer most. She was framing a reply +when the communication-outlet whistled shrilly, and then squawked: +"Cocktail time! One hour to dinner; cocktails in the library, Hut Four!" + + * * * * * + +The library, which was also lounge, recreation room, and general +gathering-place, was already crowded; most of the crowd was at the long +table topped with sheets of glasslike plastic that had been wall panels +out of one of the ruined buildings. She poured herself what passed, +here, for a martini, and carried it over to where Selim von Ohlmhorst +was sitting alone. + +For a while, they talked about the building they had just finished +exploring, then drifted into reminiscences of their work on Terra--von +Ohlmhorst's in Asia Minor, with the Hittite Empire, and hers in +Pakistan, excavating the cities of the Harappa Civilization. They +finished their drinks--the ingredients were plentiful; alcohol and +flavoring extracts synthesized from Martian vegetation--and von +Ohlmhorst took the two glasses to the table for refills. + +"You know, Martha," he said, when he returned, "Tony was right about one +thing. You are gambling your professional standing and reputation. It's +against all archaeological experience that a language so completely dead +as this one could be deciphered. There was a continuity between all the +other ancient languages--by knowing Greek, Champollion learned to read +Egyptian; by knowing Egyptian, Hittite was learned. That's why you and +your colleagues have never been able to translate the Harappa +hieroglyphics; no such continuity exists there. If you insist that this +utterly dead language can be read, your reputation will suffer for it." + +"I heard Colonel Penrose say, once, that an officer who's afraid to risk +his military reputation seldom makes much of a reputation. It's the same +with us. If we really want to find things out, we have to risk making +mistakes. And I'm a lot more interested in finding things out than I am +in my reputation." + +She glanced across the room, to where Tony Lattimer was sitting with +Gloria Standish, talking earnestly, while Gloria sipped one of the +counterfeit martinis and listened. Gloria was the leading contender for +the title of Miss Mars, 1996, if you liked big bosomy blondes, but Tony +would have been just as attentive to her if she'd looked like the Wicked +Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." because Gloria was the Pan-Federation +Telecast System commentator with the expedition. + +"I know you are," the old Turco-German was saying. "That's why, when +they asked me to name another archaeologist for this expedition, I named +you." + +He hadn't named Tony Lattimer; Lattimer had been pushed onto the +expedition by his university. There'd been a lot of high-level +string-pulling to that; she wished she knew the whole story. She'd +managed to keep clear of universities and university politics; all her +digs had been sponsored by non-academic foundations or art museums. + +"You have an excellent standing: much better than my own, at your age. +That's why it disturbs me to see you jeopardizing it by this insistence +that the Martian language can be translated. I can't, really, see how +you can hope to succeed." + +She shrugged and drank some more of her cocktail, then lit another +cigarette. It was getting tiresome to try to verbalize something she +only felt. + +"Neither do I, now, but I will. Maybe I'll find something like the +picture-books Sachiko was talking about. A child's primer, maybe; surely +they had things like that. And if I don't. I'll find something else. +We've only been here six months. I can wait the rest of my life, if I +have to, but I'll do it sometime." + +"I can't wait so long," von Ohlmhorst said. "The rest of my life will +only be a few years, and when the _Schiaparelli_ orbits in, I'll be +going back to Terra on the _Cyrano_." + +"I wish you wouldn't. This is a whole new world of archaeology. +Literally." + +"Yes." He finished the cocktail and looked at his pipe as though +wondering whether to re-light it so soon before dinner, then put it in +his pocket. "A whole new world--but I've grown old, and it isn't for me. +I've spent my life studying the Hittites. I can speak the Hittite +language, though maybe King Muwatallis wouldn't be able to understand my +modern Turkish accent. But the things I'd have to learn here--chemistry, +physics, engineering, how to run analytic tests on steel girders and +beryllo-silver alloys and plastics and silicones. I'm more at home with +a civilization that rode in chariots and fought with swords and was just +learning how to work iron. Mars is for young people. This expedition is +a cadre of leadership--not only the Space Force people, who'll be the +commanders of the main expedition, but us scientists, too. And I'm just +an old cavalry general who can't learn to command tanks and aircraft. +You'll have time to learn about Mars. I won't." + +His reputation as the dean of Hittitologists was solid and secure, too, +she added mentally. Then she felt ashamed of the thought. He wasn't to +be classed with Tony Lattimer. + +"All I came for was to get the work started," he was continuing. "The +Federation Government felt that an old hand should do that. Well, it's +started, now; you and Tony and whoever come out on the _Schiaparelli_ +must carry it on. You said it, yourself; you have a whole new world. +This is only one city, of the last Martian civilization. Behind this, +you have the Late Upland Culture, and the Canal Builders, and all the +civilizations and races and empires before them, clear back to the +Martian Stone Age." He hesitated for a moment. "You have no idea what +all you have to learn, Martha. This isn't the time to start specializing +too narrowly." + + * * * * * + +They all got out of the truck and stretched their legs and looked up the +road to the tall building with the queer conical cap askew on its top. +The four little figures that had been busy against its wall climbed into +the jeep and started back slowly, the smallest of them, Sachiko +Koremitsu, paying out an electric cable behind. When it pulled up beside +the truck, they climbed out; Sachiko attached the free end of the cable +to a nuclear-electric battery. At once, dirty gray smoke and orange dust +puffed out from the wall of the building, and, a second later, the +multiple explosion banged. + +She and Tony Lattimer and Major Lindemann climbed onto the truck, +leaving the jeep stand by the road. When they reached the building, a +satisfyingly wide breach had been blown in the wall. Lattimer had placed +his shots between two of the windows; they were both blown out along +with the wall between, and lay unbroken on the ground. Martha remembered +the first building they had entered. A Space Force officer had picked up +a stone and thrown it at one of the windows, thinking that would be all +they'd need to do. It had bounced back. He had drawn his pistol--they'd +all carried guns, then, on the principle that what they didn't know +about Mars might easily hurt them--and fired four shots. The bullets had +ricocheted, screaming thinly; there were four coppery smears of +jacket-metal on the window, and a little surface spalling. Somebody +tried a rifle; the 4000-f.s. bullet had cracked the glasslike pane +without penetrating. An oxyacetylene torch had taken an hour to cut the +window out; the lab crew, aboard the ship, were still trying to find out +just what the stuff was. + +Tony Lattimer had gone forward and was sweeping his flashlight back and +forth, swearing petulantly, his voice harshened and amplified by his +helmet-speaker. + +"I thought I was blasting into a hallway; this lets us into a room. +Careful; there's about a two-foot drop to the floor, and a lot of rubble +from the blast just inside." + +He stepped down through the breach; the others began dragging equipment +out of the trucks--shovels and picks and crowbars and sledges, portable +floodlights, cameras, sketching materials, an extension ladder, even +Alpinists' ropes and crampons and pickaxes. Hubert Penrose was +shouldering something that looked like a surrealist machine gun but +which was really a nuclear-electric jack-hammer. Martha selected one of +the spike-shod mountaineer's ice axes, with which she could dig or chop +or poke or pry or help herself over rough footing. + +The windows, grimed and crusted with fifty millennia of dust, filtered +in a dim twilight; even the breach in the wall, in the morning shade, +lighted only a small patch of floor. Somebody snapped on a floodlight, +aiming it at the ceiling. The big room was empty and bare; dust lay +thick on the floor and reddened the once-white walls. It could have been +a large office, but there was nothing left in it to indicate its use. + +"This one's been stripped up to the seventh floor!" Lattimer exclaimed. +"Street level'll be cleaned out, completely." + +"Do for living quarters and shops, then," Lindemann said. "Added to the +others, this'll take care of everybody on the _Schiaparelli_." + +"Seem to have been a lot of electric or electronic apparatus over along +this wall," one of the Space Force officers commented. "Ten or twelve +electric outlets." He brushed the dusty wall with his glove, then +scraped on the floor with his foot. "I can see where things were pried +loose." + + * * * * * + +The door, one of the double sliding things the Martians had used, was +closed. Selim von Ohlmhorst tried it, but it was stuck fast. The metal +latch-parts had frozen together, molecule bonding itself to molecule, +since the door had last been closed. Hubert Penrose came over with the +jack-hammer, fitting a spear-point chisel into place. He set the chisel +in the joint between the doors, braced the hammer against his hip, and +squeezed the trigger-switch. The hammer banged briefly like the weapon +it resembled, and the doors popped a few inches apart, then stuck. +Enough dust had worked into the recesses into which it was supposed to +slide to block it on both sides. + +That was old stuff; they ran into that every time they had to force a +door, and they were prepared for it. Somebody went outside and brought +in a power-jack and finally one of the doors inched back to the door +jamb. That was enough to get the lights and equipment through: they all +passed from the room to the hallway beyond. About half the other doors +were open; each had a number and a single word, _Darfhulva_, over it. + +[Illustration] + +One of the civilian volunteers, a woman professor of natural ecology +from Penn State University, was looking up and down the hall. + +"You know," she said, "I feel at home here. I think this was a college +of some sort, and these were classrooms. That word, up there; that was +the subject taught, or the department. And those electronic devices, all +where the class would face them; audio-visual teaching aids." + +"A twenty-five-story university?" Lattimer scoffed. "Why, a building +like this would handle thirty thousand students." + +"Maybe there were that many. This was a big city, in its prime," Martha +said, moved chiefly by a desire to oppose Lattimer. + +"Yes, but think of the snafu in the halls, every time they changed +classes. It'd take half an hour to get everybody back and forth from one +floor to another." He turned to von Ohlmhorst. "I'm going up above this +floor. This place has been looted clean up to here, but there's a chance +there may be something above," he said. + +"I'll stay on this floor, at present," the Turco-German replied. "There +will be much coming and going, and dragging things in and out. We should +get this completely examined and recorded first. Then Major Lindemann's +people can do their worst, here." + +"Well, if nobody else wants it, I'll take the downstairs," Martha said. + +"I'll go along with you," Hubert Penrose told her. "If the lower floors +have no archaeological value, we'll turn them into living quarters. I +like this building: it'll give everybody room to keep out from under +everybody else's feet." He looked down the hall. "We ought to find +escalators at the middle." + + * * * * * + +The hallway, too, was thick underfoot with dust. Most of the open rooms +were empty, but a few contained furniture, including small seat-desks. +The original proponent of the university theory pointed these out as +just what might be found in classrooms. There were escalators, up and +down, on either side of the hall, and more on the intersecting passage +to the right. + +"That's how they handled the students, between classes," Martha +commented. "And I'll bet there are more ahead, there." + +They came to a stop where the hallway ended at a great square central +hall. There were elevators, there, on two of the sides, and four +escalators, still usable as stairways. But it was the walls, and the +paintings on them, that brought them up short and staring. + +They were clouded with dirt--she was trying to imagine what they must +have looked like originally, and at the same time estimating the labor +that would be involved in cleaning them--but they were still +distinguishable, as was the word, _Darfhulva_, in golden letters above +each of the four sides. It was a moment before she realized, from the +murals, that she had at last found a meaningful Martian word. They were +a vast historical panorama, clockwise around the room. A group of +skin-clad savages squatting around a fire. Hunters with bows and spears, +carrying a carcass of an animal slightly like a pig. Nomads riding +long-legged, graceful mounts like hornless deer. Peasants sowing and +reaping; mud-walled hut villages, and cities; processions of priests and +warriors; battles with swords and bows, and with cannon and muskets; +galleys, and ships with sails, and ships without visible means of +propulsion, and aircraft. Changing costumes and weapons and machines +and styles of architecture. A richly fertile landscape, gradually +merging into barren deserts and bushlands--the time of the great +planet-wide drought. The Canal Builders--men with machines recognizable +as steam-shovels and derricks, digging and quarrying and driving across +the empty plains with aqueducts. More cities--seaports on the shrinking +oceans; dwindling, half-deserted cities; an abandoned city, with four +tiny humanoid figures and a thing like a combat-car in the middle of a +brush-grown plaza, they and their vehicle dwarfed by the huge lifeless +buildings around them. She had not the least doubt; _Darfhulva_ was +History. + +"Wonderful!" von Ohlmhorst was saying. "The entire history of this race. +Why, if the painter depicted appropriate costumes and weapons and +machines for each period, and got the architecture right, we can break +the history of this planet into eras and periods and civilizations." + +"You can assume they're authentic. The faculty of this university would +insist on authenticity in the _Darfhulva_--History--Department," she +said. + +"Yes! _Darfhulva_--History! And your magazine was a journal of +_Sornhulva_!" Penrose exclaimed. "You have a word, Martha!" It took her +an instant to realize that he had called her by her first name, and not +Dr. Dane. She wasn't sure if that weren't a bigger triumph than learning +a word of the Martian language. Or a more auspicious start. "Alone, I +suppose that _hulva_ means something like science or knowledge, or +study; combined, it would be equivalent to our 'ology. And _darf_ would +mean something like past, or old times, or human events, or chronicles." + +"That gives you three words, Martha!" Sachiko jubilated. "You did it." + +"Let's don't go too fast," Lattimer said, for once not derisively. "I'll +admit that _darfhulva_ is the Martian word for history as a subject of +study; I'll admit that _hulva_ is the general word and _darf_ modifies +it and tells us which subject is meant. But as for assigning specific +meanings, we can't do that because we don't know just how the Martians +thought, scientifically or otherwise." + +He stopped short, startled by the blue-white light that blazed as Sid +Chamberlain's Kliegettes went on. When the whirring of the camera +stopped, it was Chamberlain who was speaking: + +"This is the biggest thing yet; the whole history of Mars, stone age to +the end, all on four walls. I'm taking this with the fast shutter, but +we'll telecast it in slow motion, from the beginning to the end. Tony, I +want you to do the voice for it--running commentary, interpretation of +each scene as it's shown. Would you do that?" + +Would he do that! Martha thought. If he had a tail, he'd be wagging it +at the very thought. + +"Well, there ought to be more murals on the other floors," she said. +"Who wants to come downstairs with us?" + +Sachiko did; immediately. Ivan Fitzgerald volunteered. Sid decided to go +upstairs with Tony Lattimer, and Gloria Standish decided to go upstairs, +too. Most of the party would remain on the seventh floor, to help Selim +von Ohlmhorst get it finished. After poking tentatively at the escalator +with the spike of her ice axe, Martha led the way downward. + + * * * * * + +The sixth floor was _Darfhulva_, too; military and technological +history, from the character of the murals. They looked around the +central hall, and went down to the fifth; it was like the floors above +except that the big quadrangle was stacked with dusty furniture and +boxes. Ivan Fitzgerald, who was carrying the floodlight, swung it slowly +around. Here the murals were of heroic-sized Martians, so human in +appearance as to seem members of her own race, each holding some +object--a book, or a test tube, or some bit of scientific apparatus, and +behind them were scenes of laboratories and factories, flame and smoke, +lightning-flashes. The word at the top of each of the four walls was one +with which she was already familiar--_Sornhulva_. + +"Hey, Martha; there's that word," Ivan Fitzgerald exclaimed. "The one in +the title of your magazine." He looked at the paintings. "Chemistry, or +physics." + +"Both." Hubert Penrose considered. "I don't think the Martians made any +sharp distinction between them. See, the old fellow with the scraggly +whiskers must be the inventor of the spectroscope; he has one in his +hands, and he has a rainbow behind him. And the woman in the blue smock, +beside him, worked in organic chemistry; see the diagrams of long-chain +molecules behind her. What word would convey the idea of chemistry and +physics taken as one subject?" + +"_Sornhulva_," Sachiko suggested. "If _hulva's_ something like science, +"_sorn_" must mean matter, or substance, or physical object. You were +right, all along, Martha. A civilization like this would certainly leave +something like this, that would be self-explanatory." + +"This'll wipe a little more of that superior grin off Tony Lattimer's +face," Fitzgerald was saying, as they went down the motionless escalator +to the floor below. "Tony wants to be a big shot. When you want to be a +big shot, you can't bear the possibility of anybody else being a bigger +big shot, and whoever makes a start on reading this language will be the +biggest big shot archaeology ever saw." + +That was true. She hadn't thought of it, in that way, before, and now +she tried not to think about it. She didn't want to be a big shot. She +wanted to be able to read the Martian language, and find things out +about the Martians. + +Two escalators down, they came out on a mezzanine around a wide central +hall on the street level, the floor forty feet below them and the +ceiling thirty feet above. Their lights picked out object after object +below--a huge group of sculptured figures in the middle; some kind of a +motor vehicle jacked up on trestles for repairs; things that looked like +machine-guns and auto-cannon; long tables, tops littered with a +dust-covered miscellany; machinery; boxes and crates and containers. + + * * * * * + +They made their way down and walked among the clutter, missing a hundred +things for every one they saw, until they found an escalator to the +basement. There were three basements, one under another, until at last +they stood at the bottom of the last escalator, on a bare concrete +floor, swinging the portable floodlight over stacks of boxes and barrels +and drums, and heaps of powdery dust. The boxes were plastic--nobody had +ever found anything made of wood in the city--and the barrels and drums +were of metal or glass or some glasslike substance. They were outwardly +intact. The powdery heaps might have been anything organic, or anything +containing fluid. Down here, where wind and dust could not reach, +evaporation had been the only force of destruction after the minute life +that caused putrefaction had vanished. + +They found refrigeration rooms, too, and using Martha's ice axe and the +pistollike vibratool Sachiko carried on her belt, they pounded and pried +one open, to find dessicated piles of what had been vegetables, and +leathery chunks of meat. Samples of that stuff, rocketed up to the ship, +would give a reliable estimate, by radio-carbon dating, of how long ago +this building had been occupied. The refrigeration unit, radically +different from anything their own culture had produced, had been +electrically powered. Sachiko and Penrose, poking into it, found the +switches still on; the machine had only ceased to function when the +power-source, whatever that had been, had failed. + +The middle basement had also been used, at least toward the end, for +storage; it was cut in half by a partition pierced by but one door. They +took half an hour to force this, and were on the point of sending above +for heavy equipment when it yielded enough for them to squeeze through. +Fitzgerald, in the lead with the light, stopped short, looked around, +and then gave a groan that came through his helmet-speaker like a +foghorn. + +"Oh, no! _No!_" + +"What's the matter, Ivan?" Sachiko, entering behind him, asked +anxiously. + +He stepped aside. "Look at it, Sachi! Are we going to have to do all +that?" + +Martha crowded through behind her friend and looked around, then stood +motionless, dizzy with excitement. Books. Case on case of books, half an +acre of cases, fifteen feet to the ceiling. Fitzgerald, and Penrose, who +had pushed in behind her, were talking in rapid excitement; she only +heard the sound of their voices, not their words. This must be the main +stacks of the university library--the entire literature of the vanished +race of Mars. In the center, down an aisle between the cases, she could +see the hollow square of the librarians' desk, and stairs and a +dumb-waiter to the floor above. + +She realized that she was walking forward, with the others, toward this. +Sachiko was saying: "I'm the lightest; let me go first." She must be +talking about the spidery metal stairs. + +"I'd say they were safe," Penrose answered. "The trouble we've had with +doors around here shows that the metal hasn't deteriorated." + +In the end, the Japanese girl led the way, more catlike than ever in her +caution. The stairs were quite sound, in spite of their fragile +appearance, and they all followed her. The floor above was a duplicate +of the room they had entered, and seemed to contain about as many books. +Rather than waste time forcing the door here, they returned to the +middle basement and came up by the escalator down which they had +originally descended. + +The upper basement contained kitchens--electric stoves, some with pots +and pans still on them--and a big room that must have been, originally, +the students' dining room, though when last used it had been a workshop. +As they expected, the library reading room was on the street-level +floor, directly above the stacks. It seemed to have been converted into +a sort of common living room for the building's last occupants. An +adjoining auditorium had been made into a chemical works; there were +vats and distillation apparatus, and a metal fractionating tower that +extended through a hole knocked in the ceiling seventy feet above. A +good deal of plastic furniture of the sort they had been finding +everywhere in the city was stacked about, some of it broken up, +apparently for reprocessing. The other rooms on the street floor seemed +also to have been devoted to manufacturing and repair work; a +considerable industry, along a number of lines, must have been carried +on here for a long time after the university had ceased to function as +such. + +On the second floor, they found a museum; many of the exhibits remained, +tantalizingly half-visible in grimed glass cases. There had been +administrative offices there, too. The doors of most of them were +closed, and they did not waste time trying to force them, but those that +were open had been turned into living quarters. They made notes, and +rough floor plans, to guide them in future more thorough examination; it +was almost noon before they had worked their way back to the seventh +floor. + +Selim von Ohlmhorst was in a room on the north side of the building, +sketching the position of things before examining them and collecting +them for removal. He had the floor checkerboarded with a grid of chalked +lines, each numbered. + +"We have everything on this floor photographed," he said. "I have three +gangs--all the floodlights I have--sketching and making measurements. At +the rate we're going, with time out for lunch, we'll be finished by the +middle of the afternoon." + +"You've been working fast. Evidently you aren't being high-church about +a 'qualified archaeologist' entering rooms first," Penrose commented. + +"Ach, childishness!" the old man exclaimed impatiently. "These officers +of yours aren't fools. All of them have been to Intelligence School and +Criminal Investigation School. Some of the most careful amateur +archaeologists I ever knew were retired soldiers or policemen. But there +isn't much work to be done. Most of the rooms are either empty or like +this one--a few bits of furniture and broken trash and scraps of paper. +Did you find anything down on the lower floors?" + +"Well, yes," Penrose said, a hint of mirth in his voice. "What would you +say, Martha?" + +She started to tell Selim. The others, unable to restrain their +excitement, broke in with interruptions. Von Ohlmhorst was staring in +incredulous amazement. + +"But this floor was looted almost clean, and the buildings we've entered +before were all looted from the street level up," he said, at length. + +"The people who looted this one lived here," Penrose replied. "They had +electric power to the last; we found refrigerators full of food, and +stoves with the dinner still on them. They must have used the elevators +to haul things down from the upper floor. The whole first floor was +converted into workshops and laboratories. I think that this place must +have been something like a monastery in the Dark Ages in Europe, or what +such a monastery would have been like if the Dark Ages had followed the +fall of a highly developed scientific civilization. For one thing, we +found a lot of machine guns and light auto-cannon on the street level, +and all the doors were barricaded. The people here were trying to keep a +civilization running after the rest of the planet had gone back to +barbarism; I suppose they'd have to fight off raids by the barbarians +now and then." + +"You're not going to insist on making this building into expedition +quarters, I hope, colonel?" von Ohlmhorst asked anxiously. + +"Oh, no! This place is an archaeological treasure-house. More than that; +from what I saw, our technicians can learn a lot, here. But you'd better +get this floor cleaned up as soon as you can, though. I'll have the +subsurface part, from the sixth floor down, airsealed. Then we'll put +in oxygen generators and power units, and get a couple of elevators into +service. For the floors above, we can use temporary airsealing floor by +floor, and portable equipment; when we have things atmosphered and +lighted and heated, you and Martha and Tony Lattimer can go to work +systematically and in comfort, and I'll give you all the help I can +spare from the other work. This is one of the biggest things we've found +yet." + +Tony Lattimer and his companions came down to the seventh floor a little +later. + +"I don't get this, at all," he began, as soon as he joined them. "This +building wasn't stripped the way the others were. Always, the procedure +seems to have been to strip from the bottom up, but they seem to have +stripped the top floors first, here. All but the very top. I found out +what that conical thing is, by the way. It's a wind-rotor, and under it +there's an electric generator. This building generated its own power." + +"What sort of condition are the generators in?" Penrose asked. + +"Well, everything's full of dust that blew in under the rotor, of +course, but it looks to be in pretty good shape. Hey, I'll bet that's +it! They had power, so they used the elevators to haul stuff down. +That's just what they did. Some of the floors above here don't seem to +have been touched, though." He paused momentarily; back of his oxy-mask, +he seemed to be grinning. "I don't know that I ought to mention this in +front of Martha, but two floors above--we hit a room--it must have been +the reference library for one of the departments--that had close to five +hundred books in it." + +The noise that interrupted him, like the squawking of a Brobdingnagian +parrot, was only Ivan Fitzgerald laughing through his helmet-speaker. + + * * * * * + +Lunch at the huts was a hasty meal, with a gabble of full-mouthed and +excited talking. Hubert Penrose and his chief subordinates snatched +their food in a huddled consultation at one end of the table; in the +afternoon, work was suspended on everything else and the fifty-odd men +and women of the expedition concentrated their efforts on the +University. By the middle of the afternoon, the seventh floor had been +completely examined, photographed and sketched, and the murals in the +square central hall covered with protective tarpaulins, and Laurent +Gicquel and his airsealing crew had moved in and were at work. It had +been decided to seal the central hall at the entrances. It took the +French-Canadian engineer most of the afternoon to find all the +ventilation-ducts and plug them. An elevator-shaft on the north side was +found reaching clear to the twenty-fifth floor; this would give access +to the top of the building; another shaft, from the center, would take +care of the floors below. Nobody seemed willing to trust the ancient +elevators, themselves; it was the next evening before a couple of cars +and the necessary machinery could be fabricated in the machine shops +aboard the ship and sent down by landing-rocket. By that time, the +airsealing was finished, the nuclear-electric energy-converters were in +place, and the oxygen generators set up. + +[Illustration] + +Martha was in the lower basement, an hour or so before lunch the day +after, when a couple of Space Force officers came out of the elevator, +bringing extra lights with them. She was still using oxygen-equipment; +it was a moment before she realized that the newcomers had no masks, and +that one of them was smoking. She took off her own helmet-speaker, +throat-mike and mask and unslung her tank-pack, breathing cautiously. +The air was chilly, and musty-acrid with the odor of antiquity--the +first Martian odor she had smelled--but when she lit a cigarette, the +lighter flamed clear and steady and the tobacco caught and burned +evenly. + +The archaeologists, many of the other civilian scientists, a few of the +Space Force officers and the two news-correspondents, Sid Chamberlain +and Gloria Standish, moved in that evening, setting up cots in vacant +rooms. They installed electric stoves and a refrigerator in the old +Library Reading Room, and put in a bar and lunch counter. For a few +days, the place was full of noise and activity, then, gradually, the +Space Force people and all but a few of the civilians returned to their +own work. There was still the business of airsealing the more habitable +of the buildings already explored, and fitting them up in readiness for +the arrival, in a year and a half, of the five hundred members of the +main expedition. There was work to be done enlarging the landing field +for the ship's rocket craft, and building new chemical-fuel tanks. + +There was the work of getting the city's ancient reservoirs cleared of +silt before the next spring thaw brought more water down the underground +aqueducts everybody called canals in mistranslation of Schiaparelli's +Italian word, though this was proving considerably easier than +anticipated. The ancient Canal-Builders must have anticipated a time +when their descendants would no longer be capable of maintenance work, +and had prepared against it. By the day after the University had been +made completely habitable, the actual work there was being done by +Selim, Tony Lattimer and herself, with half a dozen Space Force +officers, mostly girls, and four or five civilians, helping. + + * * * * * + +They worked up from the bottom, dividing the floor-surfaces into +numbered squares, measuring and listing and sketching and photographing. +They packaged samples of organic matter and sent them up to the ship for +Carbon-14 dating and analysis; they opened cans and jars and bottles, +and found that everything fluid in them had evaporated, through the +porosity of glass and metal and plastic if there were no other way. +Wherever they looked, they found evidence of activity suddenly suspended +and never resumed. A vise with a bar of metal in it, half cut through +and the hacksaw beside it. Pots and pans with hardened remains of food +in them; a leathery cut of meat on a table, with the knife ready at +hand. Toilet articles on washstands; unmade beds, the bedding ready to +crumble at a touch but still retaining the impress of the sleeper's +body; papers and writing materials on desks, as though the writer had +gotten up, meaning to return and finish in a fifty-thousand-year-ago +moment. + +It worried her. Irrationally, she began to feel that the Martians had +never left this place; that they were still around her, watching +disapprovingly every time she picked up something they had laid down. +They haunted her dreams, now, instead of their enigmatic writing. At +first, everybody who had moved into the University had taken a separate +room, happy to escape the crowding and lack of privacy of the huts. +After a few nights, she was glad when Gloria Standish moved in with her, +and accepted the newswoman's excuse that she felt lonely without +somebody to talk to before falling asleep. Sachiko Koremitsu joined them +the next evening, and before going to bed, the girl officer cleaned and +oiled her pistol, remarking that she was afraid some rust may have +gotten into it. + +The others felt it, too. Selim von Ohlmhorst developed the habit of +turning quickly and looking behind him, as though trying to surprise +somebody or something that was stalking him. Tony Lattimer, having a +drink at the bar that had been improvised from the librarian's desk in +the Reading Room, set down his glass and swore. + +"You know what this place is? It's an archaeological _Marie Celeste_!" +he declared. "It was occupied right up to the end--we've all seen the +shifts these people used to keep a civilization going here--but what was +the end? What happened to them? Where did they go?" + +"You didn't expect them to be waiting out front, with a red carpet and a +big banner, _Welcome Terrans_, did you, Tony?" Gloria Standish asked. + +"No, of course not; they've all been dead for fifty thousand years. But +if they were the last of the Martians, why haven't we found their bones, +at least? Who buried them, after they were dead?" He looked at the +glass, a bubble-thin goblet, found, with hundreds of others like it, in +a closet above, as though debating with himself whether to have another +drink. Then he voted in the affirmative and reached for the cocktail +pitcher. "And every door on the old ground level is either barred or +barricaded from the inside. How did they get out? And why did they +leave?" + + * * * * * + +The next day, at lunch, Sachiko Koremitsu had the answer to the second +question. Four or five electrical engineers had come down by rocket from +the ship, and she had been spending the morning with them, in oxy-masks, +at the top of the building. + +"Tony, I thought you said those generators were in good shape," she +began, catching sight of Lattimer. "They aren't. They're in the most +unholy mess I ever saw. What happened, up there, was that the supports +of the wind-rotor gave way, and weight snapped the main shaft, and +smashed everything under it." + +"Well, after fifty thousand years, you can expect something like that," +Lattimer retorted. "When an archaeologist says something's in good +shape, he doesn't necessarily mean it'll start as soon as you shove a +switch in." + +"You didn't notice that it happened when the power was on, did you," one +of the engineers asked, nettled at Lattimer's tone. "Well, it was. +Everything's burned out or shorted or fused together; I saw one busbar +eight inches across melted clean in two. It's a pity we didn't find +things in good shape, even archaeologically speaking. I saw a lot of +interesting things, things in advance of what we're using now. But it'll +take a couple of years to get everything sorted out and figure what it +looked like originally." + +"Did it look as though anybody'd made any attempt to fix it?" Martha +asked. + +Sachiko shook her head. "They must have taken one look at it and given +up. I don't believe there would have been any possible way to repair +anything." + +"Well, that explains why they left. They needed electricity for +lighting, and heating, and all their industrial equipment was +electrical. They had a good life, here, with power; without it, this +place wouldn't have been habitable." + +"Then why did they barricade everything from the inside, and how did +they get out?" Lattimer wanted to know. + +"To keep other people from breaking in and looting. Last man out +probably barred the last door and slid down a rope from upstairs," von +Ohlmhorst suggested. "This Houdini-trick doesn't worry me too much. +We'll find out eventually." + +"Yes, about the time Martha starts reading Martian," Lattimer scoffed. + +"That may be just when we'll find out," von Ohlmhorst replied seriously. +"It wouldn't surprise me if they left something in writing when they +evacuated this place." + +"Are you really beginning to treat this pipe dream of hers as a serious +possibility, Selim?" Lattimer demanded. "I know, it would be a wonderful +thing, but wonderful things don't happen just because they're wonderful. +Only because they're possible, and this isn't. Let me quote that +distinguished Hittitologist, Johannes Friedrich: 'Nothing can be +translated out of nothing.' Or that later but not less distinguished +Hittitologist, Selim von Ohlmhorst: 'Where are you going to get your +bilingual?'" + +"Friedrich lived to see the Hittite language deciphered and read," von +Ohlmhorst reminded him. + +"Yes, when they found Hittite-Assyrian bilinguals." Lattimer measured a +spoonful of coffee-powder into his cup and added hot water. "Martha, you +ought to know, better than anybody, how little chance you have. You've +been working for years in the Indus Valley; how many words of Harappa +have you or anybody else ever been able to read?" + +"We never found a university, with a half-million-volume library, at +Harappa or Mohenjo-Daro." + +"And, the first day we entered this building, we established meanings +for several words," Selim von Ohlmhorst added. + +"And you've never found another meaningful word since," Lattimer added. +"And you're only sure of general meaning, not specific meaning of +word-elements, and you have a dozen different interpretations for each +word." + +"We made a start," von Ohlmhorst maintained. "We have Grotefend's word +for 'king.' But I'm going to be able to read some of those books, over +there, if it takes me the rest of my life here. It probably will, +anyhow." + +"You mean you've changed your mind about going home on the _Cyrano_?" +Martha asked. "You'll stay on here?" + +The old man nodded. "I can't leave this. There's too much to discover. +The old dog will have to learn a lot of new tricks, but this is where my +work will be, from now on." + +Lattimer was shocked. "You're nuts!" he cried. "You mean you're going +to throw away everything you've accomplished in Hittitology and start +all over again here on Mars? Martha, if you've talked him into this +crazy decision, you're a criminal!" + +"Nobody talked me into anything," von Ohlmhorst said roughly. "And as +for throwing away what I've accomplished in Hittitology, I don't know +what the devil you're talking about. Everything I know about the Hittite +Empire is published and available to anybody. Hittitology's like +Egyptology; it's stopped being research and archaeology and become +scholarship and history. And I'm not a scholar or a historian; I'm a +pick-and-shovel field archaeologist--a highly skilled and specialized +grave-robber and junk-picker--and there's more pick-and-shovel work on +this planet than I could do in a hundred lifetimes. This is something +new; I was a fool to think I could turn my back on it and go back to +scribbling footnotes about Hittite kings." + +"You could have anything you wanted, in Hittitology. There are a dozen +universities that'd sooner have you than a winning football team. But +no! You have to be the top man in Martiology, too. You can't leave that +for anybody else--" Lattimer shoved his chair back and got to his feet, +leaving the table with an oath that was almost a sob of exasperation. + +Maybe his feelings were too much for him. Maybe he realized, as Martha +did, what he had betrayed. She sat, avoiding the eyes of the others, +looking at the ceiling, as embarrassed as though Lattimer had flung +something dirty on the table in front of them. Tony Lattimer had, +desperately, wanted Selim to go home on the _Cyrano_. Martiology was a +new field; if Selim entered it, he would bring with him the reputation +he had already built in Hittitology, automatically stepping into the +leading role that Lattimer had coveted for himself. Ivan Fitzgerald's +words echoed back to her--when you want to be a big shot, you can't bear +the possibility of anybody else being a bigger big shot. His derision of +her own efforts became comprehensible, too. It wasn't that he was +convinced that she would never learn to read the Martian language. He +had been afraid that she would. + + * * * * * + +Ivan Fitzgerald finally isolated the germ that had caused the Finchley +girl's undiagnosed illness. Shortly afterward, the malady turned into a +mild fever, from which she recovered. Nobody else seemed to have caught +it. Fitzgerald was still trying to find out how the germ had been +transmitted. + +They found a globe of Mars, made when the city had been a seaport. They +located the city, and learned that its name had been Kukan--or something +with a similar vowel-consonant ratio. Immediately, Sid Chamberlain and +Gloria Standish began giving their telecasts a Kukan dateline, and +Hubert Penrose used the name in his official reports. They also found a +Martian calendar; the year had been divided into ten more or less equal +months, and one of them had been Doma. Another month was Nor, and that +was a part of the name of the scientific journal Martha had found. + +Bill Chandler, the zoologist, had been going deeper and deeper into the +old sea bottom of Syrtis. Four hundred miles from Kukan, and at fifteen +thousand feet lower altitude, he shot a bird. At least, it was a +something with wings and what were almost but not quite feathers, though +it was more reptilian than avian in general characteristics. He and Ivan +Fitzgerald skinned and mounted it, and then dissected the carcass almost +tissue by tissue. About seven-eighths of its body capacity was lungs; it +certainly breathed air containing at least half enough oxygen to support +human life, or five times as much as the air around Kukan. + +That took the center of interest away from archaeology, and started a +new burst of activity. All the expedition's aircraft--four jetticopters +and three wingless airdyne reconnaissance fighters--were thrown into +intensified exploration of the lower sea bottoms, and the bio-science +boys and girls were wild with excitement and making new discoveries on +each flight. + +The University was left to Selim and Martha and Tony Lattimer, the +latter keeping to himself while she and the old Turco-German worked +together. The civilian specialists in other fields, and the Space Force +people who had been holding tape lines and making sketches and snapping +cameras, were all flying to lower Syrtis to find out how much oxygen +there was and what kind of life it supported. + +Sometimes Sachiko dropped in; most of the time she was busy helping Ivan +Fitzgerald dissect specimens. They had four or five species of what +might loosely be called birds, and something that could easily be +classed as a reptile, and a carnivorous mammal the size of a cat with +birdlike claws, and a herbivore almost identical with the piglike thing +in the big _Darfhulva_ mural, and another like a gazelle with a single +horn in the middle of its forehead. + +The high point came when one party, at thirty thousand feet below the +level of Kukan, found breathable air. One of them had a mild attack of +_sorroche_ and had to be flown back for treatment in a hurry, but the +others showed no ill effects. + +The daily newscasts from Terra showed a corresponding shift in interest +at home. The discovery of the University had focused attention on the +dead past of Mars; now the public was interested in Mars as a possible +home for humanity. It was Tony Lattimer who brought archaeology back +into the activities of the expedition and the news at home. + +Martha and Selim were working in the museum on the second floor, +scrubbing the grime from the glass cases, noting contents, and +grease-penciling numbers; Lattimer and a couple of Space Force officers +were going through what had been the administrative offices on the other +side. It was one of these, a young second lieutenant, who came hurrying +in from the mezzanine, almost bursting with excitement. + +"Hey, Martha! Dr. von Ohlmhorst!" he was shouting. "Where are you? +Tony's found the Martians!" + +Selim dropped his rag back in the bucket; she laid her clipboard on top +of the case beside her. + +"Where?" they asked together. + +"Over on the north side." The lieutenant took hold of himself and spoke +more deliberately. "Little room, back of one of the old faculty +offices--conference room. It was locked from the inside, and we had to +burn it down with a torch. That's where they are. Eighteen of them, +around a long table--" + +Gloria Standish, who had dropped in for lunch, was on the mezzanine, +fairly screaming into a radiophone extension: + +" ... Dozen and a half of them! Well, of course they're dead. What a +question! They look like skeletons covered with leather. No, I do not +know what they died of. Well, forget it; I don't care if Bill Chandler's +found a three-headed hippopotamus. Sid, don't you get it? We've found +the _Martians_!" + +She slammed the phone back on its hook, rushing away ahead of them. + + * * * * * + +Martha remembered the closed door; on the first survey, they hadn't +attempted opening it. Now it was burned away at both sides and lay, +still hot along the edges, on the floor of the big office room in front. +A floodlight was on in the room inside, and Lattimer was going around +looking at things while a Space Force officer stood by the door. The +center of the room was filled by a long table; in armchairs around it +sat the eighteen men and women who had occupied the room for the last +fifty millennia. There were bottles and glasses on the table in front of +them, and, had she seen them in a dimmer light, she would have thought +that they were merely dozing over their drinks. One had a knee hooked +over his chair-arm and was curled in foetuslike sleep. Another had +fallen forward onto the table, arms extended, the emerald set of a ring +twinkling dully on one finger. Skeletons covered with leather, Gloria +Standish had called them, and so they were--faces like skulls, arms and +legs like sticks, the flesh shrunken onto the bones under it. + +"Isn't this something!" Lattimer was exulting. "Mass suicide, that's +what it was. Notice what's in the corners?" + +Braziers, made of perforated two-gallon-odd metal cans, the white walls +smudged with smoke above them. Von Ohlmhorst had noticed them at once, +and was poking into one of them with his flashlight. + +"Yes; charcoal. I noticed a quantity of it around a couple of +hand-forges in the shop on the first floor. That's why you had so much +trouble breaking in; they'd sealed the room on the inside." He +straightened and went around the room, until he found a ventilator, and +peered into it. "Stuffed with rags. They must have been all that were +left, here. Their power was gone, and they were old and tired, and all +around them their world was dying. So they just came in here and lit the +charcoal, and sat drinking together till they all fell asleep. Well, we +know what became of them, now, anyhow." + +Sid and Gloria made the most of it. The Terran public wanted to hear +about Martians, and if live Martians couldn't be found, a room full of +dead ones was the next best thing. Maybe an even better thing; it had +been only sixty-odd years since the Orson Welles invasion-scare. Tony +Lattimer, the discoverer, was beginning to cash in on his attentions to +Gloria and his ingratiation with Sid; he was always either making +voice-and-image talks for telecast or listening to the news from the +home planet. Without question, he had become, overnight, the most widely +known archaeologist in history. + +"Not that I'm interested in all this, for myself," he disclaimed, after +listening to the telecast from Terra two days after his discovery. "But +this is going to be a big thing for Martian archaeology. Bring it to the +public attention; dramatize it. Selim, can you remember when Lord +Carnarvon and Howard Carter found the tomb of Tutankhamen?" + +"In 1923? I was two years old, then," von Ohlmhorst chuckled. "I really +don't know how much that publicity ever did for Egyptology. Oh, the +museums did devote more space to Egyptian exhibits, and after a museum +department head gets a few extra showcases, you know how hard it is to +make him give them up. And, for a while, it was easier to get financial +support for new excavations. But I don't know how much good all this +public excitement really does, in the long run." + +"Well, I think one of us should go back on the _Cyrano_, when the +_Schiaparelli_ orbits in," Lattimer said. "I'd hoped it would be you; +your voice would carry the most weight. But I think it's important that +one of us go back, to present the story of our work, and what we have +accomplished and what we hope to accomplish, to the public and to the +universities and the learned societies, and to the Federation +Government. There will be a great deal of work that will have to be +done. We must not allow the other scientific fields and the so-called +practical interests to monopolize public and academic support. So, I +believe I shall go back at least for a while, and see what I can do--" + +Lectures. The organization of a Society of Martian Archaeology, with +Anthony Lattimer, Ph.D., the logical candidate for the chair. Degrees, +honors; the deference of the learned, and the adulation of the lay +public. Positions, with impressive titles and salaries. Sweet are the +uses of publicity. + +She crushed out her cigarette and got to her feet. "Well, I still have +the final lists of what we found in _Halvhulva_--Biology--department to +check over. I'm starting on Sornhulva tomorrow, and I want that stuff in +shape for expert evaluation." + +That was the sort of thing Tony Lattimer wanted to get away from, the +detail-work and the drudgery. Let the infantry do the slogging through +the mud; the brass-hats got the medals. + + * * * * * + +She was halfway through the fifth floor, a week later, and was having +midday lunch in the reading room on the first floor when Hubert Penrose +came over and sat down beside her, asking her what she was doing. She +told him. + +"I wonder if you could find me a couple of men, for an hour or so," she +added. "I'm stopped by a couple of jammed doors at the central hall. +Lecture room and library, if the layout of that floor's anything like +the ones below it." + +"Yes. I'm a pretty fair door-buster, myself." He looked around the room. +"There's Jeff Miles; he isn't doing much of anything. And we'll put Sid +Chamberlain to work, for a change, too. The four of us ought to get your +doors open." He called to Chamberlain, who was carrying his tray over to +the dish washer. "Oh, Sid; you doing anything for the next hour or so?" + +"I was going up to the fourth floor, to see what Tony's doing." + +"Forget it. Tony's bagged his season limit of Martians. I'm going to +help Martha bust in a couple of doors; we'll probably find a whole +cemetery full of Martians." + +Chamberlain shrugged. "Why not. A jammed door can have anything back of +it, and I know what Tony's doing--just routine stuff." + +Jeff Miles, the Space Force captain, came over, accompanied by one of +the lab-crew from the ship who had come down on the rocket the day +before. + +"This ought to be up your alley, Mort," he was saying to his companion. +"Chemistry and physics department. Want to come along?" + +The lab man, Mort Tranter, was willing. Seeing the sights was what he'd +come down from the ship for. She finished her coffee and cigarette, and +they went out into the hall together, gathered equipment and rode the +elevator to the fifth floor. + +The lecture hall door was the nearest; they attacked it first. With +proper equipment and help, it was no problem and in ten minutes they had +it open wide enough to squeeze through with the floodlights. The room +inside was quite empty, and, like most of the rooms behind closed doors, +comparatively free from dust. The students, it appeared, had sat with +their backs to the door, facing a low platform, but their seats and the +lecturer's table and equipment had been removed. The two side walls bore +inscriptions: on the right, a pattern of concentric circles which she +recognized as a diagram of atomic structure, and on the left a +complicated table of numbers and words, in two columns. Tranter was +pointing at the diagram on the right. + +[Illustration] + +"They got as far as the Bohr atom, anyhow," he said. "Well, not quite. +They knew about electron shells, but they have the nucleus pictured as a +solid mass. No indication of proton-and-neutron structure. I'll bet, +when you come to translate their scientific books, you'll find that they +taught that the atom was the ultimate and indivisible particle. That +explains why you people never found any evidence that the Martians used +nuclear energy." + +"That's a uranium atom," Captain Miles mentioned. + +"It is?" Sid Chamberlain asked, excitedly. "Then they did know about +atomic energy. Just because we haven't found any pictures of A-bomb +mushrooms doesn't mean--" + +She turned to look at the other wall. Sid's signal reactions were +getting away from him again; uranium meant nuclear power to him, and the +two words were interchangeable. As she studied the arrangement of the +numbers and words, she could hear Tranter saying: + +"Nuts, Sid. We knew about uranium a long time before anybody found out +what could be done with it. Uranium was discovered on Terra in 1789, by +Klaproth." + +There was something familiar about the table on the left wall. She tried +to remember what she had been taught in school about physics, and what +she had picked up by accident afterward. The second column was a +continuation of the first: there were forty-six items in each, each item +numbered consecutively-- + +"Probably used uranium because it's the largest of the natural atoms," +Penrose was saying. "The fact that there's nothing beyond it there shows +that they hadn't created any of the transuranics. A student could go to +that thing and point out the outer electron of any of the ninety-two +elements." + + * * * * * + +Ninety-two! That was it; there were ninety-two items in the table on the +left wall! Hydrogen was Number One, she knew; One, _Sarfaldsorn_. Helium +was Two; that was _Tirfaldsorn_. She couldn't remember which element +came next, but in Martian it was _Sarfalddavas_. _Sorn_ must mean +matter, or substance, then. And _davas_; she was trying to think of what +it could be. She turned quickly to the others, catching hold of Hubert +Penrose's arm with one hand and waving her clipboard with the other. + +"Look at this thing, over here," she was clamoring excitedly. "Tell me +what you think it is. Could it be a table of the elements?" + +They all turned to look. Mort Tranter stared at it for a moment. + +"Could be. If I only knew what those squiggles meant--" + +That was right; he'd spent his time aboard the ship. + +"If you could read the numbers, would that help?" she asked, beginning +to set down the Arabic digits and their Martian equivalents. "It's +decimal system, the same as we use." + +"Sure. If that's a table of elements, all I'd need would be the numbers. +Thanks," he added as she tore off the sheet and gave it to him. + +Penrose knew the numbers, and was ahead of him. "Ninety-two items, +numbered consecutively. The first number would be the atomic number. +Then a single word, the name of the element. Then the atomic weight--" + +She began reading off the names of the elements. "I know hydrogen and +helium; what's _tirfalddavas_, the third one?" + +"Lithium," Tranter said. "The atomic weights aren't run out past the +decimal point. Hydrogen's one plus, if that double-hook dingus is a plus +sign; Helium's four-plus, that's right. And lithium's given as seven, +that isn't right. It's six-point nine-four-oh. Or is that thing a +Martian minus sign?" + +"Of course! Look! A plus sign is a hook, to hang things together; a +minus sign is a knife, to cut something off from something--see, the +little loop is the handle and the long pointed loop is the blade. +Stylized, of course, but that's what it is. And the fourth element, +kiradavas; what's that?" + +"Beryllium. Atomic weight given as nine-and-a-hook; actually it's +nine-point-oh-two." + +Sid Chamberlain had been disgruntled because he couldn't get a story +about the Martians having developed atomic energy. It took him a few +minutes to understand the newest development, but finally it dawned on +him. + +"Hey! You're reading that!" he cried. "You're reading Martian!" + +"That's right," Penrose told him. "Just reading it right off. I don't +get the two items after the atomic weight, though. They look like months +of the Martian calendar. What ought they to be, Mort?" + + * * * * * + +Tranter hesitated. "Well, the next information after the atomic weight +ought to be the period and group numbers. But those are words." + +"What would the numbers be for the first one, hydrogen?" + +"Period One, Group One. One electron shell, one electron in the outer +shell," Tranter told her. "Helium's period one, too, but it has the +outer--only--electron shell full, so it's in the group of inert +elements." + +"_Trav, Trav._ _Trav's_ the first month of the year. And helium's _Trav, +Yenth_; _Yenth_ is the eighth month." + +"The inert elements could be called Group Eight, yes. And the third +element, lithium, is Period Two, Group One. That check?" + +"It certainly does. _Sanv, Trav_; _Sanv's_ the second month. What's the +first element in Period Three?" + +"Sodium. Number Eleven." + +That's right; it's _Krav, Trav_. Why, the names of the months are simply +numbers, one to ten, spelled out. + +"_Doma_'s the fifth month. That was your first Martian word, Martha," +Penrose told her. "The word for five. And if _davas_ is the word for +metal, and _sornhulva_ is chemistry and / or physics, I'll bet Tadavas +Sornhulva is literally translated as: Of-Metal Matter-Knowledge. +Metallurgy, in other words. I wonder what Mastharnorvod means." It +surprised her that, after so long and with so much happening in the +meantime, he could remember that. "Something like 'Journal,' or +'Review,' or maybe 'Quarterly.'" + +"We'll work that out, too," she said confidently. After this, nothing +seemed impossible. "Maybe we can find--" Then she stopped short. "You +said 'Quarterly.' I think it was 'Monthly,' instead. It was dated for a +specific month, the fifth one. And if _nor_ is ten, Mastharnorvod could +be 'Year-Tenth.' And I'll bet we'll find that _masthar_ is the word for +year." She looked at the table on the wall again. "Well, let's get all +these words down, with translations for as many as we can." + +"Let's take a break for a minute," Penrose suggested, getting out his +cigarettes. "And then, let's do this in comfort. Jeff, suppose you and +Sid go across the hall and see what you find in the other room in the +way of a desk or something like that, and a few chairs. There'll be a +lot of work to do on this." + +Sid Chamberlain had been squirming as though he were afflicted with +ants, trying to contain himself. Now he let go with an excited jabber. + +"This is really it! _The_ it, not just it-of-the-week, like finding the +reservoirs or those statues or this building, or even the animals and +the dead Martians! Wait till Selim and Tony see this! Wait till Tony +sees it; I want to see his face! And when I get this on telecast, all +Terra's going to go nuts about it!" He turned to Captain Miles. "Jeff, +suppose you take a look at that other door, while I find somebody to +send to tell Selim and Tony. And Gloria; wait till she sees this--" + +"Take it easy, Sid," Martha cautioned. "You'd better let me have a look +at your script, before you go too far overboard on the telecast. This is +just a beginning; it'll take years and years before we're able to read +any of those books downstairs." + +"It'll go faster than you think, Martha," Hubert Penrose told her. +"We'll all work on it, and we'll teleprint material to Terra, and people +there will work on it. We'll send them everything we can ... everything +we work out, and copies of books, and copies of your word-lists--" + +And there would be other tables--astronomical tables, tables in physics +and mechanics, for instance--in which words and numbers were equivalent. +The library stacks, below, would be full of them. Transliterate them +into Roman alphabet spellings and Arabic numerals, and somewhere, +somebody would spot each numerical significance, as Hubert Penrose and +Mort Tranter and she had done with the table of elements. And pick out +all the chemistry textbooks in the Library; new words would take on +meaning from contexts in which the names of elements appeared. She'd +have to start studying chemistry and physics, herself-- + + * * * * * + +Sachiko Koremitsu peeped in through the door, then stepped inside. + +"Is there anything I can do--?" she began. "What's happened? Something +important?" + +"Important?" Sid Chamberlain exploded. "Look at that, Sachi! We're +reading it! Martha's found out how to read Martian!" He grabbed Captain +Miles by the arm. "Come on, Jeff; let's go. I want to call the others--" +He was still babbling as he hurried from the room. + +Sachi looked at the inscription. "Is it true?" she asked, and then, +before Martha could more than begin to explain, flung her arms around +her. "Oh, it really is! You are reading it! I'm so happy!" + +She had to start explaining again when Selim von Ohlmhorst entered. This +time, she was able to finish. + +"But, Martha, can you be really sure? You know, by now, that learning to +read this language is as important to me as it is to you, but how can +you be so sure that those words really mean things like hydrogen and +helium and boron and oxygen? How do you know that their table of +elements was anything like ours?" + +Tranter and Penrose and Sachiko all looked at him in amazement. + +"That isn't just the Martian table of elements; that's _the_ table of +elements. It's the only one there is." Mort Tranter almost exploded. +"Look, hydrogen has one proton and one electron. If it had more of +either, it wouldn't be hydrogen, it'd be something else. And the same +with all the rest of the elements. And hydrogen on Mars is the same as +hydrogen on Terra, or on Alpha Centauri, or in the next galaxy--" + +"You just set up those numbers, in that order, and any first-year +chemistry student could tell you what elements they represented." +Penrose said. "Could if he expected to make a passing grade, that is." + +The old man shook his head slowly, smiling. "I'm afraid I wouldn't make +a passing grade. I didn't know, or at least didn't realize, that. One of +the things I'm going to place an order for, to be brought on the +_Schiaparelli_, will be a set of primers in chemistry and physics, of +the sort intended for a bright child of ten or twelve. It seems that a +Martiologist has to learn a lot of things the Hittites and the Assyrians +never heard about." + +Tony Lattimer, coming in, caught the last part of the explanation. He +looked quickly at the walls and, having found out just what had +happened, advanced and caught Martha by the hand. + +"You really did it, Martha! You found your bilingual! I never believed +that it would be possible; let me congratulate you!" + +He probably expected that to erase all the jibes and sneers of the past. +If he did, he could have it that way. His friendship would mean as +little to her as his derision--except that his friends had to watch +their backs and his knife. But he was going home on the _Cyrano_, to be +a big shot. Or had this changed his mind for him again? + +"This is something we can show the world, to justify any expenditure of +time and money on Martian archaeological work. When I get back to Terra, +I'll see that you're given full credit for this achievement--" + +On Terra, her back and his knife would be out of her watchfulness. + +"We won't need to wait that long," Hubert Penrose told him dryly. "I'm +sending off an official report, tomorrow; you can be sure Dr. Dane will +be given full credit, not only for this but for her previous work, +which made it possible to exploit this discovery." + +"And you might add, work done in spite of the doubts and discouragements +of her colleagues," Selim von Ohlmhorst said. "To which I am ashamed to +have to confess my own share." + +"You said we had to find a bilingual," she said. "You were right, too." + +"This is better than a bilingual, Martha," Hubert Penrose said. +"Physical science expresses universal facts; necessarily it is a +universal language. Heretofore archaeologists have dealt only with +pre-scientific cultures." + + +THE END + + +[Transcriber's Note: The following errors in the original have been +corrected in this version. + +Page 11: fixitive to fixative +crushed. to crushed." + +Page 13: photostated to photostatted + +Page 21: jeapordizing to jeopardizing + +Page 22: ricochetted to ricocheted + +Page 26: aquaducts to aqueducts + +Page 27: testtube to test tube + +Page 28: evaportation to evaporation + +Page 33: aquaducts to aqueducts + +Page 35: And you've never to "And you've never + +Page 36: Finchly to Finchley + +Page 37: eights to eighths + +Page 39: Egyptiology to Egyptology + +Page 42: There's an uncorrected error here: the third element is +"Sarfalddavas" above but "tirfalddavas" below. This wasn't changed in +later versions of the text, so it's not clear which is correct. The +capitalized one would be consistent with the other names, and the "Sar-" +implies a relationship with the first element, which _is_ in the same +group. Or maybe the character misspoke, in her excitement? + +Page 45: big-shot to big shot + +Page 46: archeologists to archaeologists + +] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OMNILINGUAL *** + +***** This file should be named 19445-8.txt or 19445-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/4/4/19445/ + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Greg Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/19445-8.zip b/19445-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..736315f --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-8.zip diff --git a/19445-h.zip b/19445-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ecd730a --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h.zip diff --git a/19445-h/19445-h.htm b/19445-h/19445-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b64e2b --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h/19445-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2401 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + ins.correction { text-decoration: none; + border-bottom: thin dotted gray; } + .tr {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 2em; + background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: solid black 1px;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Omnilingual + +Author: H. Beam Piper + +Illustrator: Freas + +Release Date: October 2, 2006 [EBook #19445] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OMNILINGUAL *** + + + + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Greg Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<p class='tr center'>Transcriber's Note:<br /> +This etext was produced from "Astounding Science Fiction," February, 1957. Extensive research +did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication +was renewed.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/001.png" width="600" height="527" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + + + + +<h1>OMNILINGUAL</h1> + + +<p class="center"><i>To translate writings, you need a key to the +code—and if the last writer of Martian died forty +thousand years before the first writer of Earth was +born ... how could the Martian be translated...?</i></p> + +<h2>BY H. BEAM PIPER</h2> + +<p class="center">Illustrated by Freas</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;"> +<img src="images/002.png" width="300" height="464" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + + +<p>Martha Dane paused, looking up at the purple-tinged copper sky. The wind +had shifted since noon, while she had been inside, and the dust storm +that was sweeping the high deserts to the east was now blowing out over +Syrtis. The sun, magnified by the haze, was a gorgeous magenta ball, as +large as the sun of Terra, at which she could look directly. Tonight, +some of that dust would come sifting down from the upper atmosphere to +add another film to what had been burying the city for the last fifty +thousand years.</p> + +<p>The red loess lay over everything, covering the streets and the open +spaces of park and plaza, hiding the small houses that had been crushed +and pressed flat under it and the rubble that had come down from the +tall buildings when roofs had caved in and walls had toppled outward. +Here, where she stood, the ancient streets were a hundred to a hundred +and fifty feet below the surface; the breach they had made in the wall +of the building behind her had opened into the sixth story. She could +look down on the cluster of prefabricated huts and sheds, on the +brush-grown flat that had been the waterfront when this place had been a +seaport on the ocean that was now Syrtis Depression; already, the bright +metal was thinly coated with red dust. She thought, again, of what +clearing this city would mean, in terms of time and labor, of people and +supplies and equipment brought across fifty million miles of space. +They'd have to use machinery; there was no other way it could be done. +Bulldozers and power shovels and draglines; they were fast, but they +were rough and indiscriminate. She remembered the digs around Harappa +and Mohenjo-Daro, in the Indus Valley, and the careful, patient native +laborers—the painstaking foremen, the pickmen and spademen, the long +files of basketmen carrying away the earth. Slow and primitive as the +civilization whose ruins they were uncovering, yes, but she could count +on the fingers of one hand the times<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> one of her pickmen had damaged a +valuable object in the ground. If it hadn't been for the underpaid and +uncomplaining native laborer, archaeology would still be back where +Wincklemann had found it. But on Mars there was no native labor; the +last Martian had died five hundred centuries ago.</p> + +<p>Something started banging like a machine gun, four or five hundred yards +to her left. A solenoid jack-hammer; Tony Lattimer must have decided +which building he wanted to break into next. She became conscious, then, +of the awkward weight of her equipment, and began redistributing it, +shifting the straps of her oxy-tank pack, slinging the camera from one +shoulder and the board and drafting tools from the other, gathering the +notebooks and sketchbooks under her left arm. She started walking down +the road, over hillocks of buried rubble, around snags of wall jutting +up out of the loess, past buildings still standing, some of them already +breached and explored, and across the brush-grown flat to the huts.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There were ten people in the main office room of Hut One when she +entered. As soon as she had disposed of her oxygen equipment, she lit a +cigarette, her first since noon, then looked from one to another of +them. Old Selim von Ohlmhorst, the Turco-German, one of her two fellow +archaeologists, sitting at the end of the long table against the farther +wall, smoking his big curved pipe and going through a looseleaf +notebook. The girl ordnance officer, Sachiko Koremitsu, between two +droplights at the other end of the table, her head bent over her work. +Colonel Hubert Penrose, the Space Force CO, and Captain Field, the +intelligence officer, listening to the report of one of the airdyne +pilots, returned from his afternoon survey flight. A couple of girl +lieutenants from Signals, going over the script of the evening telecast, +to be transmitted to the <i>Cyrano</i>, on orbit five thousand miles off +planet and relayed from thence to Terra via Lunar. Sid Chamberlain, the +Trans-Space News Service man, was with them. Like Selim and herself, he +was a civilian; he was advertising the fact with a white shirt and a +sleeveless blue sweater. And Major Lindemann, the engineer officer, and +one of his assistants, arguing over some plans on a drafting board. She +hoped, drawing a pint of hot water to wash her hands and sponge off her +face, that they were doing something about the pipeline.</p> + +<p>She started to carry the notebooks and sketchbooks over to where Selim +von Ohlmhorst was sitting, and then, as she always did, she turned aside +and stopped to watch Sachiko. The Japanese girl was restoring what had +been a book, fifty thousand years ago; her eyes were masked by a +binocular loup, the black headband invisible against her glossy black +hair, and she was picking delicately at the crumbled page<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> with a +hair-fine wire set in a handle of copper tubing. Finally, loosening a +particle as tiny as a snowflake, she grasped it with tweezers, placed it +on the sheet of transparent plastic on which she was reconstructing the +page, and set it with a mist of <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'fixitive'.">fixative</ins> from a little spraygun. It was +a sheer joy to watch her; every movement was as graceful and precise as +though done to music after being rehearsed a hundred times.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Martha. It isn't cocktail-time yet, is it?" The girl at the +table spoke without raising her head, almost without moving her lips, as +though she were afraid that the slightest breath would disturb the flaky +stuff in front of her.</p> + +<p>"No, it's only fifteen-thirty. I finished my work, over there. I didn't +find any more books, if that's good news for you."</p> + +<p>Sachiko took off the loup and leaned back in her chair, her palms cupped +over her eyes.</p> + +<p>"No, I like doing this. I call it micro-jigsaw puzzles. This book, here, +really is a mess. Selim found it lying open, with some heavy stuff on +top of it; the pages were simply crushed.<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Quotation mark was missing in original.">"</ins> She hesitated briefly. "If +only it would mean something, after I did it."</p> + +<p>There could be a faintly critical overtone to that. As she replied, +Martha realized that she was being defensive.</p> + +<p>"It will, some day. Look how long it took to read Egyptian +hieroglyphics, even after they had the Rosetta Stone."</p> + +<p>Sachiko smiled. "Yes. I know. But they did have the Rosetta Stone."</p> + +<p>"And we don't. There is no Rosetta Stone, not anywhere on Mars. A whole +race, a whole species, died while the first Crò-Magnon cave-artist was +daubing pictures of reindeer and bison, and across fifty thousand years +and fifty million miles there was no bridge of understanding.</p> + +<p>"We'll find one. There must be something, somewhere, that will give us +the meaning of a few words, and we'll use them to pry meaning out of +more words, and so on. We may not live to learn this language, but we'll +make a start, and some day somebody will."</p> + +<p>Sachiko took her hands from her eyes, being careful not to look toward +the unshaded light, and smiled again. This time Martha was sure that it +was not the Japanese smile of politeness, but the universally human +smile of friendship.</p> + +<p>"I hope so, Martha: really I do. It would be wonderful for you to be the +first to do it, and it would be wonderful for all of us to be able to +read what these people wrote. It would really bring this dead city to +life again." The smile faded slowly. "But it seems so hopeless."</p> + +<p>"You haven't found any more pictures?"</p> + +<p>Sachiko shook her head. Not that it would have meant much if she had. +They had found hundreds of pictures with captions; they had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> never been +able to establish a positive relationship between any pictured object +and any printed word. Neither of them said anything more, and after a +moment Sachiko replaced the loup and bent her head forward over the +book.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Selim von Ohlmhorst looked up from his notebook, taking his pipe out of +his mouth.</p> + +<p>"Everything finished, over there?" he asked, releasing a puff of smoke.</p> + +<p>"Such as it was." She laid the notebooks and sketches on the table. +"Captain Gicquel's started airsealing the building from the fifth floor +down, with an entrance on the sixth; he'll start putting in oxygen +generators as soon as that's done. I have everything cleared up where +he'll be working."</p> + +<p>Colonel Penrose looked up quickly, as though making a mental note to +attend to something later. Then he returned his attention to the pilot, +who was pointing something out on a map.</p> + +<p>Von Ohlmhorst nodded. "There wasn't much to it, at that," he agreed. "Do +you know which building Tony has decided to enter next?"</p> + +<p>"The tall one with the conical thing like a candle extinguisher on top, +I think. I heard him drilling for the blasting shots over that way."</p> + +<p>"Well, I hope it turns out to be one that was occupied up to the end."</p> + +<p>The last one hadn't. It had been stripped of its contents and fittings, +a piece of this and a bit of that, haphazardly, apparently over a long +period of time, until it had been almost gutted. For centuries, as it +had died, this city had been consuming itself by a process of +auto-cannibalism. She said something to that effect.</p> + +<p>"Yes. We always find that—except, of course, at places like Pompeii. +Have you seen any of the other Roman cities in Italy?" he asked. +"Minturnae, for instance? First the inhabitants tore down this to repair +that, and then, after they had vacated the city, other people came along +and tore down what was left, and burned the stones for lime, or crushed +them to mend roads, till there was nothing left but the foundation +traces. That's where we are fortunate; this is one of the places where +the Martian race perished, and there were no barbarians to come later +and destroy what they had left." He puffed slowly at his pipe. "Some of +these days, Martha, we are going to break into one of these buildings +and find that it was one in which the last of these people died. Then we +will learn the story of the end of this civilization."</p> + +<p>And if we learn to read their language, we'll learn the whole story, not +just the obituary. She hesitated, not putting the thought into words. +"We'll find that, sometime, Selim," she said, then looked at her watch. +"I'm going to get some more work done on my lists, before dinner."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p> + +<p>For an instant, the old man's face stiffened in disapproval; he started +to say something, thought better of it, and put his pipe back into his +mouth. The brief wrinkling around his mouth and the twitch of his white +mustache had been enough, however; she knew what he was thinking. She +was wasting time and effort, he believed; time and effort belonging not +to herself but to the expedition. He could be right, too, she realized. +But he had to be wrong; there had to be a way to do it. She turned from +him silently and went to her own packing-case seat, at the middle of the +table.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Photographs, and photostats of restored pages of books, and transcripts +of inscriptions, were piled in front of her, and the notebooks in which +she was compiling her lists. She sat down, lighting a fresh cigarette, +and reached over to a stack of unexamined material, taking off the top +sheet. It was a photostat of what looked like the title page and +contents of some sort of a periodical. She remembered it; she had found +it herself, two days before, in a closet in the basement of the building +she had just finished examining.</p> + +<p>She sat for a moment, looking at it. It was readable, in the sense that +she had set up a purely arbitrary but consistently pronounceable system +of phonetic values for the letters. The long vertical symbols were +vowels. There were only ten of them; not too many, allowing separate +characters for long and short sounds. There were twenty of the short +horizontal letters, which meant that sounds like -ng or -ch or -sh were +single letters. The odds were millions to one against her system being +anything like the original sound of the language, but she had listed +several thousand Martian words, and she could pronounce all of them.</p> + +<p>And that was as far as it went. She could pronounce between three and +four thousand Martian words, and she couldn't assign a meaning to one of +them. Selim von Ohlmhorst believed that she never would. So did Tony +Lattimer, and he was a great deal less reticent about saying so. So, she +was sure, did Sachiko Koremitsu. There were times, now and then, when +she began to be afraid that they were right.</p> + +<p>The letters on the page in front of her began squirming and dancing, +slender vowels with fat little consonants. They did that, now, every +night in her dreams. And there were other dreams, in which she read them +as easily as English; waking, she would try desperately and vainly to +remember. She blinked, and looked away from the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'photostated'.">photostatted</ins> page; when +she looked back, the letters were behaving themselves again. There were +three words at the top of the page, over-and-underlined, which seemed to +be the Martian method of capitalization. <i>Mastharnorvod Tadavas +Sornhulva</i>. She pronounced them mentally, leafing through her notebooks +to see if she had encountered them before,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and in what contexts. All +three were listed. In addition, <i>masthar</i> was a fairly common word, and +so was <i>norvod</i>, and so was <i>nor</i>, but <i>-vod</i> was a suffix and nothing +but a suffix. <i>Davas</i>, was a word, too, and <i>ta-</i> was a common prefix; +<i>sorn</i> and <i>hulva</i> were both common words. This language, she had long +ago decided, must be something like German; when the Martians had needed +a new word, they had just pasted a couple of existing words together. It +would probably turn out to be a grammatical horror. Well, they had +published magazines, and one of them had been called <i>Mastharnorvod +Tadavas Sornhulva</i>. She wondered if it had been something like the +<i>Quarterly Archaeological Review</i>, or something more on the order of +<i>Sexy Stories</i>.</p> + +<p>A smaller line, under the title, was plainly the issue number and date; +enough things had been found numbered in series to enable her to +identify the numerals and determine that a decimal system of numeration +had been used. This was the one thousand and seven hundred and +fifty-fourth issue, for Doma, 14837; then Doma must be the name of one +of the Martian months. The word had turned up several times before. She +found herself puffing furiously on her cigarette as she leafed through +notebooks and piles of already examined material.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Sachiko was speaking to somebody, and a chair scraped at the end of the +table. She raised her head, to see a big man with red hair and a red +face, in Space Force green, with the single star of a major on his +shoulder, sitting down. Ivan Fitzgerald, the medic. He was lifting +weights from a book similar to the one the girl ordnance officer was +restoring.</p> + +<p>"Haven't had time, lately," he was saying, in reply to Sachiko's +question. "The Finchley girl's still down with whatever it is she has, +and it's something I haven't been able to diagnose yet. And I've been +checking on bacteria cultures, and in what spare time I have, I've been +dissecting specimens for Bill Chandler. Bill's finally found a mammal. +Looks like a lizard, and it's only four inches long, but it's a real +warm-blooded, gamogenetic, placental, viviparous mammal. Burrows, and +seems to live on what pass for insects here."</p> + +<p>"Is there enough oxygen for anything like that?" Sachiko was asking.</p> + +<p>"Seems to be, close to the ground." Fitzgerald got the headband of his +loup adjusted, and pulled it down over his eyes. "He found this thing in +a ravine down on the sea bottom—Ha, this page seems to be intact; now, +if I can get it out all in one piece—"</p> + +<p>He went on talking inaudibly to himself, lifting the page a little at a +time and sliding one of the transparent plastic sheets under it, working +with minute delicacy. Not the delicacy of the Japanese girl's small +hands, moving like the paws of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> cat washing her face, but like a +steam-hammer cracking a peanut. Field archaeology requires a certain +delicacy of touch, too, but Martha watched the pair of them with envious +admiration. Then she turned back to her own work, finishing the table of +contents.</p> + +<p>The next page was the beginning of the first article listed; many of the +words were unfamiliar. She had the impression that this must be some +kind of scientific or technical journal; that could be because such +publications made up the bulk of her own periodical reading. She doubted +if it were fiction; the paragraphs had a solid, factual look.</p> + +<p>At length, Ivan Fitzgerald gave a short, explosive grunt.</p> + +<p>"Ha! Got it!"</p> + +<p>She looked up. He had detached the page and was cementing another +plastic sheet onto it.</p> + +<p>"Any pictures?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"None on this side. Wait a moment." He turned the sheet. "None on this +side, either." He sprayed another sheet of plastic to sandwich the page, +then picked up his pipe and relighted it.</p> + +<p>"I get fun out of this, and it's good practice for my hands, so don't +think I'm complaining," he said, "but, Martha, do you honestly think +anybody's ever going to get anything out of this?"</p> + +<p>Sachiko held up a scrap of the silicone plastic the Martians had used +for paper with her tweezers. It was almost an inch square.</p> + +<p>"Look; three whole words on this piece," she crowed. "Ivan, you took the +easy book."</p> + +<p>Fitzgerald wasn't being sidetracked. "This stuff's absolutely +meaningless," he continued. "It had a meaning fifty thousand years ago, +when it was written, but it has none at all now."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "Meaning isn't something that evaporates with time," +she argued. "It has just as much meaning now as it ever had. We just +haven't learned how to decipher it."</p> + +<p>"That seems like a pretty pointless distinction," Selim von Ohlmhorst +joined the conversation. "There no longer exists a means of deciphering +it."</p> + +<p>"We'll find one." She was speaking, she realized, more in +self-encouragement than in controversy.</p> + +<p>"How? From pictures and captions? We've found captioned pictures, and +what have they given us? A caption is intended to explain the picture, +not the picture to explain the caption. Suppose some alien to our +culture found a picture of a man with a white beard and mustache sawing +a billet from a log. He would think the caption meant, 'Man Sawing +Wood.' How would he know that it was really 'Wilhelm II in Exile at +Doorn?'"</p> + +<p>Sachiko had taken off her loup and was lighting a cigarette.</p> + +<p>"I can think of pictures intended to explain their captions," she said. +"These picture language-books, the sort we use in the Service—little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> +line drawings, with a word or phrase under them."</p> + +<p>"Well, of course, if we found something like that," von Ohlmhorst began.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Michael Ventris found something like that, back in the Fifties," Hubert +Penrose's voice broke in from directly behind her.</p> + +<p>She turned her head. The colonel was standing by the archaeologists' +table; Captain Field and the airdyne pilot had gone out.</p> + +<p>"He found a lot of Greek inventories of military stores," Penrose +continued. "They were in Cretan Linear B script, and at the head of each +list was a little picture, a sword or a helmet or a cooking tripod or a +chariot wheel. That's what gave him the key to the script."</p> + +<p>"Colonel's getting to be quite an archaeologist," Fitzgerald commented. +"We're all learning each others' specialties, on this expedition."</p> + +<p>"I heard about that long before this expedition was even contemplated." +Penrose was tapping a cigarette on his gold case. "I heard about that +back before the Thirty Days' War, at Intelligence School, when I was a +lieutenant. As a feat of cryptanalysis, not an archaeological +discovery."</p> + +<p>"Yes, cryptanalysis," von Ohlmhorst pounced. "The reading of a known +language in an unknown form of writing. Ventris' lists were in the known +language, Greek. Neither he nor anybody else ever read a word of the +Cretan language until the finding of the Greek-Cretan bilingual in 1963, +because only with a bilingual text, one language already known, can an +unknown ancient language be learned. And what hope, I ask you, have we +of finding anything like that here? Martha, you've been working on these +Martian texts ever since we landed here—for the last six months. Tell +me, have you found a single word to which you can positively assign a +meaning?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think I have one." She was trying hard not to sound too +exultant. "<i>Doma.</i> It's the name of one of the months of the Martian +calendar."</p> + +<p>"Where did you find that?" von Ohlmhorst asked. "And how did you +establish—?"</p> + +<p>"Here." She picked up the photostat and handed it along the table to +him. "I'd call this the title page of a magazine."</p> + +<p>He was silent for a moment, looking at it. "Yes. I would say so, too. +Have you any of the rest of it?"</p> + +<p>"I'm working on the first page of the first article, listed there. Wait +till I see; yes, here's all I found, together, here." She told him where +she had gotten it. "I just gathered it up, at the time, and gave it to +Geoffrey and Rosita to photostat; this is the first I've really examined +it."</p> + +<p>The old man got to his feet, brushing tobacco ashes from the front of +his jacket, and came to where she was sitting, laying the title page on +the table and leafing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> quickly through the stack of photostats.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/010.png" width="600" height="517" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>"Yes, and here is the second article, on page eight, and here's the next +one." He finished the pile of photostats. "A couple of pages missing at +the end of the last article. This is remarkable; surprising that a thing +like a magazine would have survived so long."</p> + +<p>"Well, this silicone stuff the Martians used for paper is pretty +durable," Hubert Penrose said. "There doesn't seem to have been any +water or any other fluid in it originally, so it wouldn't dry out with +time."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's not remarkable that the material would have survived. We've +found a good many books and papers in excellent condition. But only a +really vital culture, an organized culture, will publish magazines, and +this civilization had been dying for hundreds of years before the end. +It might have been a thousand years before the time they died out +completely that such activities as publishing ended."</p> + +<p>"Well, look where I found it; in a closet in a cellar. Tossed in there +and forgotten, and then ignored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> when they were stripping the building. +Things like that happen."</p> + +<p>Penrose had picked up the title page and was looking at it.</p> + +<p>"I don't think there's any doubt about this being a magazine, at all." +He looked again at the title, his lips moving silently. "<i>Mastharnorvod +Tadavas Sornhulva</i>. Wonder what it means. But you're right about the +date—<i>Doma</i> seems to be the name of a month. Yes, you have a word, Dr. +Dane."</p> + +<p>Sid Chamberlain, seeing that something unusual was going on, had come +over from the table at which he was working. After examining the title +page and some of the inside pages, he began whispering into the +stenophone he had taken from his belt.</p> + +<p>"Don't try to blow this up to anything big, Sid," she cautioned. "All we +have is the name of a month, and Lord only knows how long it'll be till +we even find out which month it was."</p> + +<p>"Well, it's a start, isn't it?" Penrose argued. "Grotefend only had the +word for 'king' when he started reading Persian cuneiform."</p> + +<p>"But I don't have the word for month; just the name of a month. +Everybody knew the names of the Persian kings, long before Grotefend."</p> + +<p>"That's not the story," Chamberlain said. "What the public back on Terra +will be interested in is finding out that the Martians published +magazines, just like we do. Something familiar; make the Martians seem +more real. More human."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Three men had come in, and were removing their masks and helmets and +oxy-tanks, and peeling out of their quilted coveralls. Two were Space +Force lieutenants; the third was a youngish civilian with close-cropped +blond hair, in a checked woolen shirt. Tony Lattimer and his helpers.</p> + +<p>"Don't tell me Martha finally got something out of that stuff?" he +asked, approaching the table. He might have been commenting on the +antics of the village half-wit, from his tone.</p> + +<p>"Yes; the name of one of the Martian months." Hubert Penrose went on to +explain, showing the photostat.</p> + +<p>Tony Lattimer took it, glanced at it, and dropped it on the table.</p> + +<p>"Sounds plausible, of course, but just an assumption. That word may not +be the name of a month, at all—could mean 'published' or 'authorized' +or 'copyrighted' or anything like that. Fact is, I don't think it's more +than a wild guess that that thing's anything like a periodical." He +dismissed the subject and turned to Penrose. "I picked out the next +building to enter; that tall one with the conical thing on top. It ought +to be in pretty good shape inside; the conical top wouldn't allow dust +to accumulate, and from the outside nothing seems to be caved in or +crushed. Ground level's higher than the other one, about the seventh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> +floor. I found a good place and drilled for the shots; tomorrow I'll +blast a hole in it, and if you can spare some people to help, we can +start exploring it right away."</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course, Dr. Lattimer. I can spare about a dozen, and I suppose +you can find a few civilian volunteers," Penrose told him. "What will +you need in the way of equipment?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, about six demolition-packets; they can all be shot together. And +the usual thing in the way of lights, and breaking and digging tools, +and climbing equipment in case we run into broken or doubtful stairways. +We'll divide into two parties. Nothing ought to be entered for the first +time without a qualified archaeologist along. Three parties, if Martha +can tear herself away from this catalogue of systematized +incomprehensibilities she's making long enough to do some real work."</p> + +<p>She felt her chest tighten and her face become stiff. She was pressing +her lips together to lock in a furious retort when Hubert Penrose +answered for her.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Dane's been doing as much work, and as important work, as you +have," he said brusquely. "More important work, I'd be inclined to say."</p> + +<p>Von Ohlmhorst was visibly distressed; he glanced once toward Sid +Chamberlain, then looked hastily away from him. Afraid of a story of +dissension among archaeologists getting out.</p> + +<p>"Working out a system of pronunciation by which the Martian language +could be transliterated was a most important contribution," he said. +"And Martha did that almost unassisted."</p> + +<p>"Unassisted by Dr. Lattimer, anyway," Penrose added. "Captain Field and +Lieutenant Koremitsu did some work, and I helped out a little, but +nine-tenths of it she did herself."</p> + +<p>"Purely arbitrary," Lattimer disdained. "Why, we don't even know that +the Martians could make the same kind of vocal sounds we do."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, we do," Ivan Fitzgerald contradicted, safe on his own ground. +"I haven't seen any actual Martian skulls—these people seem to have +been very tidy about disposing of their dead—but from statues and busts +and pictures I've seen. I'd say that their vocal organs were identical +with our own."</p> + +<p>"Well, grant that. And grant that it's going to be impressive to rattle +off the names of Martian notables whose statues we find, and that if +we're ever able to attribute any placenames, they'll sound a lot better +than this horse-doctors' Latin the old astronomers splashed all over the +map of Mars," Lattimer said. "What I object to is her wasting time on +this stuff, of which nobody will ever be able to read a word if she +fiddles around with those lists till there's another hundred feet of +loess on this city, when there's so much real work to be done and we're +as shorthanded as we are."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> + +<p>That was the first time that had come out in just so many words. She was +glad Lattimer had said it and not Selim von Ohlmhorst.</p> + +<p>"What you mean," she retorted, "is that it doesn't have the publicity +value that digging up statues has."</p> + +<p>For an instant, she could see that the shot had scored. Then Lattimer, +with a side glance at Chamberlain, answered:</p> + +<p>"What I mean is that you're trying to find something that any +archaeologist, yourself included, should know doesn't exist. I don't +object to your gambling your professional reputation and making a +laughing stock of yourself; what I object to is that the blunders of one +archaeologist discredit the whole subject in the eyes of the public."</p> + +<p>That seemed to be what worried Lattimer most. She was framing a reply +when the communication-outlet whistled shrilly, and then squawked: +"Cocktail time! One hour to dinner; cocktails in the library, Hut Four!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The library, which was also lounge, recreation room, and general +gathering-place, was already crowded; most of the crowd was at the long +table topped with sheets of glasslike plastic that had been wall panels +out of one of the ruined buildings. She poured herself what passed, +here, for a martini, and carried it over to where Selim von Ohlmhorst +was sitting alone.</p> + +<p>For a while, they talked about the building they had just finished +exploring, then drifted into reminiscences of their work on Terra—von +Ohlmhorst's in Asia Minor, with the Hittite Empire, and hers in +Pakistan, excavating the cities of the Harappa Civilization. They +finished their drinks—the ingredients were plentiful; alcohol and +flavoring extracts synthesized from Martian vegetation—and von +Ohlmhorst took the two glasses to the table for refills.</p> + +<p>"You know, Martha," he said, when he returned, "Tony was right about one +thing. You are gambling your professional standing and reputation. It's +against all archaeological experience that a language so completely dead +as this one could be deciphered. There was a continuity between all the +other ancient languages—by knowing Greek, Champollion learned to read +Egyptian; by knowing Egyptian, Hittite was learned. That's why you and +your colleagues have never been able to translate the Harappa +hieroglyphics; no such continuity exists there. If you insist that this +utterly dead language can be read, your reputation will suffer for it."</p> + +<p>"I heard Colonel Penrose say, once, that an officer who's afraid to risk +his military reputation seldom makes much of a reputation. It's the same +with us. If we really want to find things out, we have to risk making +mistakes. And I'm a lot more interested in finding things out than I am +in my reputation."</p> + +<p>She glanced across the room, to where Tony Lattimer was sitting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> with +Gloria Standish, talking earnestly, while Gloria sipped one of the +counterfeit martinis and listened. Gloria was the leading contender for +the title of Miss Mars, 1996, if you liked big bosomy blondes, but Tony +would have been just as attentive to her if she'd looked like the Wicked +Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." because Gloria was the Pan-Federation +Telecast System commentator with the expedition.</p> + +<p>"I know you are," the old Turco-German was saying. "That's why, when +they asked me to name another archaeologist for this expedition, I named +you."</p> + +<p>He hadn't named Tony Lattimer; Lattimer had been pushed onto the +expedition by his university. There'd been a lot of high-level +string-pulling to that; she wished she knew the whole story. She'd +managed to keep clear of universities and university politics; all her +digs had been sponsored by non-academic foundations or art museums.</p> + +<p>"You have an excellent standing: much better than my own, at your age. +That's why it disturbs me to see you <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'jeapordizing'.">jeopardizing</ins> it by this insistence +that the Martian language can be translated. I can't, really, see how +you can hope to succeed."</p> + +<p>She shrugged and drank some more of her cocktail, then lit another +cigarette. It was getting tiresome to try to verbalize something she +only felt.</p> + +<p>"Neither do I, now, but I will. Maybe I'll find something like the +picture-books Sachiko was talking about. A child's primer, maybe; surely +they had things like that. And if I don't. I'll find something else. +We've only been here six months. I can wait the rest of my life, if I +have to, but I'll do it sometime."</p> + +<p>"I can't wait so long," von Ohlmhorst said. "The rest of my life will +only be a few years, and when the <i>Schiaparelli</i> orbits in, I'll be +going back to Terra on the <i>Cyrano</i>."</p> + +<p>"I wish you wouldn't. This is a whole new world of archaeology. +Literally."</p> + +<p>"Yes." He finished the cocktail and looked at his pipe as though +wondering whether to re-light it so soon before dinner, then put it in +his pocket. "A whole new world—but I've grown old, and it isn't for me. +I've spent my life studying the Hittites. I can speak the Hittite +language, though maybe King Muwatallis wouldn't be able to understand my +modern Turkish accent. But the things I'd have to learn here—chemistry, +physics, engineering, how to run analytic tests on steel girders and +beryllo-silver alloys and plastics and silicones. I'm more at home with +a civilization that rode in chariots and fought with swords and was just +learning how to work iron. Mars is for young people. This expedition is +a cadre of leadership—not only the Space Force people, who'll be the +commanders of the main expedition, but us scientists, too. And I'm just +an old cavalry general who can't learn to command tanks and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> aircraft. +You'll have time to learn about Mars. I won't."</p> + +<p>His reputation as the dean of Hittitologists was solid and secure, too, +she added mentally. Then she felt ashamed of the thought. He wasn't to +be classed with Tony Lattimer.</p> + +<p>"All I came for was to get the work started," he was continuing. "The +Federation Government felt that an old hand should do that. Well, it's +started, now; you and Tony and whoever come out on the <i>Schiaparelli</i> +must carry it on. You said it, yourself; you have a whole new world. +This is only one city, of the last Martian civilization. Behind this, +you have the Late Upland Culture, and the Canal Builders, and all the +civilizations and races and empires before them, clear back to the +Martian Stone Age." He hesitated for a moment. "You have no idea what +all you have to learn, Martha. This isn't the time to start specializing +too narrowly."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>They all got out of the truck and stretched their legs and looked up the +road to the tall building with the queer conical cap askew on its top. +The four little figures that had been busy against its wall climbed into +the jeep and started back slowly, the smallest of them, Sachiko +Koremitsu, paying out an electric cable behind. When it pulled up beside +the truck, they climbed out; Sachiko attached the free end of the cable +to a nuclear-electric battery. At once, dirty gray smoke and orange dust +puffed out from the wall of the building, and, a second later, the +multiple explosion banged.</p> + +<p>She and Tony Lattimer and Major Lindemann climbed onto the truck, +leaving the jeep stand by the road. When they reached the building, a +satisfyingly wide breach had been blown in the wall. Lattimer had placed +his shots between two of the windows; they were both blown out along +with the wall between, and lay unbroken on the ground. Martha remembered +the first building they had entered. A Space Force officer had picked up +a stone and thrown it at one of the windows, thinking that would be all +they'd need to do. It had bounced back. He had drawn his pistol—they'd +all carried guns, then, on the principle that what they didn't know +about Mars might easily hurt them—and fired four shots. The bullets had +<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'ricochetted'.">ricocheted</ins>, screaming thinly; there were four coppery smears of +jacket-metal on the window, and a little surface spalling. Somebody +tried a rifle; the 4000-f.s. bullet had cracked the glasslike pane +without penetrating. An oxyacetylene torch had taken an hour to cut the +window out; the lab crew, aboard the ship, were still trying to find out +just what the stuff was.</p> + +<p>Tony Lattimer had gone forward and was sweeping his flashlight back and +forth, swearing petulantly, his voice harshened and amplified by his +helmet-speaker.</p> + +<p>"I thought I was blasting into a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> hallway; this lets us into a room. +Careful; there's about a two-foot drop to the floor, and a lot of rubble +from the blast just inside."</p> + +<p>He stepped down through the breach; the others began dragging equipment +out of the trucks—shovels and picks and crowbars and sledges, portable +floodlights, cameras, sketching materials, an extension ladder, even +Alpinists' ropes and crampons and pickaxes. Hubert Penrose was +shouldering something that looked like a surrealist machine gun but +which was really a nuclear-electric jack-hammer. Martha selected one of +the spike-shod mountaineer's ice axes, with which she could dig or chop +or poke or pry or help herself over rough footing.</p> + +<p>The windows, grimed and crusted with fifty millennia of dust, filtered +in a dim twilight; even the breach in the wall, in the morning shade, +lighted only a small patch of floor. Somebody snapped on a floodlight, +aiming it at the ceiling. The big room was empty and bare; dust lay +thick on the floor and reddened the once-white walls. It could have been +a large office, but there was nothing left in it to indicate its use.</p> + +<p>"This one's been stripped up to the seventh floor!" Lattimer exclaimed. +"Street level'll be cleaned out, completely."</p> + +<p>"Do for living quarters and shops, then," Lindemann said. "Added to the +others, this'll take care of everybody on the <i>Schiaparelli</i>."</p> + +<p>"Seem to have been a lot of electric or electronic apparatus over along +this wall," one of the Space Force officers commented. "Ten or twelve +electric outlets." He brushed the dusty wall with his glove, then +scraped on the floor with his foot. "I can see where things were pried +loose."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The door, one of the double sliding things the Martians had used, was +closed. Selim von Ohlmhorst tried it, but it was stuck fast. The metal +latch-parts had frozen together, molecule bonding itself to molecule, +since the door had last been closed. Hubert Penrose came over with the +jack-hammer, fitting a spear-point chisel into place. He set the chisel +in the joint between the doors, braced the hammer against his hip, and +squeezed the trigger-switch. The hammer banged briefly like the weapon +it resembled, and the doors popped a few inches apart, then stuck. +Enough dust had worked into the recesses into which it was supposed to +slide to block it on both sides.</p> + +<p>That was old stuff; they ran into that every time they had to force a +door, and they were prepared for it. Somebody went outside and brought +in a power-jack and finally one of the doors inched back to the door +jamb. That was enough to get the lights and equipment through: they all +passed from the room to the hallway beyond. About half the other doors +were open; each had a number and a single word, <i>Darfhulva</i>, over it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/017.png" width="600" height="855" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>One of the civilian volunteers, a woman professor of natural ecology +from Penn State University, was looking up and down the hall.</p> + +<p>"You know," she said, "I feel at home here. I think this was a college +of some sort, and these were classrooms. That word, up there; that was +the subject taught, or the department. And those electronic devices, all +where the class would face them; audio-visual teaching aids."</p> + +<p>"A twenty-five-story university?" Lattimer scoffed. "Why, a building +like this would handle thirty thousand students."</p> + +<p>"Maybe there were that many.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> This was a big city, in its prime," Martha +said, moved chiefly by a desire to oppose Lattimer.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but think of the snafu in the halls, every time they changed +classes. It'd take half an hour to get everybody back and forth from one +floor to another." He turned to von Ohlmhorst. "I'm going up above this +floor. This place has been looted clean up to here, but there's a chance +there may be something above," he said.</p> + +<p>"I'll stay on this floor, at present," the Turco-German replied. "There +will be much coming and going, and dragging things in and out. We should +get this completely examined and recorded first. Then Major Lindemann's +people can do their worst, here."</p> + +<p>"Well, if nobody else wants it, I'll take the downstairs," Martha said.</p> + +<p>"I'll go along with you," Hubert Penrose told her. "If the lower floors +have no archaeological value, we'll turn them into living quarters. I +like this building: it'll give everybody room to keep out from under +everybody else's feet." He looked down the hall. "We ought to find +escalators at the middle."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The hallway, too, was thick underfoot with dust. Most of the open rooms +were empty, but a few contained furniture, including small seat-desks. +The original proponent of the university theory pointed these out as +just what might be found in classrooms. There were escalators, up and +down, on either side of the hall, and more on the intersecting passage +to the right.</p> + +<p>"That's how they handled the students, between classes," Martha +commented. "And I'll bet there are more ahead, there."</p> + +<p>They came to a stop where the hallway ended at a great square central +hall. There were elevators, there, on two of the sides, and four +escalators, still usable as stairways. But it was the walls, and the +paintings on them, that brought them up short and staring.</p> + +<p>They were clouded with dirt—she was trying to imagine what they must +have looked like originally, and at the same time estimating the labor +that would be involved in cleaning them—but they were still +distinguishable, as was the word, <i>Darfhulva</i>, in golden letters above +each of the four sides. It was a moment before she realized, from the +murals, that she had at last found a meaningful Martian word. They were +a vast historical panorama, clockwise around the room. A group of +skin-clad savages squatting around a fire. Hunters with bows and spears, +carrying a carcass of an animal slightly like a pig. Nomads riding +long-legged, graceful mounts like hornless deer. Peasants sowing and +reaping; mud-walled hut villages, and cities; processions of priests and +warriors; battles with swords and bows, and with cannon and muskets; +galleys, and ships with sails, and ships without visible means of +propulsion, and aircraft.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> Changing costumes and weapons and machines +and styles of architecture. A richly fertile landscape, gradually +merging into barren deserts and bushlands—the time of the great +planet-wide drought. The Canal Builders—men with machines recognizable +as steam-shovels and derricks, digging and quarrying and driving across +the empty plains with <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'aquaducts'.">aqueducts</ins>. More cities—seaports on the shrinking +oceans; dwindling, half-deserted cities; an abandoned city, with four +tiny humanoid figures and a thing like a combat-car in the middle of a +brush-grown plaza, they and their vehicle dwarfed by the huge lifeless +buildings around them. She had not the least doubt; <i>Darfhulva</i> was +History.</p> + +<p>"Wonderful!" von Ohlmhorst was saying. "The entire history of this race. +Why, if the painter depicted appropriate costumes and weapons and +machines for each period, and got the architecture right, we can break +the history of this planet into eras and periods and civilizations."</p> + +<p>"You can assume they're authentic. The faculty of this university would +insist on authenticity in the <i>Darfhulva</i>—History—Department," she +said.</p> + +<p>"Yes! <i>Darfhulva</i>—History! And your magazine was a journal of +<i>Sornhulva</i>!" Penrose exclaimed. "You have a word, Martha!" It took her +an instant to realize that he had called her by her first name, and not +Dr. Dane. She wasn't sure if that weren't a bigger triumph than learning +a word of the Martian language. Or a more auspicious start. "Alone, I +suppose that <i>hulva</i> means something like science or knowledge, or +study; combined, it would be equivalent to our 'ology. And <i>darf</i> would +mean something like past, or old times, or human events, or chronicles."</p> + +<p>"That gives you three words, Martha!" Sachiko jubilated. "You did it."</p> + +<p>"Let's don't go too fast," Lattimer said, for once not derisively. "I'll +admit that <i>darfhulva</i> is the Martian word for history as a subject of +study; I'll admit that <i>hulva</i> is the general word and <i>darf</i> modifies +it and tells us which subject is meant. But as for assigning specific +meanings, we can't do that because we don't know just how the Martians +thought, scientifically or otherwise."</p> + +<p>He stopped short, startled by the blue-white light that blazed as Sid +Chamberlain's Kliegettes went on. When the whirring of the camera +stopped, it was Chamberlain who was speaking:</p> + +<p>"This is the biggest thing yet; the whole history of Mars, stone age to +the end, all on four walls. I'm taking this with the fast shutter, but +we'll telecast it in slow motion, from the beginning to the end. Tony, I +want you to do the voice for it—running commentary, interpretation of +each scene as it's shown. Would you do that?"</p> + +<p>Would he do that! Martha thought. If he had a tail, he'd be wagging it +at the very thought.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well, there ought to be more murals on the other floors," she said. +"Who wants to come downstairs with us?"</p> + +<p>Sachiko did; immediately. Ivan Fitzgerald volunteered. Sid decided to go +upstairs with Tony Lattimer, and Gloria Standish decided to go upstairs, +too. Most of the party would remain on the seventh floor, to help Selim +von Ohlmhorst get it finished. After poking tentatively at the escalator +with the spike of her ice axe, Martha led the way downward.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The sixth floor was <i>Darfhulva</i>, too; military and technological +history, from the character of the murals. They looked around the +central hall, and went down to the fifth; it was like the floors above +except that the big quadrangle was stacked with dusty furniture and +boxes. Ivan Fitzgerald, who was carrying the floodlight, swung it slowly +around. Here the murals were of heroic-sized Martians, so human in +appearance as to seem members of her own race, each holding some +object—a book, or a <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'testtube'.">test tube</ins>, or some bit of scientific apparatus, and +behind them were scenes of laboratories and factories, flame and smoke, +lightning-flashes. The word at the top of each of the four walls was one +with which she was already familiar—<i>Sornhulva</i>.</p> + +<p>"Hey, Martha; there's that word," Ivan Fitzgerald exclaimed. "The one in +the title of your magazine." He looked at the paintings. "Chemistry, or +physics."</p> + +<p>"Both." Hubert Penrose considered. "I don't think the Martians made any +sharp distinction between them. See, the old fellow with the scraggly +whiskers must be the inventor of the spectroscope; he has one in his +hands, and he has a rainbow behind him. And the woman in the blue smock, +beside him, worked in organic chemistry; see the diagrams of long-chain +molecules behind her. What word would convey the idea of chemistry and +physics taken as one subject?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Sornhulva</i>," Sachiko suggested. "If <i>hulva's</i> something like science, +"<i>sorn</i>" must mean matter, or substance, or physical object. You were +right, all along, Martha. A civilization like this would certainly leave +something like this, that would be self-explanatory."</p> + +<p>"This'll wipe a little more of that superior grin off Tony Lattimer's +face," Fitzgerald was saying, as they went down the motionless escalator +to the floor below. "Tony wants to be a big shot. When you want to be a +big shot, you can't bear the possibility of anybody else being a bigger +big shot, and whoever makes a start on reading this language will be the +biggest big shot archaeology ever saw."</p> + +<p>That was true. She hadn't thought of it, in that way, before, and now +she tried not to think about it. She didn't want to be a big shot. She +wanted to be able to read the Mar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>tian language, and find things out +about the Martians.</p> + +<p>Two escalators down, they came out on a mezzanine around a wide central +hall on the street level, the floor forty feet below them and the +ceiling thirty feet above. Their lights picked out object after object +below—a huge group of sculptured figures in the middle; some kind of a +motor vehicle jacked up on trestles for repairs; things that looked like +machine-guns and auto-cannon; long tables, tops littered with a +dust-covered miscellany; machinery; boxes and crates and containers.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>They made their way down and walked among the clutter, missing a hundred +things for every one they saw, until they found an escalator to the +basement. There were three basements, one under another, until at last +they stood at the bottom of the last escalator, on a bare concrete +floor, swinging the portable floodlight over stacks of boxes and barrels +and drums, and heaps of powdery dust. The boxes were plastic—nobody had +ever found anything made of wood in the city—and the barrels and drums +were of metal or glass or some glasslike substance. They were outwardly +intact. The powdery heaps might have been anything organic, or anything +containing fluid. Down here, where wind and dust could not reach, +<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'evaportation'.">evaporation</ins> had been the only force of destruction after the minute life +that caused putrefaction had vanished.</p> + +<p>They found refrigeration rooms, too, and using Martha's ice axe and the +pistollike vibratool Sachiko carried on her belt, they pounded and pried +one open, to find dessicated piles of what had been vegetables, and +leathery chunks of meat. Samples of that stuff, rocketed up to the ship, +would give a reliable estimate, by radio-carbon dating, of how long ago +this building had been occupied. The refrigeration unit, radically +different from anything their own culture had produced, had been +electrically powered. Sachiko and Penrose, poking into it, found the +switches still on; the machine had only ceased to function when the +power-source, whatever that had been, had failed.</p> + +<p>The middle basement had also been used, at least toward the end, for +storage; it was cut in half by a partition pierced by but one door. They +took half an hour to force this, and were on the point of sending above +for heavy equipment when it yielded enough for them to squeeze through. +Fitzgerald, in the lead with the light, stopped short, looked around, +and then gave a groan that came through his helmet-speaker like a +foghorn.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! <i>No!</i>"</p> + +<p>"What's the matter, Ivan?" Sachiko, entering behind him, asked +anxiously.</p> + +<p>He stepped aside. "Look at it, Sachi! Are we going to have to do all +that?"</p> + +<p>Martha crowded through behind her friend and looked around, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> stood +motionless, dizzy with excitement. Books. Case on case of books, half an +acre of cases, fifteen feet to the ceiling. Fitzgerald, and Penrose, who +had pushed in behind her, were talking in rapid excitement; she only +heard the sound of their voices, not their words. This must be the main +stacks of the university library—the entire literature of the vanished +race of Mars. In the center, down an aisle between the cases, she could +see the hollow square of the librarians' desk, and stairs and a +dumb-waiter to the floor above.</p> + +<p>She realized that she was walking forward, with the others, toward this. +Sachiko was saying: "I'm the lightest; let me go first." She must be +talking about the spidery metal stairs.</p> + +<p>"I'd say they were safe," Penrose answered. "The trouble we've had with +doors around here shows that the metal hasn't deteriorated."</p> + +<p>In the end, the Japanese girl led the way, more catlike than ever in her +caution. The stairs were quite sound, in spite of their fragile +appearance, and they all followed her. The floor above was a duplicate +of the room they had entered, and seemed to contain about as many books. +Rather than waste time forcing the door here, they returned to the +middle basement and came up by the escalator down which they had +originally descended.</p> + +<p>The upper basement contained kitchens—electric stoves, some with pots +and pans still on them—and a big room that must have been, originally, +the students' dining room, though when last used it had been a workshop. +As they expected, the library reading room was on the street-level +floor, directly above the stacks. It seemed to have been converted into +a sort of common living room for the building's last occupants. An +adjoining auditorium had been made into a chemical works; there were +vats and distillation apparatus, and a metal fractionating tower that +extended through a hole knocked in the ceiling seventy feet above. A +good deal of plastic furniture of the sort they had been finding +everywhere in the city was stacked about, some of it broken up, +apparently for reprocessing. The other rooms on the street floor seemed +also to have been devoted to manufacturing and repair work; a +considerable industry, along a number of lines, must have been carried +on here for a long time after the university had ceased to function as +such.</p> + +<p>On the second floor, they found a museum; many of the exhibits remained, +tantalizingly half-visible in grimed glass cases. There had been +administrative offices there, too. The doors of most of them were +closed, and they did not waste time trying to force them, but those that +were open had been turned into living quarters. They made notes, and +rough floor plans, to guide them in future more thorough examination; it +was almost noon before they had worked their way back to the seventh +floor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> + +<p>Selim von Ohlmhorst was in a room on the north side of the building, +sketching the position of things before examining them and collecting +them for removal. He had the floor checkerboarded with a grid of chalked +lines, each numbered.</p> + +<p>"We have everything on this floor photographed," he said. "I have three +gangs—all the floodlights I have—sketching and making measurements. At +the rate we're going, with time out for lunch, we'll be finished by the +middle of the afternoon."</p> + +<p>"You've been working fast. Evidently you aren't being high-church about +a 'qualified archaeologist' entering rooms first," Penrose commented.</p> + +<p>"Ach, childishness!" the old man exclaimed impatiently. "These officers +of yours aren't fools. All of them have been to Intelligence School and +Criminal Investigation School. Some of the most careful amateur +archaeologists I ever knew were retired soldiers or policemen. But there +isn't much work to be done. Most of the rooms are either empty or like +this one—a few bits of furniture and broken trash and scraps of paper. +Did you find anything down on the lower floors?"</p> + +<p>"Well, yes," Penrose said, a hint of mirth in his voice. "What would you +say, Martha?"</p> + +<p>She started to tell Selim. The others, unable to restrain their +excitement, broke in with interruptions. Von Ohlmhorst was staring in +incredulous amazement.</p> + +<p>"But this floor was looted almost clean, and the buildings we've entered +before were all looted from the street level up," he said, at length.</p> + +<p>"The people who looted this one lived here," Penrose replied. "They had +electric power to the last; we found refrigerators full of food, and +stoves with the dinner still on them. They must have used the elevators +to haul things down from the upper floor. The whole first floor was +converted into workshops and laboratories. I think that this place must +have been something like a monastery in the Dark Ages in Europe, or what +such a monastery would have been like if the Dark Ages had followed the +fall of a highly developed scientific civilization. For one thing, we +found a lot of machine guns and light auto-cannon on the street level, +and all the doors were barricaded. The people here were trying to keep a +civilization running after the rest of the planet had gone back to +barbarism; I suppose they'd have to fight off raids by the barbarians +now and then."</p> + +<p>"You're not going to insist on making this building into expedition +quarters, I hope, colonel?" von Ohlmhorst asked anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! This place is an archaeological treasure-house. More than that; +from what I saw, our technicians can learn a lot, here. But you'd better +get this floor cleaned up as soon as you can, though. I'll have the +subsurface part, from the sixth floor down, airsealed. Then we'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> put +in oxygen generators and power units, and get a couple of elevators into +service. For the floors above, we can use temporary airsealing floor by +floor, and portable equipment; when we have things atmosphered and +lighted and heated, you and Martha and Tony Lattimer can go to work +systematically and in comfort, and I'll give you all the help I can +spare from the other work. This is one of the biggest things we've found +yet."</p> + +<p>Tony Lattimer and his companions came down to the seventh floor a little +later.</p> + +<p>"I don't get this, at all," he began, as soon as he joined them. "This +building wasn't stripped the way the others were. Always, the procedure +seems to have been to strip from the bottom up, but they seem to have +stripped the top floors first, here. All but the very top. I found out +what that conical thing is, by the way. It's a wind-rotor, and under it +there's an electric generator. This building generated its own power."</p> + +<p>"What sort of condition are the generators in?" Penrose asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, everything's full of dust that blew in under the rotor, of +course, but it looks to be in pretty good shape. Hey, I'll bet that's +it! They had power, so they used the elevators to haul stuff down. +That's just what they did. Some of the floors above here don't seem to +have been touched, though." He paused momentarily; back of his oxy-mask, +he seemed to be grinning. "I don't know that I ought to mention this in +front of Martha, but two floors above—we hit a room—it must have been +the reference library for one of the departments—that had close to five +hundred books in it."</p> + +<p>The noise that interrupted him, like the squawking of a Brobdingnagian +parrot, was only Ivan Fitzgerald laughing through his helmet-speaker.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Lunch at the huts was a hasty meal, with a gabble of full-mouthed and +excited talking. Hubert Penrose and his chief subordinates snatched +their food in a huddled consultation at one end of the table; in the +afternoon, work was suspended on everything else and the fifty-odd men +and women of the expedition concentrated their efforts on the +University. By the middle of the afternoon, the seventh floor had been +completely examined, photographed and sketched, and the murals in the +square central hall covered with protective tarpaulins, and Laurent +Gicquel and his airsealing crew had moved in and were at work. It had +been decided to seal the central hall at the entrances. It took the +French-Canadian engineer most of the afternoon to find all the +ventilation-ducts and plug them. An elevator-shaft on the north side was +found reaching clear to the twenty-fifth floor; this would give access +to the top of the building; another shaft, from the center, would take +care of the floors below. Nobody seemed willing to trust the ancient +elevators, themselves; it was the next evening before a couple of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> cars +and the necessary machinery could be fabricated in the machine shops +aboard the ship and sent down by landing-rocket. By that time, the +airsealing was finished, the nuclear-electric energy-converters were in +place, and the oxygen generators set up.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/025.png" width="600" height="367" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>Martha was in the lower basement, an hour or so before lunch the day +after, when a couple of Space Force officers came out of the elevator, +bringing extra lights with them. She was still using oxygen-equipment; +it was a moment before she realized that the newcomers had no masks, and +that one of them was smoking. She took off her own helmet-speaker, +throat-mike and mask and unslung her tank-pack, breathing cautiously. +The air was chilly, and musty-acrid with the odor of antiquity—the +first Martian odor she had smelled—but when she lit a cigarette, the +lighter flamed clear and steady and the tobacco caught and burned +evenly.</p> + +<p>The archaeologists, many of the other civilian scientists, a few of the +Space Force officers and the two news-correspondents, Sid Chamberlain +and Gloria Standish, moved in that evening, setting up cots in vacant +rooms. They installed electric stoves and a refrigerator in the old +Library Reading Room, and put in a bar and lunch counter. For a few +days, the place was full of noise and activity, then, gradually, the +Space Force people and all but a few of the civilians returned to their +own work. There was still the business of airsealing the more habitable +of the buildings already explored, and fitting them up in readiness for +the arrival, in a year and a half, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> five hundred members of the +main expedition. There was work to be done enlarging the landing field +for the ship's rocket craft, and building new chemical-fuel tanks.</p> + +<p>There was the work of getting the city's ancient reservoirs cleared of +silt before the next spring thaw brought more water down the underground +<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'aquaducts'.">aqueducts</ins> everybody called canals in mistranslation of Schiaparelli's +Italian word, though this was proving considerably easier than +anticipated. The ancient Canal-Builders must have anticipated a time +when their descendants would no longer be capable of maintenance work, +and had prepared against it. By the day after the University had been +made completely habitable, the actual work there was being done by +Selim, Tony Lattimer and herself, with half a dozen Space Force +officers, mostly girls, and four or five civilians, helping.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>They worked up from the bottom, dividing the floor-surfaces into +numbered squares, measuring and listing and sketching and photographing. +They packaged samples of organic matter and sent them up to the ship for +Carbon-14 dating and analysis; they opened cans and jars and bottles, +and found that everything fluid in them had evaporated, through the +porosity of glass and metal and plastic if there were no other way. +Wherever they looked, they found evidence of activity suddenly suspended +and never resumed. A vise with a bar of metal in it, half cut through +and the hacksaw beside it. Pots and pans with hardened remains of food +in them; a leathery cut of meat on a table, with the knife ready at +hand. Toilet articles on washstands; unmade beds, the bedding ready to +crumble at a touch but still retaining the impress of the sleeper's +body; papers and writing materials on desks, as though the writer had +gotten up, meaning to return and finish in a fifty-thousand-year-ago +moment.</p> + +<p>It worried her. Irrationally, she began to feel that the Martians had +never left this place; that they were still around her, watching +disapprovingly every time she picked up something they had laid down. +They haunted her dreams, now, instead of their enigmatic writing. At +first, everybody who had moved into the University had taken a separate +room, happy to escape the crowding and lack of privacy of the huts. +After a few nights, she was glad when Gloria Standish moved in with her, +and accepted the newswoman's excuse that she felt lonely without +somebody to talk to before falling asleep. Sachiko Koremitsu joined them +the next evening, and before going to bed, the girl officer cleaned and +oiled her pistol, remarking that she was afraid some rust may have +gotten into it.</p> + +<p>The others felt it, too. Selim von Ohlmhorst developed the habit of +turning quickly and looking behind him, as though trying to surprise +somebody or something that was stalking him. Tony Lattimer, having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> a +drink at the bar that had been improvised from the librarian's desk in +the Reading Room, set down his glass and swore.</p> + +<p>"You know what this place is? It's an archaeological <i>Marie Celeste</i>!" +he declared. "It was occupied right up to the end—we've all seen the +shifts these people used to keep a civilization going here—but what was +the end? What happened to them? Where did they go?"</p> + +<p>"You didn't expect them to be waiting out front, with a red carpet and a +big banner, <i>Welcome Terrans</i>, did you, Tony?" Gloria Standish asked.</p> + +<p>"No, of course not; they've all been dead for fifty thousand years. But +if they were the last of the Martians, why haven't we found their bones, +at least? Who buried them, after they were dead?" He looked at the +glass, a bubble-thin goblet, found, with hundreds of others like it, in +a closet above, as though debating with himself whether to have another +drink. Then he voted in the affirmative and reached for the cocktail +pitcher. "And every door on the old ground level is either barred or +barricaded from the inside. How did they get out? And why did they +leave?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The next day, at lunch, Sachiko Koremitsu had the answer to the second +question. Four or five electrical engineers had come down by rocket from +the ship, and she had been spending the morning with them, in oxy-masks, +at the top of the building.</p> + +<p>"Tony, I thought you said those generators were in good shape," she +began, catching sight of Lattimer. "They aren't. They're in the most +unholy mess I ever saw. What happened, up there, was that the supports +of the wind-rotor gave way, and weight snapped the main shaft, and +smashed everything under it."</p> + +<p>"Well, after fifty thousand years, you can expect something like that," +Lattimer retorted. "When an archaeologist says something's in good +shape, he doesn't necessarily mean it'll start as soon as you shove a +switch in."</p> + +<p>"You didn't notice that it happened when the power was on, did you," one +of the engineers asked, nettled at Lattimer's tone. "Well, it was. +Everything's burned out or shorted or fused together; I saw one busbar +eight inches across melted clean in two. It's a pity we didn't find +things in good shape, even archaeologically speaking. I saw a lot of +interesting things, things in advance of what we're using now. But it'll +take a couple of years to get everything sorted out and figure what it +looked like originally."</p> + +<p>"Did it look as though anybody'd made any attempt to fix it?" Martha +asked.</p> + +<p>Sachiko shook her head. "They must have taken one look at it and given +up. I don't believe there would have been any possible way to repair +anything."</p> + +<p>"Well, that explains why they left.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> They needed electricity for +lighting, and heating, and all their industrial equipment was +electrical. They had a good life, here, with power; without it, this +place wouldn't have been habitable."</p> + +<p>"Then why did they barricade everything from the inside, and how did +they get out?" Lattimer wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"To keep other people from breaking in and looting. Last man out +probably barred the last door and slid down a rope from upstairs," von +Ohlmhorst suggested. "This Houdini-trick doesn't worry me too much. +We'll find out eventually."</p> + +<p>"Yes, about the time Martha starts reading Martian," Lattimer scoffed.</p> + +<p>"That may be just when we'll find out," von Ohlmhorst replied seriously. +"It wouldn't surprise me if they left something in writing when they +evacuated this place."</p> + +<p>"Are you really beginning to treat this pipe dream of hers as a serious +possibility, Selim?" Lattimer demanded. "I know, it would be a wonderful +thing, but wonderful things don't happen just because they're wonderful. +Only because they're possible, and this isn't. Let me quote that +distinguished Hittitologist, Johannes Friedrich: 'Nothing can be +translated out of nothing.' Or that later but not less distinguished +Hittitologist, Selim von Ohlmhorst: 'Where are you going to get your +bilingual?'"</p> + +<p>"Friedrich lived to see the Hittite language deciphered and read," von +Ohlmhorst reminded him.</p> + +<p>"Yes, when they found Hittite-Assyrian bilinguals." Lattimer measured a +spoonful of coffee-powder into his cup and added hot water. "Martha, you +ought to know, better than anybody, how little chance you have. You've +been working for years in the Indus Valley; how many words of Harappa +have you or anybody else ever been able to read?"</p> + +<p>"We never found a university, with a half-million-volume library, at +Harappa or Mohenjo-Daro."</p> + +<p>"And, the first day we entered this building, we established meanings +for several words," Selim von Ohlmhorst added.</p> + +<p><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Quotation mark was missing in original.">"</ins>And you've never found another meaningful word since," Lattimer added. +"And you're only sure of general meaning, not specific meaning of +word-elements, and you have a dozen different interpretations for each +word."</p> + +<p>"We made a start," von Ohlmhorst maintained. "We have Grotefend's word +for 'king.' But I'm going to be able to read some of those books, over +there, if it takes me the rest of my life here. It probably will, +anyhow."</p> + +<p>"You mean you've changed your mind about going home on the <i>Cyrano</i>?" +Martha asked. "You'll stay on here?"</p> + +<p>The old man nodded. "I can't leave this. There's too much to discover. +The old dog will have to learn a lot of new tricks, but this is where my +work will be, from now on."</p> + +<p>Lattimer was shocked. "You're<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> nuts!" he cried. "You mean you're going +to throw away everything you've accomplished in Hittitology and start +all over again here on Mars? Martha, if you've talked him into this +crazy decision, you're a criminal!"</p> + +<p>"Nobody talked me into anything," von Ohlmhorst said roughly. "And as +for throwing away what I've accomplished in Hittitology, I don't know +what the devil you're talking about. Everything I know about the Hittite +Empire is published and available to anybody. Hittitology's like +Egyptology; it's stopped being research and archaeology and become +scholarship and history. And I'm not a scholar or a historian; I'm a +pick-and-shovel field archaeologist—a highly skilled and specialized +grave-robber and junk-picker—and there's more pick-and-shovel work on +this planet than I could do in a hundred lifetimes. This is something +new; I was a fool to think I could turn my back on it and go back to +scribbling footnotes about Hittite kings."</p> + +<p>"You could have anything you wanted, in Hittitology. There are a dozen +universities that'd sooner have you than a winning football team. But +no! You have to be the top man in Martiology, too. You can't leave that +for anybody else—" Lattimer shoved his chair back and got to his feet, +leaving the table with an oath that was almost a sob of exasperation.</p> + +<p>Maybe his feelings were too much for him. Maybe he realized, as Martha +did, what he had betrayed. She sat, avoiding the eyes of the others, +looking at the ceiling, as embarrassed as though Lattimer had flung +something dirty on the table in front of them. Tony Lattimer had, +desperately, wanted Selim to go home on the <i>Cyrano</i>. Martiology was a +new field; if Selim entered it, he would bring with him the reputation +he had already built in Hittitology, automatically stepping into the +leading role that Lattimer had coveted for himself. Ivan Fitzgerald's +words echoed back to her—when you want to be a big shot, you can't bear +the possibility of anybody else being a bigger big shot. His derision of +her own efforts became comprehensible, too. It wasn't that he was +convinced that she would never learn to read the Martian language. He +had been afraid that she would.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Ivan Fitzgerald finally isolated the germ that had caused the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'Finchly'.">Finchley</ins> +girl's undiagnosed illness. Shortly afterward, the malady turned into a +mild fever, from which she recovered. Nobody else seemed to have caught +it. Fitzgerald was still trying to find out how the germ had been +transmitted.</p> + +<p>They found a globe of Mars, made when the city had been a seaport. They +located the city, and learned that its name had been Kukan—or something +with a similar vowel-consonant ratio. Immediately, Sid Chamberlain and +Gloria Standish began giving their telecasts a Kukan dateline, and +Hubert Penrose used<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> the name in his official reports. They also found a +Martian calendar; the year had been divided into ten more or less equal +months, and one of them had been Doma. Another month was Nor, and that +was a part of the name of the scientific journal Martha had found.</p> + +<p>Bill Chandler, the zoologist, had been going deeper and deeper into the +old sea bottom of Syrtis. Four hundred miles from Kukan, and at fifteen +thousand feet lower altitude, he shot a bird. At least, it was a +something with wings and what were almost but not quite feathers, though +it was more reptilian than avian in general characteristics. He and Ivan +Fitzgerald skinned and mounted it, and then dissected the carcass almost +tissue by tissue. About seven-<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'eights'.">eighths</ins> of its body capacity was lungs; it +certainly breathed air containing at least half enough oxygen to support +human life, or five times as much as the air around Kukan.</p> + +<p>That took the center of interest away from archaeology, and started a +new burst of activity. All the expedition's aircraft—four jetticopters +and three wingless airdyne reconnaissance fighters—were thrown into +intensified exploration of the lower sea bottoms, and the bio-science +boys and girls were wild with excitement and making new discoveries on +each flight.</p> + +<p>The University was left to Selim and Martha and Tony Lattimer, the +latter keeping to himself while she and the old Turco-German worked +together. The civilian specialists in other fields, and the Space Force +people who had been holding tape lines and making sketches and snapping +cameras, were all flying to lower Syrtis to find out how much oxygen +there was and what kind of life it supported.</p> + +<p>Sometimes Sachiko dropped in; most of the time she was busy helping Ivan +Fitzgerald dissect specimens. They had four or five species of what +might loosely be called birds, and something that could easily be +classed as a reptile, and a carnivorous mammal the size of a cat with +birdlike claws, and a herbivore almost identical with the piglike thing +in the big <i>Darfhulva</i> mural, and another like a gazelle with a single +horn in the middle of its forehead.</p> + +<p>The high point came when one party, at thirty thousand feet below the +level of Kukan, found breathable air. One of them had a mild attack of +<i>sorroche</i> and had to be flown back for treatment in a hurry, but the +others showed no ill effects.</p> + +<p>The daily newscasts from Terra showed a corresponding shift in interest +at home. The discovery of the University had focused attention on the +dead past of Mars; now the public was interested in Mars as a possible +home for humanity. It was Tony Lattimer who brought archaeology back +into the activities of the expedition and the news at home.</p> + +<p>Martha and Selim were working in the museum on the second floor, +scrubbing the grime from the glass cases, noting contents, and +grease-penciling numbers; Lattimer and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> couple of Space Force officers +were going through what had been the administrative offices on the other +side. It was one of these, a young second lieutenant, who came hurrying +in from the mezzanine, almost bursting with excitement.</p> + +<p>"Hey, Martha! Dr. von Ohlmhorst!" he was shouting. "Where are you? +Tony's found the Martians!"</p> + +<p>Selim dropped his rag back in the bucket; she laid her clipboard on top +of the case beside her.</p> + +<p>"Where?" they asked together.</p> + +<p>"Over on the north side." The lieutenant took hold of himself and spoke +more deliberately. "Little room, back of one of the old faculty +offices—conference room. It was locked from the inside, and we had to +burn it down with a torch. That's where they are. Eighteen of them, +around a long table—"</p> + +<p>Gloria Standish, who had dropped in for lunch, was on the mezzanine, +fairly screaming into a radiophone extension:</p> + +<p>" ... Dozen and a half of them! Well, of course they're dead. What a +question! They look like skeletons covered with leather. No, I do not +know what they died of. Well, forget it; I don't care if Bill Chandler's +found a three-headed hippopotamus. Sid, don't you get it? We've found +the <i>Martians</i>!"</p> + +<p>She slammed the phone back on its hook, rushing away ahead of them.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Martha remembered the closed door; on the first survey, they hadn't +attempted opening it. Now it was burned away at both sides and lay, +still hot along the edges, on the floor of the big office room in front. +A floodlight was on in the room inside, and Lattimer was going around +looking at things while a Space Force officer stood by the door. The +center of the room was filled by a long table; in armchairs around it +sat the eighteen men and women who had occupied the room for the last +fifty millennia. There were bottles and glasses on the table in front of +them, and, had she seen them in a dimmer light, she would have thought +that they were merely dozing over their drinks. One had a knee hooked +over his chair-arm and was curled in foetuslike sleep. Another had +fallen forward onto the table, arms extended, the emerald set of a ring +twinkling dully on one finger. Skeletons covered with leather, Gloria +Standish had called them, and so they were—faces like skulls, arms and +legs like sticks, the flesh shrunken onto the bones under it.</p> + +<p>"Isn't this something!" Lattimer was exulting. "Mass suicide, that's +what it was. Notice what's in the corners?"</p> + +<p>Braziers, made of perforated two-gallon-odd metal cans, the white walls +smudged with smoke above them. Von Ohlmhorst had noticed them at once, +and was poking into one of them with his flashlight.</p> + +<p>"Yes; charcoal. I noticed a quantity of it around a couple of +hand-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>forges in the shop on the first floor. That's why you had so much +trouble breaking in; they'd sealed the room on the inside." He +straightened and went around the room, until he found a ventilator, and +peered into it. "Stuffed with rags. They must have been all that were +left, here. Their power was gone, and they were old and tired, and all +around them their world was dying. So they just came in here and lit the +charcoal, and sat drinking together till they all fell asleep. Well, we +know what became of them, now, anyhow."</p> + +<p>Sid and Gloria made the most of it. The Terran public wanted to hear +about Martians, and if live Martians couldn't be found, a room full of +dead ones was the next best thing. Maybe an even better thing; it had +been only sixty-odd years since the Orson Welles invasion-scare. Tony +Lattimer, the discoverer, was beginning to cash in on his attentions to +Gloria and his ingratiation with Sid; he was always either making +voice-and-image talks for telecast or listening to the news from the +home planet. Without question, he had become, overnight, the most widely +known archaeologist in history.</p> + +<p>"Not that I'm interested in all this, for myself," he disclaimed, after +listening to the telecast from Terra two days after his discovery. "But +this is going to be a big thing for Martian archaeology. Bring it to the +public attention; dramatize it. Selim, can you remember when Lord +Carnarvon and Howard Carter found the tomb of Tutankhamen?"</p> + +<p>"In 1923? I was two years old, then," von Ohlmhorst chuckled. "I really +don't know how much that publicity ever did for <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'Egyptiology'.">Egyptology</ins>. Oh, the +museums did devote more space to Egyptian exhibits, and after a museum +department head gets a few extra showcases, you know how hard it is to +make him give them up. And, for a while, it was easier to get financial +support for new excavations. But I don't know how much good all this +public excitement really does, in the long run."</p> + +<p>"Well, I think one of us should go back on the <i>Cyrano</i>, when the +<i>Schiaparelli</i> orbits in," Lattimer said. "I'd hoped it would be you; +your voice would carry the most weight. But I think it's important that +one of us go back, to present the story of our work, and what we have +accomplished and what we hope to accomplish, to the public and to the +universities and the learned societies, and to the Federation +Government. There will be a great deal of work that will have to be +done. We must not allow the other scientific fields and the so-called +practical interests to monopolize public and academic support. So, I +believe I shall go back at least for a while, and see what I can do—"</p> + +<p>Lectures. The organization of a Society of Martian Archaeology, with +Anthony Lattimer, Ph.D., the logical candidate for the chair. Degrees, +honors; the deference of the learned, and the adulation of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> lay +public. Positions, with impressive titles and salaries. Sweet are the +uses of publicity.</p> + +<p>She crushed out her cigarette and got to her feet. "Well, I still have +the final lists of what we found in <i>Halvhulva</i>—Biology—department to +check over. I'm starting on Sornhulva tomorrow, and I want that stuff in +shape for expert evaluation."</p> + +<p>That was the sort of thing Tony Lattimer wanted to get away from, the +detail-work and the drudgery. Let the infantry do the slogging through +the mud; the brass-hats got the medals.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She was halfway through the fifth floor, a week later, and was having +midday lunch in the reading room on the first floor when Hubert Penrose +came over and sat down beside her, asking her what she was doing. She +told him.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if you could find me a couple of men, for an hour or so," she +added. "I'm stopped by a couple of jammed doors at the central hall. +Lecture room and library, if the layout of that floor's anything like +the ones below it."</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'm a pretty fair door-buster, myself." He looked around the room. +"There's Jeff Miles; he isn't doing much of anything. And we'll put Sid +Chamberlain to work, for a change, too. The four of us ought to get your +doors open." He called to Chamberlain, who was carrying his tray over to +the dish washer. "Oh, Sid; you doing anything for the next hour or so?"</p> + +<p>"I was going up to the fourth floor, to see what Tony's doing."</p> + +<p>"Forget it. Tony's bagged his season limit of Martians. I'm going to +help Martha bust in a couple of doors; we'll probably find a whole +cemetery full of Martians."</p> + +<p>Chamberlain shrugged. "Why not. A jammed door can have anything back of +it, and I know what Tony's doing—just routine stuff."</p> + +<p>Jeff Miles, the Space Force captain, came over, accompanied by one of +the lab-crew from the ship who had come down on the rocket the day +before.</p> + +<p>"This ought to be up your alley, Mort," he was saying to his companion. +"Chemistry and physics department. Want to come along?"</p> + +<p>The lab man, Mort Tranter, was willing. Seeing the sights was what he'd +come down from the ship for. She finished her coffee and cigarette, and +they went out into the hall together, gathered equipment and rode the +elevator to the fifth floor.</p> + +<p>The lecture hall door was the nearest; they attacked it first. With +proper equipment and help, it was no problem and in ten minutes they had +it open wide enough to squeeze through with the floodlights. The room +inside was quite empty, and, like most of the rooms behind closed doors, +comparatively free from dust. The students, it appeared, had sat with +their backs to the door, facing a low platform, but their seats and the +lecturer's table and equipment had been removed. The two side walls bore +inscriptions: on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> right, a pattern of concentric circles which she +recognized as a diagram of atomic structure, and on the left a +complicated table of numbers and words, in two columns. Tranter was +pointing at the diagram on the right.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/034.png" width="600" height="489" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>"They got as far as the Bohr atom, anyhow," he said. "Well, not quite. +They knew about electron shells, but they have the nucleus pictured as a +solid mass. No indication of proton-and-neutron structure. I'll bet, +when you come to translate their scientific books, you'll find that they +taught that the atom was the ultimate and indivisible particle. That +explains why you people never found any evidence that the Martians used +nuclear energy."</p> + +<p>"That's a uranium atom," Captain Miles mentioned.</p> + +<p>"It is?" Sid Chamberlain asked, excitedly. "Then they did know about +atomic energy. Just because we haven't found any pictures of A-bomb +mushrooms doesn't mean—"</p> + +<p>She turned to look at the other wall. Sid's signal reactions were +getting away from him again; uranium meant nuclear power to him, and the +two words were interchangeable. As she studied the arrangement of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> the +numbers and words, she could hear Tranter saying:</p> + +<p>"Nuts, Sid. We knew about uranium a long time before anybody found out +what could be done with it. Uranium was discovered on Terra in 1789, by +Klaproth."</p> + +<p>There was something familiar about the table on the left wall. She tried +to remember what she had been taught in school about physics, and what +she had picked up by accident afterward. The second column was a +continuation of the first: there were forty-six items in each, each item +numbered consecutively—</p> + +<p>"Probably used uranium because it's the largest of the natural atoms," +Penrose was saying. "The fact that there's nothing beyond it there shows +that they hadn't created any of the transuranics. A student could go to +that thing and point out the outer electron of any of the ninety-two +elements."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Ninety-two! That was it; there were ninety-two items in the table on the +left wall! Hydrogen was Number One, she knew; One, <i>Sarfaldsorn</i>. Helium +was Two; that was <i>Tirfaldsorn</i>. She couldn't remember which element +came next, but in Martian it was <i>Sarfalddavas</i>. <i>Sorn</i> must mean +matter, or substance, then. And <i>davas</i>; she was trying to think of what +it could be. She turned quickly to the others, catching hold of Hubert +Penrose's arm with one hand and waving her clipboard with the other.</p> + +<p>"Look at this thing, over here," she was clamoring excitedly. "Tell me +what you think it is. Could it be a table of the elements?"</p> + +<p>They all turned to look. Mort Tranter stared at it for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Could be. If I only knew what those squiggles meant—"</p> + +<p>That was right; he'd spent his time aboard the ship.</p> + +<p>"If you could read the numbers, would that help?" she asked, beginning +to set down the Arabic digits and their Martian equivalents. "It's +decimal system, the same as we use."</p> + +<p>"Sure. If that's a table of elements, all I'd need would be the numbers. +Thanks," he added as she tore off the sheet and gave it to him.</p> + +<p>Penrose knew the numbers, and was ahead of him. "Ninety-two items, +numbered consecutively. The first number would be the atomic number. +Then a single word, the name of the element. Then the atomic weight—"</p> + +<p>She began reading off the names of the elements. "I know hydrogen and +helium; what's <i>tirfalddavas</i>, the third one?"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>"Lithium," Tranter said. "The atomic weights aren't run out past the +decimal point. Hydrogen's one plus, if that double-hook dingus is a plus +sign; Helium's four-plus, that's right. And lithium's given as seven, +that isn't right. It's six-point nine-four-oh. Or is that thing a +Martian minus sign?"</p> + +<p>"Of course! Look! A plus sign is a hook, to hang things together;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> a +minus sign is a knife, to cut something off from something—see, the +little loop is the handle and the long pointed loop is the blade. +Stylized, of course, but that's what it is. And the fourth element, +kiradavas; what's that?"</p> + +<p>"Beryllium. Atomic weight given as nine-and-a-hook; actually it's +nine-point-oh-two."</p> + +<p>Sid Chamberlain had been disgruntled because he couldn't get a story +about the Martians having developed atomic energy. It took him a few +minutes to understand the newest development, but finally it dawned on +him.</p> + +<p>"Hey! You're reading that!" he cried. "You're reading Martian!"</p> + +<p>"That's right," Penrose told him. "Just reading it right off. I don't +get the two items after the atomic weight, though. They look like months +of the Martian calendar. What ought they to be, Mort?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Tranter hesitated. "Well, the next information after the atomic weight +ought to be the period and group numbers. But those are words."</p> + +<p>"What would the numbers be for the first one, hydrogen?"</p> + +<p>"Period One, Group One. One electron shell, one electron in the outer +shell," Tranter told her. "Helium's period one, too, but it has the +outer—only—electron shell full, so it's in the group of inert +elements."</p> + +<p>"<i>Trav, Trav.</i> <i>Trav's</i> the first month of the year. And helium's <i>Trav, +Yenth</i>; <i>Yenth</i> is the eighth month."</p> + +<p>"The inert elements could be called Group Eight, yes. And the third +element, lithium, is Period Two, Group One. That check?"</p> + +<p>"It certainly does. <i>Sanv, Trav</i>; <i>Sanv's</i> the second month. What's the +first element in Period Three?"</p> + +<p>"Sodium. Number Eleven."</p> + +<p>That's right; it's <i>Krav, Trav</i>. Why, the names of the months are simply +numbers, one to ten, spelled out.</p> + +<p>"<i>Doma</i>'s the fifth month. That was your first Martian word, Martha," +Penrose told her. "The word for five. And if <i>davas</i> is the word for +metal, and <i>sornhulva</i> is chemistry and / or physics, I'll bet Tadavas +Sornhulva is literally translated as: Of-Metal Matter-Knowledge. +Metallurgy, in other words. I wonder what Mastharnorvod means." It +surprised her that, after so long and with so much happening in the +meantime, he could remember that. "Something like 'Journal,' or +'Review,' or maybe 'Quarterly.'"</p> + +<p>"We'll work that out, too," she said confidently. After this, nothing +seemed impossible. "Maybe we can find—" Then she stopped short. "You +said 'Quarterly.' I think it was 'Monthly,' instead. It was dated for a +specific month, the fifth one. And if <i>nor</i> is ten, Mastharnorvod could +be 'Year-Tenth.' And I'll bet we'll find that <i>masthar</i> is the word for +year." She looked at the table on the wall again. "Well, let's get all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> +these words down, with translations for as many as we can."</p> + +<p>"Let's take a break for a minute," Penrose suggested, getting out his +cigarettes. "And then, let's do this in comfort. Jeff, suppose you and +Sid go across the hall and see what you find in the other room in the +way of a desk or something like that, and a few chairs. There'll be a +lot of work to do on this."</p> + +<p>Sid Chamberlain had been squirming as though he were afflicted with +ants, trying to contain himself. Now he let go with an excited jabber.</p> + +<p>"This is really it! <i>The</i> it, not just it-of-the-week, like finding the +reservoirs or those statues or this building, or even the animals and +the dead Martians! Wait till Selim and Tony see this! Wait till Tony +sees it; I want to see his face! And when I get this on telecast, all +Terra's going to go nuts about it!" He turned to Captain Miles. "Jeff, +suppose you take a look at that other door, while I find somebody to +send to tell Selim and Tony. And Gloria; wait till she sees this—"</p> + +<p>"Take it easy, Sid," Martha cautioned. "You'd better let me have a look +at your script, before you go too far overboard on the telecast. This is +just a beginning; it'll take years and years before we're able to read +any of those books downstairs."</p> + +<p>"It'll go faster than you think, Martha," Hubert Penrose told her. +"We'll all work on it, and we'll teleprint material to Terra, and people +there will work on it. We'll send them everything we can ... everything +we work out, and copies of books, and copies of your word-lists—"</p> + +<p>And there would be other tables—astronomical tables, tables in physics +and mechanics, for instance—in which words and numbers were equivalent. +The library stacks, below, would be full of them. Transliterate them +into Roman alphabet spellings and Arabic numerals, and somewhere, +somebody would spot each numerical significance, as Hubert Penrose and +Mort Tranter and she had done with the table of elements. And pick out +all the chemistry textbooks in the Library; new words would take on +meaning from contexts in which the names of elements appeared. She'd +have to start studying chemistry and physics, herself—</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Sachiko Koremitsu peeped in through the door, then stepped inside.</p> + +<p>"Is there anything I can do—?" she began. "What's happened? Something +important?"</p> + +<p>"Important?" Sid Chamberlain exploded. "Look at that, Sachi! We're +reading it! Martha's found out how to read Martian!" He grabbed Captain +Miles by the arm. "Come on, Jeff; let's go. I want to call the others—" +He was still babbling as he hurried from the room.</p> + +<p>Sachi looked at the inscription. "Is it true?" she asked, and then, +before Martha could more than be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>gin to explain, flung her arms around +her. "Oh, it really is! You are reading it! I'm so happy!"</p> + +<p>She had to start explaining again when Selim von Ohlmhorst entered. This +time, she was able to finish.</p> + +<p>"But, Martha, can you be really sure? You know, by now, that learning to +read this language is as important to me as it is to you, but how can +you be so sure that those words really mean things like hydrogen and +helium and boron and oxygen? How do you know that their table of +elements was anything like ours?"</p> + +<p>Tranter and Penrose and Sachiko all looked at him in amazement.</p> + +<p>"That isn't just the Martian table of elements; that's <i>the</i> table of +elements. It's the only one there is." Mort Tranter almost exploded. +"Look, hydrogen has one proton and one electron. If it had more of +either, it wouldn't be hydrogen, it'd be something else. And the same +with all the rest of the elements. And hydrogen on Mars is the same as +hydrogen on Terra, or on Alpha Centauri, or in the next galaxy—"</p> + +<p>"You just set up those numbers, in that order, and any first-year +chemistry student could tell you what elements they represented." +Penrose said. "Could if he expected to make a passing grade, that is."</p> + +<p>The old man shook his head slowly, smiling. "I'm afraid I wouldn't make +a passing grade. I didn't know, or at least didn't realize, that. One of +the things I'm going to place an order for, to be brought on the +<i>Schiaparelli</i>, will be a set of primers in chemistry and physics, of +the sort intended for a bright child of ten or twelve. It seems that a +Martiologist has to learn a lot of things the Hittites and the Assyrians +never heard about."</p> + +<p>Tony Lattimer, coming in, caught the last part of the explanation. He +looked quickly at the walls and, having found out just what had +happened, advanced and caught Martha by the hand.</p> + +<p>"You really did it, Martha! You found your bilingual! I never believed +that it would be possible; let me congratulate you!"</p> + +<p>He probably expected that to erase all the jibes and sneers of the past. +If he did, he could have it that way. His friendship would mean as +little to her as his derision—except that his friends had to watch +their backs and his knife. But he was going home on the <i>Cyrano</i>, to be +a <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'big-shot'.">big shot</ins>. Or had this changed his mind for him again?</p> + +<p>"This is something we can show the world, to justify any expenditure of +time and money on Martian archaeological work. When I get back to Terra, +I'll see that you're given full credit for this achievement—"</p> + +<p>On Terra, her back and his knife would be out of her watchfulness.</p> + +<p>"We won't need to wait that long," Hubert Penrose told him dryly. "I'm +sending off an official report, tomorrow; you can be sure Dr. Dane will +be given full credit, not only for this but for her pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>vious work, +which made it possible to exploit this discovery."</p> + +<p>"And you might add, work done in spite of the doubts and discouragements +of her colleagues," Selim von Ohlmhorst said. "To which I am ashamed to +have to confess my own share."</p> + +<p>"You said we had to find a bilingual," she said. "You were right, too."</p> + +<p>"This is better than a bilingual, Martha," Hubert Penrose said. +"Physical science expresses universal facts; necessarily it is a +universal language. Heretofore <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original had 'archeologists'.">archaeologists</ins> have dealt only with +pre-scientific cultures."</p> + + +<h3>THE END</h3> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> +[Transcriber's Note: There's an uncorrected error here: the third +element is "Sarfalddavas" above but "tirfalddavas" below. This wasn't +changed in later versions of the text, so it's not clear which is +correct. The capitalized one would be consistent with the other names, +and the "Sar-" implies a relationship with the first element, which *is* +in the same group. Or maybe the character misspoke, in her excitement?] +</p></div> +</div> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OMNILINGUAL *** + +***** This file should be named 19445-h.htm or 19445-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/4/4/19445/ + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Greg Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/19445-h/images/001.png b/19445-h/images/001.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7722aa8 --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h/images/001.png diff --git a/19445-h/images/002.png b/19445-h/images/002.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..db25d59 --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h/images/002.png diff --git a/19445-h/images/010.png b/19445-h/images/010.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..db43734 --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h/images/010.png diff --git a/19445-h/images/017.png b/19445-h/images/017.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e41cfd0 --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h/images/017.png diff --git a/19445-h/images/025.png b/19445-h/images/025.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3bcb57f --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h/images/025.png diff --git a/19445-h/images/034.png b/19445-h/images/034.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..68aefd9 --- /dev/null +++ b/19445-h/images/034.png diff --git a/19445.txt b/19445.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ed53d5e --- /dev/null +++ b/19445.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2303 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Omnilingual + +Author: H. Beam Piper + +Illustrator: Freas + +Release Date: October 2, 2006 [EBook #19445] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OMNILINGUAL *** + + + + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Greg Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + Transcriber's Note: + +This etext was produced from "Astounding Science Fiction," February, +1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. +copyright on this publication was renewed. + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +OMNILINGUAL + + + _To translate writings, you need a key to the code--and + if the last writer of Martian died forty thousand years + before the first writer of Earth was born ... how could + the Martian be translated...?_ + +BY H. BEAM PIPER + +Illustrated by Freas + + * * * * * + +[Illustration] + + +Martha Dane paused, looking up at the purple-tinged copper sky. The wind +had shifted since noon, while she had been inside, and the dust storm +that was sweeping the high deserts to the east was now blowing out over +Syrtis. The sun, magnified by the haze, was a gorgeous magenta ball, as +large as the sun of Terra, at which she could look directly. Tonight, +some of that dust would come sifting down from the upper atmosphere to +add another film to what had been burying the city for the last fifty +thousand years. + +The red loess lay over everything, covering the streets and the open +spaces of park and plaza, hiding the small houses that had been crushed +and pressed flat under it and the rubble that had come down from the +tall buildings when roofs had caved in and walls had toppled outward. +Here, where she stood, the ancient streets were a hundred to a hundred +and fifty feet below the surface; the breach they had made in the wall +of the building behind her had opened into the sixth story. She could +look down on the cluster of prefabricated huts and sheds, on the +brush-grown flat that had been the waterfront when this place had been a +seaport on the ocean that was now Syrtis Depression; already, the bright +metal was thinly coated with red dust. She thought, again, of what +clearing this city would mean, in terms of time and labor, of people and +supplies and equipment brought across fifty million miles of space. +They'd have to use machinery; there was no other way it could be done. +Bulldozers and power shovels and draglines; they were fast, but they +were rough and indiscriminate. She remembered the digs around Harappa +and Mohenjo-Daro, in the Indus Valley, and the careful, patient native +laborers--the painstaking foremen, the pickmen and spademen, the long +files of basketmen carrying away the earth. Slow and primitive as the +civilization whose ruins they were uncovering, yes, but she could count +on the fingers of one hand the times one of her pickmen had damaged a +valuable object in the ground. If it hadn't been for the underpaid and +uncomplaining native laborer, archaeology would still be back where +Wincklemann had found it. But on Mars there was no native labor; the +last Martian had died five hundred centuries ago. + +Something started banging like a machine gun, four or five hundred yards +to her left. A solenoid jack-hammer; Tony Lattimer must have decided +which building he wanted to break into next. She became conscious, then, +of the awkward weight of her equipment, and began redistributing it, +shifting the straps of her oxy-tank pack, slinging the camera from one +shoulder and the board and drafting tools from the other, gathering the +notebooks and sketchbooks under her left arm. She started walking down +the road, over hillocks of buried rubble, around snags of wall jutting +up out of the loess, past buildings still standing, some of them already +breached and explored, and across the brush-grown flat to the huts. + + * * * * * + +There were ten people in the main office room of Hut One when she +entered. As soon as she had disposed of her oxygen equipment, she lit a +cigarette, her first since noon, then looked from one to another of +them. Old Selim von Ohlmhorst, the Turco-German, one of her two fellow +archaeologists, sitting at the end of the long table against the farther +wall, smoking his big curved pipe and going through a looseleaf +notebook. The girl ordnance officer, Sachiko Koremitsu, between two +droplights at the other end of the table, her head bent over her work. +Colonel Hubert Penrose, the Space Force CO, and Captain Field, the +intelligence officer, listening to the report of one of the airdyne +pilots, returned from his afternoon survey flight. A couple of girl +lieutenants from Signals, going over the script of the evening telecast, +to be transmitted to the _Cyrano_, on orbit five thousand miles off +planet and relayed from thence to Terra via Lunar. Sid Chamberlain, the +Trans-Space News Service man, was with them. Like Selim and herself, he +was a civilian; he was advertising the fact with a white shirt and a +sleeveless blue sweater. And Major Lindemann, the engineer officer, and +one of his assistants, arguing over some plans on a drafting board. She +hoped, drawing a pint of hot water to wash her hands and sponge off her +face, that they were doing something about the pipeline. + +She started to carry the notebooks and sketchbooks over to where Selim +von Ohlmhorst was sitting, and then, as she always did, she turned aside +and stopped to watch Sachiko. The Japanese girl was restoring what had +been a book, fifty thousand years ago; her eyes were masked by a +binocular loup, the black headband invisible against her glossy black +hair, and she was picking delicately at the crumbled page with a +hair-fine wire set in a handle of copper tubing. Finally, loosening a +particle as tiny as a snowflake, she grasped it with tweezers, placed it +on the sheet of transparent plastic on which she was reconstructing the +page, and set it with a mist of fixative from a little spraygun. It was +a sheer joy to watch her; every movement was as graceful and precise as +though done to music after being rehearsed a hundred times. + +"Hello, Martha. It isn't cocktail-time yet, is it?" The girl at the +table spoke without raising her head, almost without moving her lips, as +though she were afraid that the slightest breath would disturb the flaky +stuff in front of her. + +"No, it's only fifteen-thirty. I finished my work, over there. I didn't +find any more books, if that's good news for you." + +Sachiko took off the loup and leaned back in her chair, her palms cupped +over her eyes. + +"No, I like doing this. I call it micro-jigsaw puzzles. This book, here, +really is a mess. Selim found it lying open, with some heavy stuff on +top of it; the pages were simply crushed." She hesitated briefly. "If +only it would mean something, after I did it." + +There could be a faintly critical overtone to that. As she replied, +Martha realized that she was being defensive. + +"It will, some day. Look how long it took to read Egyptian +hieroglyphics, even after they had the Rosetta Stone." + +Sachiko smiled. "Yes. I know. But they did have the Rosetta Stone." + +"And we don't. There is no Rosetta Stone, not anywhere on Mars. A whole +race, a whole species, died while the first Cro-Magnon cave-artist was +daubing pictures of reindeer and bison, and across fifty thousand years +and fifty million miles there was no bridge of understanding. + +"We'll find one. There must be something, somewhere, that will give us +the meaning of a few words, and we'll use them to pry meaning out of +more words, and so on. We may not live to learn this language, but we'll +make a start, and some day somebody will." + +Sachiko took her hands from her eyes, being careful not to look toward +the unshaded light, and smiled again. This time Martha was sure that it +was not the Japanese smile of politeness, but the universally human +smile of friendship. + +"I hope so, Martha: really I do. It would be wonderful for you to be the +first to do it, and it would be wonderful for all of us to be able to +read what these people wrote. It would really bring this dead city to +life again." The smile faded slowly. "But it seems so hopeless." + +"You haven't found any more pictures?" + +Sachiko shook her head. Not that it would have meant much if she had. +They had found hundreds of pictures with captions; they had never been +able to establish a positive relationship between any pictured object +and any printed word. Neither of them said anything more, and after a +moment Sachiko replaced the loup and bent her head forward over the +book. + + * * * * * + +Selim von Ohlmhorst looked up from his notebook, taking his pipe out of +his mouth. + +"Everything finished, over there?" he asked, releasing a puff of smoke. + +"Such as it was." She laid the notebooks and sketches on the table. +"Captain Gicquel's started airsealing the building from the fifth floor +down, with an entrance on the sixth; he'll start putting in oxygen +generators as soon as that's done. I have everything cleared up where +he'll be working." + +Colonel Penrose looked up quickly, as though making a mental note to +attend to something later. Then he returned his attention to the pilot, +who was pointing something out on a map. + +Von Ohlmhorst nodded. "There wasn't much to it, at that," he agreed. "Do +you know which building Tony has decided to enter next?" + +"The tall one with the conical thing like a candle extinguisher on top, +I think. I heard him drilling for the blasting shots over that way." + +"Well, I hope it turns out to be one that was occupied up to the end." + +The last one hadn't. It had been stripped of its contents and fittings, +a piece of this and a bit of that, haphazardly, apparently over a long +period of time, until it had been almost gutted. For centuries, as it +had died, this city had been consuming itself by a process of +auto-cannibalism. She said something to that effect. + +"Yes. We always find that--except, of course, at places like Pompeii. +Have you seen any of the other Roman cities in Italy?" he asked. +"Minturnae, for instance? First the inhabitants tore down this to repair +that, and then, after they had vacated the city, other people came along +and tore down what was left, and burned the stones for lime, or crushed +them to mend roads, till there was nothing left but the foundation +traces. That's where we are fortunate; this is one of the places where +the Martian race perished, and there were no barbarians to come later +and destroy what they had left." He puffed slowly at his pipe. "Some of +these days, Martha, we are going to break into one of these buildings +and find that it was one in which the last of these people died. Then we +will learn the story of the end of this civilization." + +And if we learn to read their language, we'll learn the whole story, not +just the obituary. She hesitated, not putting the thought into words. +"We'll find that, sometime, Selim," she said, then looked at her watch. +"I'm going to get some more work done on my lists, before dinner." + +For an instant, the old man's face stiffened in disapproval; he started +to say something, thought better of it, and put his pipe back into his +mouth. The brief wrinkling around his mouth and the twitch of his white +mustache had been enough, however; she knew what he was thinking. She +was wasting time and effort, he believed; time and effort belonging not +to herself but to the expedition. He could be right, too, she realized. +But he had to be wrong; there had to be a way to do it. She turned from +him silently and went to her own packing-case seat, at the middle of the +table. + + * * * * * + +Photographs, and photostats of restored pages of books, and transcripts +of inscriptions, were piled in front of her, and the notebooks in which +she was compiling her lists. She sat down, lighting a fresh cigarette, +and reached over to a stack of unexamined material, taking off the top +sheet. It was a photostat of what looked like the title page and +contents of some sort of a periodical. She remembered it; she had found +it herself, two days before, in a closet in the basement of the building +she had just finished examining. + +She sat for a moment, looking at it. It was readable, in the sense that +she had set up a purely arbitrary but consistently pronounceable system +of phonetic values for the letters. The long vertical symbols were +vowels. There were only ten of them; not too many, allowing separate +characters for long and short sounds. There were twenty of the short +horizontal letters, which meant that sounds like -ng or -ch or -sh were +single letters. The odds were millions to one against her system being +anything like the original sound of the language, but she had listed +several thousand Martian words, and she could pronounce all of them. + +And that was as far as it went. She could pronounce between three and +four thousand Martian words, and she couldn't assign a meaning to one of +them. Selim von Ohlmhorst believed that she never would. So did Tony +Lattimer, and he was a great deal less reticent about saying so. So, she +was sure, did Sachiko Koremitsu. There were times, now and then, when +she began to be afraid that they were right. + +The letters on the page in front of her began squirming and dancing, +slender vowels with fat little consonants. They did that, now, every +night in her dreams. And there were other dreams, in which she read them +as easily as English; waking, she would try desperately and vainly to +remember. She blinked, and looked away from the photostatted page; when +she looked back, the letters were behaving themselves again. There were +three words at the top of the page, over-and-underlined, which seemed to +be the Martian method of capitalization. _Mastharnorvod Tadavas +Sornhulva_. She pronounced them mentally, leafing through her notebooks +to see if she had encountered them before, and in what contexts. All +three were listed. In addition, _masthar_ was a fairly common word, and +so was _norvod_, and so was _nor_, but _-vod_ was a suffix and nothing +but a suffix. _Davas_, was a word, too, and _ta-_ was a common prefix; +_sorn_ and _hulva_ were both common words. This language, she had long +ago decided, must be something like German; when the Martians had needed +a new word, they had just pasted a couple of existing words together. It +would probably turn out to be a grammatical horror. Well, they had +published magazines, and one of them had been called _Mastharnorvod +Tadavas Sornhulva_. She wondered if it had been something like the +_Quarterly Archaeological Review_, or something more on the order of +_Sexy Stories_. + +A smaller line, under the title, was plainly the issue number and date; +enough things had been found numbered in series to enable her to +identify the numerals and determine that a decimal system of numeration +had been used. This was the one thousand and seven hundred and +fifty-fourth issue, for Doma, 14837; then Doma must be the name of one +of the Martian months. The word had turned up several times before. She +found herself puffing furiously on her cigarette as she leafed through +notebooks and piles of already examined material. + + * * * * * + +Sachiko was speaking to somebody, and a chair scraped at the end of the +table. She raised her head, to see a big man with red hair and a red +face, in Space Force green, with the single star of a major on his +shoulder, sitting down. Ivan Fitzgerald, the medic. He was lifting +weights from a book similar to the one the girl ordnance officer was +restoring. + +"Haven't had time, lately," he was saying, in reply to Sachiko's +question. "The Finchley girl's still down with whatever it is she has, +and it's something I haven't been able to diagnose yet. And I've been +checking on bacteria cultures, and in what spare time I have, I've been +dissecting specimens for Bill Chandler. Bill's finally found a mammal. +Looks like a lizard, and it's only four inches long, but it's a real +warm-blooded, gamogenetic, placental, viviparous mammal. Burrows, and +seems to live on what pass for insects here." + +"Is there enough oxygen for anything like that?" Sachiko was asking. + +"Seems to be, close to the ground." Fitzgerald got the headband of his +loup adjusted, and pulled it down over his eyes. "He found this thing in +a ravine down on the sea bottom--Ha, this page seems to be intact; now, +if I can get it out all in one piece--" + +He went on talking inaudibly to himself, lifting the page a little at a +time and sliding one of the transparent plastic sheets under it, working +with minute delicacy. Not the delicacy of the Japanese girl's small +hands, moving like the paws of a cat washing her face, but like a +steam-hammer cracking a peanut. Field archaeology requires a certain +delicacy of touch, too, but Martha watched the pair of them with envious +admiration. Then she turned back to her own work, finishing the table of +contents. + +The next page was the beginning of the first article listed; many of the +words were unfamiliar. She had the impression that this must be some +kind of scientific or technical journal; that could be because such +publications made up the bulk of her own periodical reading. She doubted +if it were fiction; the paragraphs had a solid, factual look. + +At length, Ivan Fitzgerald gave a short, explosive grunt. + +"Ha! Got it!" + +She looked up. He had detached the page and was cementing another +plastic sheet onto it. + +"Any pictures?" she asked. + +"None on this side. Wait a moment." He turned the sheet. "None on this +side, either." He sprayed another sheet of plastic to sandwich the page, +then picked up his pipe and relighted it. + +"I get fun out of this, and it's good practice for my hands, so don't +think I'm complaining," he said, "but, Martha, do you honestly think +anybody's ever going to get anything out of this?" + +Sachiko held up a scrap of the silicone plastic the Martians had used +for paper with her tweezers. It was almost an inch square. + +"Look; three whole words on this piece," she crowed. "Ivan, you took the +easy book." + +Fitzgerald wasn't being sidetracked. "This stuff's absolutely +meaningless," he continued. "It had a meaning fifty thousand years ago, +when it was written, but it has none at all now." + +She shook her head. "Meaning isn't something that evaporates with time," +she argued. "It has just as much meaning now as it ever had. We just +haven't learned how to decipher it." + +"That seems like a pretty pointless distinction," Selim von Ohlmhorst +joined the conversation. "There no longer exists a means of deciphering +it." + +"We'll find one." She was speaking, she realized, more in +self-encouragement than in controversy. + +"How? From pictures and captions? We've found captioned pictures, and +what have they given us? A caption is intended to explain the picture, +not the picture to explain the caption. Suppose some alien to our +culture found a picture of a man with a white beard and mustache sawing +a billet from a log. He would think the caption meant, 'Man Sawing +Wood.' How would he know that it was really 'Wilhelm II in Exile at +Doorn?'" + +Sachiko had taken off her loup and was lighting a cigarette. + +"I can think of pictures intended to explain their captions," she said. +"These picture language-books, the sort we use in the Service--little +line drawings, with a word or phrase under them." + +"Well, of course, if we found something like that," von Ohlmhorst began. + + * * * * * + +"Michael Ventris found something like that, back in the Fifties," Hubert +Penrose's voice broke in from directly behind her. + +She turned her head. The colonel was standing by the archaeologists' +table; Captain Field and the airdyne pilot had gone out. + +"He found a lot of Greek inventories of military stores," Penrose +continued. "They were in Cretan Linear B script, and at the head of each +list was a little picture, a sword or a helmet or a cooking tripod or a +chariot wheel. That's what gave him the key to the script." + +"Colonel's getting to be quite an archaeologist," Fitzgerald commented. +"We're all learning each others' specialties, on this expedition." + +"I heard about that long before this expedition was even contemplated." +Penrose was tapping a cigarette on his gold case. "I heard about that +back before the Thirty Days' War, at Intelligence School, when I was a +lieutenant. As a feat of cryptanalysis, not an archaeological +discovery." + +"Yes, cryptanalysis," von Ohlmhorst pounced. "The reading of a known +language in an unknown form of writing. Ventris' lists were in the known +language, Greek. Neither he nor anybody else ever read a word of the +Cretan language until the finding of the Greek-Cretan bilingual in 1963, +because only with a bilingual text, one language already known, can an +unknown ancient language be learned. And what hope, I ask you, have we +of finding anything like that here? Martha, you've been working on these +Martian texts ever since we landed here--for the last six months. Tell +me, have you found a single word to which you can positively assign a +meaning?" + +"Yes, I think I have one." She was trying hard not to sound too +exultant. "_Doma._ It's the name of one of the months of the Martian +calendar." + +"Where did you find that?" von Ohlmhorst asked. "And how did you +establish--?" + +"Here." She picked up the photostat and handed it along the table to +him. "I'd call this the title page of a magazine." + +He was silent for a moment, looking at it. "Yes. I would say so, too. +Have you any of the rest of it?" + +"I'm working on the first page of the first article, listed there. Wait +till I see; yes, here's all I found, together, here." She told him where +she had gotten it. "I just gathered it up, at the time, and gave it to +Geoffrey and Rosita to photostat; this is the first I've really examined +it." + +The old man got to his feet, brushing tobacco ashes from the front of +his jacket, and came to where she was sitting, laying the title page on +the table and leafing quickly through the stack of photostats. + +[Illustration] + +"Yes, and here is the second article, on page eight, and here's the next +one." He finished the pile of photostats. "A couple of pages missing at +the end of the last article. This is remarkable; surprising that a thing +like a magazine would have survived so long." + +"Well, this silicone stuff the Martians used for paper is pretty +durable," Hubert Penrose said. "There doesn't seem to have been any +water or any other fluid in it originally, so it wouldn't dry out with +time." + +"Oh, it's not remarkable that the material would have survived. We've +found a good many books and papers in excellent condition. But only a +really vital culture, an organized culture, will publish magazines, and +this civilization had been dying for hundreds of years before the end. +It might have been a thousand years before the time they died out +completely that such activities as publishing ended." + +"Well, look where I found it; in a closet in a cellar. Tossed in there +and forgotten, and then ignored when they were stripping the building. +Things like that happen." + +Penrose had picked up the title page and was looking at it. + +"I don't think there's any doubt about this being a magazine, at all." +He looked again at the title, his lips moving silently. "_Mastharnorvod +Tadavas Sornhulva_. Wonder what it means. But you're right about the +date--_Doma_ seems to be the name of a month. Yes, you have a word, Dr. +Dane." + +Sid Chamberlain, seeing that something unusual was going on, had come +over from the table at which he was working. After examining the title +page and some of the inside pages, he began whispering into the +stenophone he had taken from his belt. + +"Don't try to blow this up to anything big, Sid," she cautioned. "All we +have is the name of a month, and Lord only knows how long it'll be till +we even find out which month it was." + +"Well, it's a start, isn't it?" Penrose argued. "Grotefend only had the +word for 'king' when he started reading Persian cuneiform." + +"But I don't have the word for month; just the name of a month. +Everybody knew the names of the Persian kings, long before Grotefend." + +"That's not the story," Chamberlain said. "What the public back on Terra +will be interested in is finding out that the Martians published +magazines, just like we do. Something familiar; make the Martians seem +more real. More human." + + * * * * * + +Three men had come in, and were removing their masks and helmets and +oxy-tanks, and peeling out of their quilted coveralls. Two were Space +Force lieutenants; the third was a youngish civilian with close-cropped +blond hair, in a checked woolen shirt. Tony Lattimer and his helpers. + +"Don't tell me Martha finally got something out of that stuff?" he +asked, approaching the table. He might have been commenting on the +antics of the village half-wit, from his tone. + +"Yes; the name of one of the Martian months." Hubert Penrose went on to +explain, showing the photostat. + +Tony Lattimer took it, glanced at it, and dropped it on the table. + +"Sounds plausible, of course, but just an assumption. That word may not +be the name of a month, at all--could mean 'published' or 'authorized' +or 'copyrighted' or anything like that. Fact is, I don't think it's more +than a wild guess that that thing's anything like a periodical." He +dismissed the subject and turned to Penrose. "I picked out the next +building to enter; that tall one with the conical thing on top. It ought +to be in pretty good shape inside; the conical top wouldn't allow dust +to accumulate, and from the outside nothing seems to be caved in or +crushed. Ground level's higher than the other one, about the seventh +floor. I found a good place and drilled for the shots; tomorrow I'll +blast a hole in it, and if you can spare some people to help, we can +start exploring it right away." + +"Yes, of course, Dr. Lattimer. I can spare about a dozen, and I suppose +you can find a few civilian volunteers," Penrose told him. "What will +you need in the way of equipment?" + +"Oh, about six demolition-packets; they can all be shot together. And +the usual thing in the way of lights, and breaking and digging tools, +and climbing equipment in case we run into broken or doubtful stairways. +We'll divide into two parties. Nothing ought to be entered for the first +time without a qualified archaeologist along. Three parties, if Martha +can tear herself away from this catalogue of systematized +incomprehensibilities she's making long enough to do some real work." + +She felt her chest tighten and her face become stiff. She was pressing +her lips together to lock in a furious retort when Hubert Penrose +answered for her. + +"Dr. Dane's been doing as much work, and as important work, as you +have," he said brusquely. "More important work, I'd be inclined to say." + +Von Ohlmhorst was visibly distressed; he glanced once toward Sid +Chamberlain, then looked hastily away from him. Afraid of a story of +dissension among archaeologists getting out. + +"Working out a system of pronunciation by which the Martian language +could be transliterated was a most important contribution," he said. +"And Martha did that almost unassisted." + +"Unassisted by Dr. Lattimer, anyway," Penrose added. "Captain Field and +Lieutenant Koremitsu did some work, and I helped out a little, but +nine-tenths of it she did herself." + +"Purely arbitrary," Lattimer disdained. "Why, we don't even know that +the Martians could make the same kind of vocal sounds we do." + +"Oh, yes, we do," Ivan Fitzgerald contradicted, safe on his own ground. +"I haven't seen any actual Martian skulls--these people seem to have +been very tidy about disposing of their dead--but from statues and busts +and pictures I've seen. I'd say that their vocal organs were identical +with our own." + +"Well, grant that. And grant that it's going to be impressive to rattle +off the names of Martian notables whose statues we find, and that if +we're ever able to attribute any placenames, they'll sound a lot better +than this horse-doctors' Latin the old astronomers splashed all over the +map of Mars," Lattimer said. "What I object to is her wasting time on +this stuff, of which nobody will ever be able to read a word if she +fiddles around with those lists till there's another hundred feet of +loess on this city, when there's so much real work to be done and we're +as shorthanded as we are." + +That was the first time that had come out in just so many words. She was +glad Lattimer had said it and not Selim von Ohlmhorst. + +"What you mean," she retorted, "is that it doesn't have the publicity +value that digging up statues has." + +For an instant, she could see that the shot had scored. Then Lattimer, +with a side glance at Chamberlain, answered: + +"What I mean is that you're trying to find something that any +archaeologist, yourself included, should know doesn't exist. I don't +object to your gambling your professional reputation and making a +laughing stock of yourself; what I object to is that the blunders of one +archaeologist discredit the whole subject in the eyes of the public." + +That seemed to be what worried Lattimer most. She was framing a reply +when the communication-outlet whistled shrilly, and then squawked: +"Cocktail time! One hour to dinner; cocktails in the library, Hut Four!" + + * * * * * + +The library, which was also lounge, recreation room, and general +gathering-place, was already crowded; most of the crowd was at the long +table topped with sheets of glasslike plastic that had been wall panels +out of one of the ruined buildings. She poured herself what passed, +here, for a martini, and carried it over to where Selim von Ohlmhorst +was sitting alone. + +For a while, they talked about the building they had just finished +exploring, then drifted into reminiscences of their work on Terra--von +Ohlmhorst's in Asia Minor, with the Hittite Empire, and hers in +Pakistan, excavating the cities of the Harappa Civilization. They +finished their drinks--the ingredients were plentiful; alcohol and +flavoring extracts synthesized from Martian vegetation--and von +Ohlmhorst took the two glasses to the table for refills. + +"You know, Martha," he said, when he returned, "Tony was right about one +thing. You are gambling your professional standing and reputation. It's +against all archaeological experience that a language so completely dead +as this one could be deciphered. There was a continuity between all the +other ancient languages--by knowing Greek, Champollion learned to read +Egyptian; by knowing Egyptian, Hittite was learned. That's why you and +your colleagues have never been able to translate the Harappa +hieroglyphics; no such continuity exists there. If you insist that this +utterly dead language can be read, your reputation will suffer for it." + +"I heard Colonel Penrose say, once, that an officer who's afraid to risk +his military reputation seldom makes much of a reputation. It's the same +with us. If we really want to find things out, we have to risk making +mistakes. And I'm a lot more interested in finding things out than I am +in my reputation." + +She glanced across the room, to where Tony Lattimer was sitting with +Gloria Standish, talking earnestly, while Gloria sipped one of the +counterfeit martinis and listened. Gloria was the leading contender for +the title of Miss Mars, 1996, if you liked big bosomy blondes, but Tony +would have been just as attentive to her if she'd looked like the Wicked +Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." because Gloria was the Pan-Federation +Telecast System commentator with the expedition. + +"I know you are," the old Turco-German was saying. "That's why, when +they asked me to name another archaeologist for this expedition, I named +you." + +He hadn't named Tony Lattimer; Lattimer had been pushed onto the +expedition by his university. There'd been a lot of high-level +string-pulling to that; she wished she knew the whole story. She'd +managed to keep clear of universities and university politics; all her +digs had been sponsored by non-academic foundations or art museums. + +"You have an excellent standing: much better than my own, at your age. +That's why it disturbs me to see you jeopardizing it by this insistence +that the Martian language can be translated. I can't, really, see how +you can hope to succeed." + +She shrugged and drank some more of her cocktail, then lit another +cigarette. It was getting tiresome to try to verbalize something she +only felt. + +"Neither do I, now, but I will. Maybe I'll find something like the +picture-books Sachiko was talking about. A child's primer, maybe; surely +they had things like that. And if I don't. I'll find something else. +We've only been here six months. I can wait the rest of my life, if I +have to, but I'll do it sometime." + +"I can't wait so long," von Ohlmhorst said. "The rest of my life will +only be a few years, and when the _Schiaparelli_ orbits in, I'll be +going back to Terra on the _Cyrano_." + +"I wish you wouldn't. This is a whole new world of archaeology. +Literally." + +"Yes." He finished the cocktail and looked at his pipe as though +wondering whether to re-light it so soon before dinner, then put it in +his pocket. "A whole new world--but I've grown old, and it isn't for me. +I've spent my life studying the Hittites. I can speak the Hittite +language, though maybe King Muwatallis wouldn't be able to understand my +modern Turkish accent. But the things I'd have to learn here--chemistry, +physics, engineering, how to run analytic tests on steel girders and +beryllo-silver alloys and plastics and silicones. I'm more at home with +a civilization that rode in chariots and fought with swords and was just +learning how to work iron. Mars is for young people. This expedition is +a cadre of leadership--not only the Space Force people, who'll be the +commanders of the main expedition, but us scientists, too. And I'm just +an old cavalry general who can't learn to command tanks and aircraft. +You'll have time to learn about Mars. I won't." + +His reputation as the dean of Hittitologists was solid and secure, too, +she added mentally. Then she felt ashamed of the thought. He wasn't to +be classed with Tony Lattimer. + +"All I came for was to get the work started," he was continuing. "The +Federation Government felt that an old hand should do that. Well, it's +started, now; you and Tony and whoever come out on the _Schiaparelli_ +must carry it on. You said it, yourself; you have a whole new world. +This is only one city, of the last Martian civilization. Behind this, +you have the Late Upland Culture, and the Canal Builders, and all the +civilizations and races and empires before them, clear back to the +Martian Stone Age." He hesitated for a moment. "You have no idea what +all you have to learn, Martha. This isn't the time to start specializing +too narrowly." + + * * * * * + +They all got out of the truck and stretched their legs and looked up the +road to the tall building with the queer conical cap askew on its top. +The four little figures that had been busy against its wall climbed into +the jeep and started back slowly, the smallest of them, Sachiko +Koremitsu, paying out an electric cable behind. When it pulled up beside +the truck, they climbed out; Sachiko attached the free end of the cable +to a nuclear-electric battery. At once, dirty gray smoke and orange dust +puffed out from the wall of the building, and, a second later, the +multiple explosion banged. + +She and Tony Lattimer and Major Lindemann climbed onto the truck, +leaving the jeep stand by the road. When they reached the building, a +satisfyingly wide breach had been blown in the wall. Lattimer had placed +his shots between two of the windows; they were both blown out along +with the wall between, and lay unbroken on the ground. Martha remembered +the first building they had entered. A Space Force officer had picked up +a stone and thrown it at one of the windows, thinking that would be all +they'd need to do. It had bounced back. He had drawn his pistol--they'd +all carried guns, then, on the principle that what they didn't know +about Mars might easily hurt them--and fired four shots. The bullets had +ricocheted, screaming thinly; there were four coppery smears of +jacket-metal on the window, and a little surface spalling. Somebody +tried a rifle; the 4000-f.s. bullet had cracked the glasslike pane +without penetrating. An oxyacetylene torch had taken an hour to cut the +window out; the lab crew, aboard the ship, were still trying to find out +just what the stuff was. + +Tony Lattimer had gone forward and was sweeping his flashlight back and +forth, swearing petulantly, his voice harshened and amplified by his +helmet-speaker. + +"I thought I was blasting into a hallway; this lets us into a room. +Careful; there's about a two-foot drop to the floor, and a lot of rubble +from the blast just inside." + +He stepped down through the breach; the others began dragging equipment +out of the trucks--shovels and picks and crowbars and sledges, portable +floodlights, cameras, sketching materials, an extension ladder, even +Alpinists' ropes and crampons and pickaxes. Hubert Penrose was +shouldering something that looked like a surrealist machine gun but +which was really a nuclear-electric jack-hammer. Martha selected one of +the spike-shod mountaineer's ice axes, with which she could dig or chop +or poke or pry or help herself over rough footing. + +The windows, grimed and crusted with fifty millennia of dust, filtered +in a dim twilight; even the breach in the wall, in the morning shade, +lighted only a small patch of floor. Somebody snapped on a floodlight, +aiming it at the ceiling. The big room was empty and bare; dust lay +thick on the floor and reddened the once-white walls. It could have been +a large office, but there was nothing left in it to indicate its use. + +"This one's been stripped up to the seventh floor!" Lattimer exclaimed. +"Street level'll be cleaned out, completely." + +"Do for living quarters and shops, then," Lindemann said. "Added to the +others, this'll take care of everybody on the _Schiaparelli_." + +"Seem to have been a lot of electric or electronic apparatus over along +this wall," one of the Space Force officers commented. "Ten or twelve +electric outlets." He brushed the dusty wall with his glove, then +scraped on the floor with his foot. "I can see where things were pried +loose." + + * * * * * + +The door, one of the double sliding things the Martians had used, was +closed. Selim von Ohlmhorst tried it, but it was stuck fast. The metal +latch-parts had frozen together, molecule bonding itself to molecule, +since the door had last been closed. Hubert Penrose came over with the +jack-hammer, fitting a spear-point chisel into place. He set the chisel +in the joint between the doors, braced the hammer against his hip, and +squeezed the trigger-switch. The hammer banged briefly like the weapon +it resembled, and the doors popped a few inches apart, then stuck. +Enough dust had worked into the recesses into which it was supposed to +slide to block it on both sides. + +That was old stuff; they ran into that every time they had to force a +door, and they were prepared for it. Somebody went outside and brought +in a power-jack and finally one of the doors inched back to the door +jamb. That was enough to get the lights and equipment through: they all +passed from the room to the hallway beyond. About half the other doors +were open; each had a number and a single word, _Darfhulva_, over it. + +[Illustration] + +One of the civilian volunteers, a woman professor of natural ecology +from Penn State University, was looking up and down the hall. + +"You know," she said, "I feel at home here. I think this was a college +of some sort, and these were classrooms. That word, up there; that was +the subject taught, or the department. And those electronic devices, all +where the class would face them; audio-visual teaching aids." + +"A twenty-five-story university?" Lattimer scoffed. "Why, a building +like this would handle thirty thousand students." + +"Maybe there were that many. This was a big city, in its prime," Martha +said, moved chiefly by a desire to oppose Lattimer. + +"Yes, but think of the snafu in the halls, every time they changed +classes. It'd take half an hour to get everybody back and forth from one +floor to another." He turned to von Ohlmhorst. "I'm going up above this +floor. This place has been looted clean up to here, but there's a chance +there may be something above," he said. + +"I'll stay on this floor, at present," the Turco-German replied. "There +will be much coming and going, and dragging things in and out. We should +get this completely examined and recorded first. Then Major Lindemann's +people can do their worst, here." + +"Well, if nobody else wants it, I'll take the downstairs," Martha said. + +"I'll go along with you," Hubert Penrose told her. "If the lower floors +have no archaeological value, we'll turn them into living quarters. I +like this building: it'll give everybody room to keep out from under +everybody else's feet." He looked down the hall. "We ought to find +escalators at the middle." + + * * * * * + +The hallway, too, was thick underfoot with dust. Most of the open rooms +were empty, but a few contained furniture, including small seat-desks. +The original proponent of the university theory pointed these out as +just what might be found in classrooms. There were escalators, up and +down, on either side of the hall, and more on the intersecting passage +to the right. + +"That's how they handled the students, between classes," Martha +commented. "And I'll bet there are more ahead, there." + +They came to a stop where the hallway ended at a great square central +hall. There were elevators, there, on two of the sides, and four +escalators, still usable as stairways. But it was the walls, and the +paintings on them, that brought them up short and staring. + +They were clouded with dirt--she was trying to imagine what they must +have looked like originally, and at the same time estimating the labor +that would be involved in cleaning them--but they were still +distinguishable, as was the word, _Darfhulva_, in golden letters above +each of the four sides. It was a moment before she realized, from the +murals, that she had at last found a meaningful Martian word. They were +a vast historical panorama, clockwise around the room. A group of +skin-clad savages squatting around a fire. Hunters with bows and spears, +carrying a carcass of an animal slightly like a pig. Nomads riding +long-legged, graceful mounts like hornless deer. Peasants sowing and +reaping; mud-walled hut villages, and cities; processions of priests and +warriors; battles with swords and bows, and with cannon and muskets; +galleys, and ships with sails, and ships without visible means of +propulsion, and aircraft. Changing costumes and weapons and machines +and styles of architecture. A richly fertile landscape, gradually +merging into barren deserts and bushlands--the time of the great +planet-wide drought. The Canal Builders--men with machines recognizable +as steam-shovels and derricks, digging and quarrying and driving across +the empty plains with aqueducts. More cities--seaports on the shrinking +oceans; dwindling, half-deserted cities; an abandoned city, with four +tiny humanoid figures and a thing like a combat-car in the middle of a +brush-grown plaza, they and their vehicle dwarfed by the huge lifeless +buildings around them. She had not the least doubt; _Darfhulva_ was +History. + +"Wonderful!" von Ohlmhorst was saying. "The entire history of this race. +Why, if the painter depicted appropriate costumes and weapons and +machines for each period, and got the architecture right, we can break +the history of this planet into eras and periods and civilizations." + +"You can assume they're authentic. The faculty of this university would +insist on authenticity in the _Darfhulva_--History--Department," she +said. + +"Yes! _Darfhulva_--History! And your magazine was a journal of +_Sornhulva_!" Penrose exclaimed. "You have a word, Martha!" It took her +an instant to realize that he had called her by her first name, and not +Dr. Dane. She wasn't sure if that weren't a bigger triumph than learning +a word of the Martian language. Or a more auspicious start. "Alone, I +suppose that _hulva_ means something like science or knowledge, or +study; combined, it would be equivalent to our 'ology. And _darf_ would +mean something like past, or old times, or human events, or chronicles." + +"That gives you three words, Martha!" Sachiko jubilated. "You did it." + +"Let's don't go too fast," Lattimer said, for once not derisively. "I'll +admit that _darfhulva_ is the Martian word for history as a subject of +study; I'll admit that _hulva_ is the general word and _darf_ modifies +it and tells us which subject is meant. But as for assigning specific +meanings, we can't do that because we don't know just how the Martians +thought, scientifically or otherwise." + +He stopped short, startled by the blue-white light that blazed as Sid +Chamberlain's Kliegettes went on. When the whirring of the camera +stopped, it was Chamberlain who was speaking: + +"This is the biggest thing yet; the whole history of Mars, stone age to +the end, all on four walls. I'm taking this with the fast shutter, but +we'll telecast it in slow motion, from the beginning to the end. Tony, I +want you to do the voice for it--running commentary, interpretation of +each scene as it's shown. Would you do that?" + +Would he do that! Martha thought. If he had a tail, he'd be wagging it +at the very thought. + +"Well, there ought to be more murals on the other floors," she said. +"Who wants to come downstairs with us?" + +Sachiko did; immediately. Ivan Fitzgerald volunteered. Sid decided to go +upstairs with Tony Lattimer, and Gloria Standish decided to go upstairs, +too. Most of the party would remain on the seventh floor, to help Selim +von Ohlmhorst get it finished. After poking tentatively at the escalator +with the spike of her ice axe, Martha led the way downward. + + * * * * * + +The sixth floor was _Darfhulva_, too; military and technological +history, from the character of the murals. They looked around the +central hall, and went down to the fifth; it was like the floors above +except that the big quadrangle was stacked with dusty furniture and +boxes. Ivan Fitzgerald, who was carrying the floodlight, swung it slowly +around. Here the murals were of heroic-sized Martians, so human in +appearance as to seem members of her own race, each holding some +object--a book, or a test tube, or some bit of scientific apparatus, and +behind them were scenes of laboratories and factories, flame and smoke, +lightning-flashes. The word at the top of each of the four walls was one +with which she was already familiar--_Sornhulva_. + +"Hey, Martha; there's that word," Ivan Fitzgerald exclaimed. "The one in +the title of your magazine." He looked at the paintings. "Chemistry, or +physics." + +"Both." Hubert Penrose considered. "I don't think the Martians made any +sharp distinction between them. See, the old fellow with the scraggly +whiskers must be the inventor of the spectroscope; he has one in his +hands, and he has a rainbow behind him. And the woman in the blue smock, +beside him, worked in organic chemistry; see the diagrams of long-chain +molecules behind her. What word would convey the idea of chemistry and +physics taken as one subject?" + +"_Sornhulva_," Sachiko suggested. "If _hulva's_ something like science, +"_sorn_" must mean matter, or substance, or physical object. You were +right, all along, Martha. A civilization like this would certainly leave +something like this, that would be self-explanatory." + +"This'll wipe a little more of that superior grin off Tony Lattimer's +face," Fitzgerald was saying, as they went down the motionless escalator +to the floor below. "Tony wants to be a big shot. When you want to be a +big shot, you can't bear the possibility of anybody else being a bigger +big shot, and whoever makes a start on reading this language will be the +biggest big shot archaeology ever saw." + +That was true. She hadn't thought of it, in that way, before, and now +she tried not to think about it. She didn't want to be a big shot. She +wanted to be able to read the Martian language, and find things out +about the Martians. + +Two escalators down, they came out on a mezzanine around a wide central +hall on the street level, the floor forty feet below them and the +ceiling thirty feet above. Their lights picked out object after object +below--a huge group of sculptured figures in the middle; some kind of a +motor vehicle jacked up on trestles for repairs; things that looked like +machine-guns and auto-cannon; long tables, tops littered with a +dust-covered miscellany; machinery; boxes and crates and containers. + + * * * * * + +They made their way down and walked among the clutter, missing a hundred +things for every one they saw, until they found an escalator to the +basement. There were three basements, one under another, until at last +they stood at the bottom of the last escalator, on a bare concrete +floor, swinging the portable floodlight over stacks of boxes and barrels +and drums, and heaps of powdery dust. The boxes were plastic--nobody had +ever found anything made of wood in the city--and the barrels and drums +were of metal or glass or some glasslike substance. They were outwardly +intact. The powdery heaps might have been anything organic, or anything +containing fluid. Down here, where wind and dust could not reach, +evaporation had been the only force of destruction after the minute life +that caused putrefaction had vanished. + +They found refrigeration rooms, too, and using Martha's ice axe and the +pistollike vibratool Sachiko carried on her belt, they pounded and pried +one open, to find dessicated piles of what had been vegetables, and +leathery chunks of meat. Samples of that stuff, rocketed up to the ship, +would give a reliable estimate, by radio-carbon dating, of how long ago +this building had been occupied. The refrigeration unit, radically +different from anything their own culture had produced, had been +electrically powered. Sachiko and Penrose, poking into it, found the +switches still on; the machine had only ceased to function when the +power-source, whatever that had been, had failed. + +The middle basement had also been used, at least toward the end, for +storage; it was cut in half by a partition pierced by but one door. They +took half an hour to force this, and were on the point of sending above +for heavy equipment when it yielded enough for them to squeeze through. +Fitzgerald, in the lead with the light, stopped short, looked around, +and then gave a groan that came through his helmet-speaker like a +foghorn. + +"Oh, no! _No!_" + +"What's the matter, Ivan?" Sachiko, entering behind him, asked +anxiously. + +He stepped aside. "Look at it, Sachi! Are we going to have to do all +that?" + +Martha crowded through behind her friend and looked around, then stood +motionless, dizzy with excitement. Books. Case on case of books, half an +acre of cases, fifteen feet to the ceiling. Fitzgerald, and Penrose, who +had pushed in behind her, were talking in rapid excitement; she only +heard the sound of their voices, not their words. This must be the main +stacks of the university library--the entire literature of the vanished +race of Mars. In the center, down an aisle between the cases, she could +see the hollow square of the librarians' desk, and stairs and a +dumb-waiter to the floor above. + +She realized that she was walking forward, with the others, toward this. +Sachiko was saying: "I'm the lightest; let me go first." She must be +talking about the spidery metal stairs. + +"I'd say they were safe," Penrose answered. "The trouble we've had with +doors around here shows that the metal hasn't deteriorated." + +In the end, the Japanese girl led the way, more catlike than ever in her +caution. The stairs were quite sound, in spite of their fragile +appearance, and they all followed her. The floor above was a duplicate +of the room they had entered, and seemed to contain about as many books. +Rather than waste time forcing the door here, they returned to the +middle basement and came up by the escalator down which they had +originally descended. + +The upper basement contained kitchens--electric stoves, some with pots +and pans still on them--and a big room that must have been, originally, +the students' dining room, though when last used it had been a workshop. +As they expected, the library reading room was on the street-level +floor, directly above the stacks. It seemed to have been converted into +a sort of common living room for the building's last occupants. An +adjoining auditorium had been made into a chemical works; there were +vats and distillation apparatus, and a metal fractionating tower that +extended through a hole knocked in the ceiling seventy feet above. A +good deal of plastic furniture of the sort they had been finding +everywhere in the city was stacked about, some of it broken up, +apparently for reprocessing. The other rooms on the street floor seemed +also to have been devoted to manufacturing and repair work; a +considerable industry, along a number of lines, must have been carried +on here for a long time after the university had ceased to function as +such. + +On the second floor, they found a museum; many of the exhibits remained, +tantalizingly half-visible in grimed glass cases. There had been +administrative offices there, too. The doors of most of them were +closed, and they did not waste time trying to force them, but those that +were open had been turned into living quarters. They made notes, and +rough floor plans, to guide them in future more thorough examination; it +was almost noon before they had worked their way back to the seventh +floor. + +Selim von Ohlmhorst was in a room on the north side of the building, +sketching the position of things before examining them and collecting +them for removal. He had the floor checkerboarded with a grid of chalked +lines, each numbered. + +"We have everything on this floor photographed," he said. "I have three +gangs--all the floodlights I have--sketching and making measurements. At +the rate we're going, with time out for lunch, we'll be finished by the +middle of the afternoon." + +"You've been working fast. Evidently you aren't being high-church about +a 'qualified archaeologist' entering rooms first," Penrose commented. + +"Ach, childishness!" the old man exclaimed impatiently. "These officers +of yours aren't fools. All of them have been to Intelligence School and +Criminal Investigation School. Some of the most careful amateur +archaeologists I ever knew were retired soldiers or policemen. But there +isn't much work to be done. Most of the rooms are either empty or like +this one--a few bits of furniture and broken trash and scraps of paper. +Did you find anything down on the lower floors?" + +"Well, yes," Penrose said, a hint of mirth in his voice. "What would you +say, Martha?" + +She started to tell Selim. The others, unable to restrain their +excitement, broke in with interruptions. Von Ohlmhorst was staring in +incredulous amazement. + +"But this floor was looted almost clean, and the buildings we've entered +before were all looted from the street level up," he said, at length. + +"The people who looted this one lived here," Penrose replied. "They had +electric power to the last; we found refrigerators full of food, and +stoves with the dinner still on them. They must have used the elevators +to haul things down from the upper floor. The whole first floor was +converted into workshops and laboratories. I think that this place must +have been something like a monastery in the Dark Ages in Europe, or what +such a monastery would have been like if the Dark Ages had followed the +fall of a highly developed scientific civilization. For one thing, we +found a lot of machine guns and light auto-cannon on the street level, +and all the doors were barricaded. The people here were trying to keep a +civilization running after the rest of the planet had gone back to +barbarism; I suppose they'd have to fight off raids by the barbarians +now and then." + +"You're not going to insist on making this building into expedition +quarters, I hope, colonel?" von Ohlmhorst asked anxiously. + +"Oh, no! This place is an archaeological treasure-house. More than that; +from what I saw, our technicians can learn a lot, here. But you'd better +get this floor cleaned up as soon as you can, though. I'll have the +subsurface part, from the sixth floor down, airsealed. Then we'll put +in oxygen generators and power units, and get a couple of elevators into +service. For the floors above, we can use temporary airsealing floor by +floor, and portable equipment; when we have things atmosphered and +lighted and heated, you and Martha and Tony Lattimer can go to work +systematically and in comfort, and I'll give you all the help I can +spare from the other work. This is one of the biggest things we've found +yet." + +Tony Lattimer and his companions came down to the seventh floor a little +later. + +"I don't get this, at all," he began, as soon as he joined them. "This +building wasn't stripped the way the others were. Always, the procedure +seems to have been to strip from the bottom up, but they seem to have +stripped the top floors first, here. All but the very top. I found out +what that conical thing is, by the way. It's a wind-rotor, and under it +there's an electric generator. This building generated its own power." + +"What sort of condition are the generators in?" Penrose asked. + +"Well, everything's full of dust that blew in under the rotor, of +course, but it looks to be in pretty good shape. Hey, I'll bet that's +it! They had power, so they used the elevators to haul stuff down. +That's just what they did. Some of the floors above here don't seem to +have been touched, though." He paused momentarily; back of his oxy-mask, +he seemed to be grinning. "I don't know that I ought to mention this in +front of Martha, but two floors above--we hit a room--it must have been +the reference library for one of the departments--that had close to five +hundred books in it." + +The noise that interrupted him, like the squawking of a Brobdingnagian +parrot, was only Ivan Fitzgerald laughing through his helmet-speaker. + + * * * * * + +Lunch at the huts was a hasty meal, with a gabble of full-mouthed and +excited talking. Hubert Penrose and his chief subordinates snatched +their food in a huddled consultation at one end of the table; in the +afternoon, work was suspended on everything else and the fifty-odd men +and women of the expedition concentrated their efforts on the +University. By the middle of the afternoon, the seventh floor had been +completely examined, photographed and sketched, and the murals in the +square central hall covered with protective tarpaulins, and Laurent +Gicquel and his airsealing crew had moved in and were at work. It had +been decided to seal the central hall at the entrances. It took the +French-Canadian engineer most of the afternoon to find all the +ventilation-ducts and plug them. An elevator-shaft on the north side was +found reaching clear to the twenty-fifth floor; this would give access +to the top of the building; another shaft, from the center, would take +care of the floors below. Nobody seemed willing to trust the ancient +elevators, themselves; it was the next evening before a couple of cars +and the necessary machinery could be fabricated in the machine shops +aboard the ship and sent down by landing-rocket. By that time, the +airsealing was finished, the nuclear-electric energy-converters were in +place, and the oxygen generators set up. + +[Illustration] + +Martha was in the lower basement, an hour or so before lunch the day +after, when a couple of Space Force officers came out of the elevator, +bringing extra lights with them. She was still using oxygen-equipment; +it was a moment before she realized that the newcomers had no masks, and +that one of them was smoking. She took off her own helmet-speaker, +throat-mike and mask and unslung her tank-pack, breathing cautiously. +The air was chilly, and musty-acrid with the odor of antiquity--the +first Martian odor she had smelled--but when she lit a cigarette, the +lighter flamed clear and steady and the tobacco caught and burned +evenly. + +The archaeologists, many of the other civilian scientists, a few of the +Space Force officers and the two news-correspondents, Sid Chamberlain +and Gloria Standish, moved in that evening, setting up cots in vacant +rooms. They installed electric stoves and a refrigerator in the old +Library Reading Room, and put in a bar and lunch counter. For a few +days, the place was full of noise and activity, then, gradually, the +Space Force people and all but a few of the civilians returned to their +own work. There was still the business of airsealing the more habitable +of the buildings already explored, and fitting them up in readiness for +the arrival, in a year and a half, of the five hundred members of the +main expedition. There was work to be done enlarging the landing field +for the ship's rocket craft, and building new chemical-fuel tanks. + +There was the work of getting the city's ancient reservoirs cleared of +silt before the next spring thaw brought more water down the underground +aqueducts everybody called canals in mistranslation of Schiaparelli's +Italian word, though this was proving considerably easier than +anticipated. The ancient Canal-Builders must have anticipated a time +when their descendants would no longer be capable of maintenance work, +and had prepared against it. By the day after the University had been +made completely habitable, the actual work there was being done by +Selim, Tony Lattimer and herself, with half a dozen Space Force +officers, mostly girls, and four or five civilians, helping. + + * * * * * + +They worked up from the bottom, dividing the floor-surfaces into +numbered squares, measuring and listing and sketching and photographing. +They packaged samples of organic matter and sent them up to the ship for +Carbon-14 dating and analysis; they opened cans and jars and bottles, +and found that everything fluid in them had evaporated, through the +porosity of glass and metal and plastic if there were no other way. +Wherever they looked, they found evidence of activity suddenly suspended +and never resumed. A vise with a bar of metal in it, half cut through +and the hacksaw beside it. Pots and pans with hardened remains of food +in them; a leathery cut of meat on a table, with the knife ready at +hand. Toilet articles on washstands; unmade beds, the bedding ready to +crumble at a touch but still retaining the impress of the sleeper's +body; papers and writing materials on desks, as though the writer had +gotten up, meaning to return and finish in a fifty-thousand-year-ago +moment. + +It worried her. Irrationally, she began to feel that the Martians had +never left this place; that they were still around her, watching +disapprovingly every time she picked up something they had laid down. +They haunted her dreams, now, instead of their enigmatic writing. At +first, everybody who had moved into the University had taken a separate +room, happy to escape the crowding and lack of privacy of the huts. +After a few nights, she was glad when Gloria Standish moved in with her, +and accepted the newswoman's excuse that she felt lonely without +somebody to talk to before falling asleep. Sachiko Koremitsu joined them +the next evening, and before going to bed, the girl officer cleaned and +oiled her pistol, remarking that she was afraid some rust may have +gotten into it. + +The others felt it, too. Selim von Ohlmhorst developed the habit of +turning quickly and looking behind him, as though trying to surprise +somebody or something that was stalking him. Tony Lattimer, having a +drink at the bar that had been improvised from the librarian's desk in +the Reading Room, set down his glass and swore. + +"You know what this place is? It's an archaeological _Marie Celeste_!" +he declared. "It was occupied right up to the end--we've all seen the +shifts these people used to keep a civilization going here--but what was +the end? What happened to them? Where did they go?" + +"You didn't expect them to be waiting out front, with a red carpet and a +big banner, _Welcome Terrans_, did you, Tony?" Gloria Standish asked. + +"No, of course not; they've all been dead for fifty thousand years. But +if they were the last of the Martians, why haven't we found their bones, +at least? Who buried them, after they were dead?" He looked at the +glass, a bubble-thin goblet, found, with hundreds of others like it, in +a closet above, as though debating with himself whether to have another +drink. Then he voted in the affirmative and reached for the cocktail +pitcher. "And every door on the old ground level is either barred or +barricaded from the inside. How did they get out? And why did they +leave?" + + * * * * * + +The next day, at lunch, Sachiko Koremitsu had the answer to the second +question. Four or five electrical engineers had come down by rocket from +the ship, and she had been spending the morning with them, in oxy-masks, +at the top of the building. + +"Tony, I thought you said those generators were in good shape," she +began, catching sight of Lattimer. "They aren't. They're in the most +unholy mess I ever saw. What happened, up there, was that the supports +of the wind-rotor gave way, and weight snapped the main shaft, and +smashed everything under it." + +"Well, after fifty thousand years, you can expect something like that," +Lattimer retorted. "When an archaeologist says something's in good +shape, he doesn't necessarily mean it'll start as soon as you shove a +switch in." + +"You didn't notice that it happened when the power was on, did you," one +of the engineers asked, nettled at Lattimer's tone. "Well, it was. +Everything's burned out or shorted or fused together; I saw one busbar +eight inches across melted clean in two. It's a pity we didn't find +things in good shape, even archaeologically speaking. I saw a lot of +interesting things, things in advance of what we're using now. But it'll +take a couple of years to get everything sorted out and figure what it +looked like originally." + +"Did it look as though anybody'd made any attempt to fix it?" Martha +asked. + +Sachiko shook her head. "They must have taken one look at it and given +up. I don't believe there would have been any possible way to repair +anything." + +"Well, that explains why they left. They needed electricity for +lighting, and heating, and all their industrial equipment was +electrical. They had a good life, here, with power; without it, this +place wouldn't have been habitable." + +"Then why did they barricade everything from the inside, and how did +they get out?" Lattimer wanted to know. + +"To keep other people from breaking in and looting. Last man out +probably barred the last door and slid down a rope from upstairs," von +Ohlmhorst suggested. "This Houdini-trick doesn't worry me too much. +We'll find out eventually." + +"Yes, about the time Martha starts reading Martian," Lattimer scoffed. + +"That may be just when we'll find out," von Ohlmhorst replied seriously. +"It wouldn't surprise me if they left something in writing when they +evacuated this place." + +"Are you really beginning to treat this pipe dream of hers as a serious +possibility, Selim?" Lattimer demanded. "I know, it would be a wonderful +thing, but wonderful things don't happen just because they're wonderful. +Only because they're possible, and this isn't. Let me quote that +distinguished Hittitologist, Johannes Friedrich: 'Nothing can be +translated out of nothing.' Or that later but not less distinguished +Hittitologist, Selim von Ohlmhorst: 'Where are you going to get your +bilingual?'" + +"Friedrich lived to see the Hittite language deciphered and read," von +Ohlmhorst reminded him. + +"Yes, when they found Hittite-Assyrian bilinguals." Lattimer measured a +spoonful of coffee-powder into his cup and added hot water. "Martha, you +ought to know, better than anybody, how little chance you have. You've +been working for years in the Indus Valley; how many words of Harappa +have you or anybody else ever been able to read?" + +"We never found a university, with a half-million-volume library, at +Harappa or Mohenjo-Daro." + +"And, the first day we entered this building, we established meanings +for several words," Selim von Ohlmhorst added. + +"And you've never found another meaningful word since," Lattimer added. +"And you're only sure of general meaning, not specific meaning of +word-elements, and you have a dozen different interpretations for each +word." + +"We made a start," von Ohlmhorst maintained. "We have Grotefend's word +for 'king.' But I'm going to be able to read some of those books, over +there, if it takes me the rest of my life here. It probably will, +anyhow." + +"You mean you've changed your mind about going home on the _Cyrano_?" +Martha asked. "You'll stay on here?" + +The old man nodded. "I can't leave this. There's too much to discover. +The old dog will have to learn a lot of new tricks, but this is where my +work will be, from now on." + +Lattimer was shocked. "You're nuts!" he cried. "You mean you're going +to throw away everything you've accomplished in Hittitology and start +all over again here on Mars? Martha, if you've talked him into this +crazy decision, you're a criminal!" + +"Nobody talked me into anything," von Ohlmhorst said roughly. "And as +for throwing away what I've accomplished in Hittitology, I don't know +what the devil you're talking about. Everything I know about the Hittite +Empire is published and available to anybody. Hittitology's like +Egyptology; it's stopped being research and archaeology and become +scholarship and history. And I'm not a scholar or a historian; I'm a +pick-and-shovel field archaeologist--a highly skilled and specialized +grave-robber and junk-picker--and there's more pick-and-shovel work on +this planet than I could do in a hundred lifetimes. This is something +new; I was a fool to think I could turn my back on it and go back to +scribbling footnotes about Hittite kings." + +"You could have anything you wanted, in Hittitology. There are a dozen +universities that'd sooner have you than a winning football team. But +no! You have to be the top man in Martiology, too. You can't leave that +for anybody else--" Lattimer shoved his chair back and got to his feet, +leaving the table with an oath that was almost a sob of exasperation. + +Maybe his feelings were too much for him. Maybe he realized, as Martha +did, what he had betrayed. She sat, avoiding the eyes of the others, +looking at the ceiling, as embarrassed as though Lattimer had flung +something dirty on the table in front of them. Tony Lattimer had, +desperately, wanted Selim to go home on the _Cyrano_. Martiology was a +new field; if Selim entered it, he would bring with him the reputation +he had already built in Hittitology, automatically stepping into the +leading role that Lattimer had coveted for himself. Ivan Fitzgerald's +words echoed back to her--when you want to be a big shot, you can't bear +the possibility of anybody else being a bigger big shot. His derision of +her own efforts became comprehensible, too. It wasn't that he was +convinced that she would never learn to read the Martian language. He +had been afraid that she would. + + * * * * * + +Ivan Fitzgerald finally isolated the germ that had caused the Finchley +girl's undiagnosed illness. Shortly afterward, the malady turned into a +mild fever, from which she recovered. Nobody else seemed to have caught +it. Fitzgerald was still trying to find out how the germ had been +transmitted. + +They found a globe of Mars, made when the city had been a seaport. They +located the city, and learned that its name had been Kukan--or something +with a similar vowel-consonant ratio. Immediately, Sid Chamberlain and +Gloria Standish began giving their telecasts a Kukan dateline, and +Hubert Penrose used the name in his official reports. They also found a +Martian calendar; the year had been divided into ten more or less equal +months, and one of them had been Doma. Another month was Nor, and that +was a part of the name of the scientific journal Martha had found. + +Bill Chandler, the zoologist, had been going deeper and deeper into the +old sea bottom of Syrtis. Four hundred miles from Kukan, and at fifteen +thousand feet lower altitude, he shot a bird. At least, it was a +something with wings and what were almost but not quite feathers, though +it was more reptilian than avian in general characteristics. He and Ivan +Fitzgerald skinned and mounted it, and then dissected the carcass almost +tissue by tissue. About seven-eighths of its body capacity was lungs; it +certainly breathed air containing at least half enough oxygen to support +human life, or five times as much as the air around Kukan. + +That took the center of interest away from archaeology, and started a +new burst of activity. All the expedition's aircraft--four jetticopters +and three wingless airdyne reconnaissance fighters--were thrown into +intensified exploration of the lower sea bottoms, and the bio-science +boys and girls were wild with excitement and making new discoveries on +each flight. + +The University was left to Selim and Martha and Tony Lattimer, the +latter keeping to himself while she and the old Turco-German worked +together. The civilian specialists in other fields, and the Space Force +people who had been holding tape lines and making sketches and snapping +cameras, were all flying to lower Syrtis to find out how much oxygen +there was and what kind of life it supported. + +Sometimes Sachiko dropped in; most of the time she was busy helping Ivan +Fitzgerald dissect specimens. They had four or five species of what +might loosely be called birds, and something that could easily be +classed as a reptile, and a carnivorous mammal the size of a cat with +birdlike claws, and a herbivore almost identical with the piglike thing +in the big _Darfhulva_ mural, and another like a gazelle with a single +horn in the middle of its forehead. + +The high point came when one party, at thirty thousand feet below the +level of Kukan, found breathable air. One of them had a mild attack of +_sorroche_ and had to be flown back for treatment in a hurry, but the +others showed no ill effects. + +The daily newscasts from Terra showed a corresponding shift in interest +at home. The discovery of the University had focused attention on the +dead past of Mars; now the public was interested in Mars as a possible +home for humanity. It was Tony Lattimer who brought archaeology back +into the activities of the expedition and the news at home. + +Martha and Selim were working in the museum on the second floor, +scrubbing the grime from the glass cases, noting contents, and +grease-penciling numbers; Lattimer and a couple of Space Force officers +were going through what had been the administrative offices on the other +side. It was one of these, a young second lieutenant, who came hurrying +in from the mezzanine, almost bursting with excitement. + +"Hey, Martha! Dr. von Ohlmhorst!" he was shouting. "Where are you? +Tony's found the Martians!" + +Selim dropped his rag back in the bucket; she laid her clipboard on top +of the case beside her. + +"Where?" they asked together. + +"Over on the north side." The lieutenant took hold of himself and spoke +more deliberately. "Little room, back of one of the old faculty +offices--conference room. It was locked from the inside, and we had to +burn it down with a torch. That's where they are. Eighteen of them, +around a long table--" + +Gloria Standish, who had dropped in for lunch, was on the mezzanine, +fairly screaming into a radiophone extension: + +" ... Dozen and a half of them! Well, of course they're dead. What a +question! They look like skeletons covered with leather. No, I do not +know what they died of. Well, forget it; I don't care if Bill Chandler's +found a three-headed hippopotamus. Sid, don't you get it? We've found +the _Martians_!" + +She slammed the phone back on its hook, rushing away ahead of them. + + * * * * * + +Martha remembered the closed door; on the first survey, they hadn't +attempted opening it. Now it was burned away at both sides and lay, +still hot along the edges, on the floor of the big office room in front. +A floodlight was on in the room inside, and Lattimer was going around +looking at things while a Space Force officer stood by the door. The +center of the room was filled by a long table; in armchairs around it +sat the eighteen men and women who had occupied the room for the last +fifty millennia. There were bottles and glasses on the table in front of +them, and, had she seen them in a dimmer light, she would have thought +that they were merely dozing over their drinks. One had a knee hooked +over his chair-arm and was curled in foetuslike sleep. Another had +fallen forward onto the table, arms extended, the emerald set of a ring +twinkling dully on one finger. Skeletons covered with leather, Gloria +Standish had called them, and so they were--faces like skulls, arms and +legs like sticks, the flesh shrunken onto the bones under it. + +"Isn't this something!" Lattimer was exulting. "Mass suicide, that's +what it was. Notice what's in the corners?" + +Braziers, made of perforated two-gallon-odd metal cans, the white walls +smudged with smoke above them. Von Ohlmhorst had noticed them at once, +and was poking into one of them with his flashlight. + +"Yes; charcoal. I noticed a quantity of it around a couple of +hand-forges in the shop on the first floor. That's why you had so much +trouble breaking in; they'd sealed the room on the inside." He +straightened and went around the room, until he found a ventilator, and +peered into it. "Stuffed with rags. They must have been all that were +left, here. Their power was gone, and they were old and tired, and all +around them their world was dying. So they just came in here and lit the +charcoal, and sat drinking together till they all fell asleep. Well, we +know what became of them, now, anyhow." + +Sid and Gloria made the most of it. The Terran public wanted to hear +about Martians, and if live Martians couldn't be found, a room full of +dead ones was the next best thing. Maybe an even better thing; it had +been only sixty-odd years since the Orson Welles invasion-scare. Tony +Lattimer, the discoverer, was beginning to cash in on his attentions to +Gloria and his ingratiation with Sid; he was always either making +voice-and-image talks for telecast or listening to the news from the +home planet. Without question, he had become, overnight, the most widely +known archaeologist in history. + +"Not that I'm interested in all this, for myself," he disclaimed, after +listening to the telecast from Terra two days after his discovery. "But +this is going to be a big thing for Martian archaeology. Bring it to the +public attention; dramatize it. Selim, can you remember when Lord +Carnarvon and Howard Carter found the tomb of Tutankhamen?" + +"In 1923? I was two years old, then," von Ohlmhorst chuckled. "I really +don't know how much that publicity ever did for Egyptology. Oh, the +museums did devote more space to Egyptian exhibits, and after a museum +department head gets a few extra showcases, you know how hard it is to +make him give them up. And, for a while, it was easier to get financial +support for new excavations. But I don't know how much good all this +public excitement really does, in the long run." + +"Well, I think one of us should go back on the _Cyrano_, when the +_Schiaparelli_ orbits in," Lattimer said. "I'd hoped it would be you; +your voice would carry the most weight. But I think it's important that +one of us go back, to present the story of our work, and what we have +accomplished and what we hope to accomplish, to the public and to the +universities and the learned societies, and to the Federation +Government. There will be a great deal of work that will have to be +done. We must not allow the other scientific fields and the so-called +practical interests to monopolize public and academic support. So, I +believe I shall go back at least for a while, and see what I can do--" + +Lectures. The organization of a Society of Martian Archaeology, with +Anthony Lattimer, Ph.D., the logical candidate for the chair. Degrees, +honors; the deference of the learned, and the adulation of the lay +public. Positions, with impressive titles and salaries. Sweet are the +uses of publicity. + +She crushed out her cigarette and got to her feet. "Well, I still have +the final lists of what we found in _Halvhulva_--Biology--department to +check over. I'm starting on Sornhulva tomorrow, and I want that stuff in +shape for expert evaluation." + +That was the sort of thing Tony Lattimer wanted to get away from, the +detail-work and the drudgery. Let the infantry do the slogging through +the mud; the brass-hats got the medals. + + * * * * * + +She was halfway through the fifth floor, a week later, and was having +midday lunch in the reading room on the first floor when Hubert Penrose +came over and sat down beside her, asking her what she was doing. She +told him. + +"I wonder if you could find me a couple of men, for an hour or so," she +added. "I'm stopped by a couple of jammed doors at the central hall. +Lecture room and library, if the layout of that floor's anything like +the ones below it." + +"Yes. I'm a pretty fair door-buster, myself." He looked around the room. +"There's Jeff Miles; he isn't doing much of anything. And we'll put Sid +Chamberlain to work, for a change, too. The four of us ought to get your +doors open." He called to Chamberlain, who was carrying his tray over to +the dish washer. "Oh, Sid; you doing anything for the next hour or so?" + +"I was going up to the fourth floor, to see what Tony's doing." + +"Forget it. Tony's bagged his season limit of Martians. I'm going to +help Martha bust in a couple of doors; we'll probably find a whole +cemetery full of Martians." + +Chamberlain shrugged. "Why not. A jammed door can have anything back of +it, and I know what Tony's doing--just routine stuff." + +Jeff Miles, the Space Force captain, came over, accompanied by one of +the lab-crew from the ship who had come down on the rocket the day +before. + +"This ought to be up your alley, Mort," he was saying to his companion. +"Chemistry and physics department. Want to come along?" + +The lab man, Mort Tranter, was willing. Seeing the sights was what he'd +come down from the ship for. She finished her coffee and cigarette, and +they went out into the hall together, gathered equipment and rode the +elevator to the fifth floor. + +The lecture hall door was the nearest; they attacked it first. With +proper equipment and help, it was no problem and in ten minutes they had +it open wide enough to squeeze through with the floodlights. The room +inside was quite empty, and, like most of the rooms behind closed doors, +comparatively free from dust. The students, it appeared, had sat with +their backs to the door, facing a low platform, but their seats and the +lecturer's table and equipment had been removed. The two side walls bore +inscriptions: on the right, a pattern of concentric circles which she +recognized as a diagram of atomic structure, and on the left a +complicated table of numbers and words, in two columns. Tranter was +pointing at the diagram on the right. + +[Illustration] + +"They got as far as the Bohr atom, anyhow," he said. "Well, not quite. +They knew about electron shells, but they have the nucleus pictured as a +solid mass. No indication of proton-and-neutron structure. I'll bet, +when you come to translate their scientific books, you'll find that they +taught that the atom was the ultimate and indivisible particle. That +explains why you people never found any evidence that the Martians used +nuclear energy." + +"That's a uranium atom," Captain Miles mentioned. + +"It is?" Sid Chamberlain asked, excitedly. "Then they did know about +atomic energy. Just because we haven't found any pictures of A-bomb +mushrooms doesn't mean--" + +She turned to look at the other wall. Sid's signal reactions were +getting away from him again; uranium meant nuclear power to him, and the +two words were interchangeable. As she studied the arrangement of the +numbers and words, she could hear Tranter saying: + +"Nuts, Sid. We knew about uranium a long time before anybody found out +what could be done with it. Uranium was discovered on Terra in 1789, by +Klaproth." + +There was something familiar about the table on the left wall. She tried +to remember what she had been taught in school about physics, and what +she had picked up by accident afterward. The second column was a +continuation of the first: there were forty-six items in each, each item +numbered consecutively-- + +"Probably used uranium because it's the largest of the natural atoms," +Penrose was saying. "The fact that there's nothing beyond it there shows +that they hadn't created any of the transuranics. A student could go to +that thing and point out the outer electron of any of the ninety-two +elements." + + * * * * * + +Ninety-two! That was it; there were ninety-two items in the table on the +left wall! Hydrogen was Number One, she knew; One, _Sarfaldsorn_. Helium +was Two; that was _Tirfaldsorn_. She couldn't remember which element +came next, but in Martian it was _Sarfalddavas_. _Sorn_ must mean +matter, or substance, then. And _davas_; she was trying to think of what +it could be. She turned quickly to the others, catching hold of Hubert +Penrose's arm with one hand and waving her clipboard with the other. + +"Look at this thing, over here," she was clamoring excitedly. "Tell me +what you think it is. Could it be a table of the elements?" + +They all turned to look. Mort Tranter stared at it for a moment. + +"Could be. If I only knew what those squiggles meant--" + +That was right; he'd spent his time aboard the ship. + +"If you could read the numbers, would that help?" she asked, beginning +to set down the Arabic digits and their Martian equivalents. "It's +decimal system, the same as we use." + +"Sure. If that's a table of elements, all I'd need would be the numbers. +Thanks," he added as she tore off the sheet and gave it to him. + +Penrose knew the numbers, and was ahead of him. "Ninety-two items, +numbered consecutively. The first number would be the atomic number. +Then a single word, the name of the element. Then the atomic weight--" + +She began reading off the names of the elements. "I know hydrogen and +helium; what's _tirfalddavas_, the third one?" + +"Lithium," Tranter said. "The atomic weights aren't run out past the +decimal point. Hydrogen's one plus, if that double-hook dingus is a plus +sign; Helium's four-plus, that's right. And lithium's given as seven, +that isn't right. It's six-point nine-four-oh. Or is that thing a +Martian minus sign?" + +"Of course! Look! A plus sign is a hook, to hang things together; a +minus sign is a knife, to cut something off from something--see, the +little loop is the handle and the long pointed loop is the blade. +Stylized, of course, but that's what it is. And the fourth element, +kiradavas; what's that?" + +"Beryllium. Atomic weight given as nine-and-a-hook; actually it's +nine-point-oh-two." + +Sid Chamberlain had been disgruntled because he couldn't get a story +about the Martians having developed atomic energy. It took him a few +minutes to understand the newest development, but finally it dawned on +him. + +"Hey! You're reading that!" he cried. "You're reading Martian!" + +"That's right," Penrose told him. "Just reading it right off. I don't +get the two items after the atomic weight, though. They look like months +of the Martian calendar. What ought they to be, Mort?" + + * * * * * + +Tranter hesitated. "Well, the next information after the atomic weight +ought to be the period and group numbers. But those are words." + +"What would the numbers be for the first one, hydrogen?" + +"Period One, Group One. One electron shell, one electron in the outer +shell," Tranter told her. "Helium's period one, too, but it has the +outer--only--electron shell full, so it's in the group of inert +elements." + +"_Trav, Trav._ _Trav's_ the first month of the year. And helium's _Trav, +Yenth_; _Yenth_ is the eighth month." + +"The inert elements could be called Group Eight, yes. And the third +element, lithium, is Period Two, Group One. That check?" + +"It certainly does. _Sanv, Trav_; _Sanv's_ the second month. What's the +first element in Period Three?" + +"Sodium. Number Eleven." + +That's right; it's _Krav, Trav_. Why, the names of the months are simply +numbers, one to ten, spelled out. + +"_Doma_'s the fifth month. That was your first Martian word, Martha," +Penrose told her. "The word for five. And if _davas_ is the word for +metal, and _sornhulva_ is chemistry and / or physics, I'll bet Tadavas +Sornhulva is literally translated as: Of-Metal Matter-Knowledge. +Metallurgy, in other words. I wonder what Mastharnorvod means." It +surprised her that, after so long and with so much happening in the +meantime, he could remember that. "Something like 'Journal,' or +'Review,' or maybe 'Quarterly.'" + +"We'll work that out, too," she said confidently. After this, nothing +seemed impossible. "Maybe we can find--" Then she stopped short. "You +said 'Quarterly.' I think it was 'Monthly,' instead. It was dated for a +specific month, the fifth one. And if _nor_ is ten, Mastharnorvod could +be 'Year-Tenth.' And I'll bet we'll find that _masthar_ is the word for +year." She looked at the table on the wall again. "Well, let's get all +these words down, with translations for as many as we can." + +"Let's take a break for a minute," Penrose suggested, getting out his +cigarettes. "And then, let's do this in comfort. Jeff, suppose you and +Sid go across the hall and see what you find in the other room in the +way of a desk or something like that, and a few chairs. There'll be a +lot of work to do on this." + +Sid Chamberlain had been squirming as though he were afflicted with +ants, trying to contain himself. Now he let go with an excited jabber. + +"This is really it! _The_ it, not just it-of-the-week, like finding the +reservoirs or those statues or this building, or even the animals and +the dead Martians! Wait till Selim and Tony see this! Wait till Tony +sees it; I want to see his face! And when I get this on telecast, all +Terra's going to go nuts about it!" He turned to Captain Miles. "Jeff, +suppose you take a look at that other door, while I find somebody to +send to tell Selim and Tony. And Gloria; wait till she sees this--" + +"Take it easy, Sid," Martha cautioned. "You'd better let me have a look +at your script, before you go too far overboard on the telecast. This is +just a beginning; it'll take years and years before we're able to read +any of those books downstairs." + +"It'll go faster than you think, Martha," Hubert Penrose told her. +"We'll all work on it, and we'll teleprint material to Terra, and people +there will work on it. We'll send them everything we can ... everything +we work out, and copies of books, and copies of your word-lists--" + +And there would be other tables--astronomical tables, tables in physics +and mechanics, for instance--in which words and numbers were equivalent. +The library stacks, below, would be full of them. Transliterate them +into Roman alphabet spellings and Arabic numerals, and somewhere, +somebody would spot each numerical significance, as Hubert Penrose and +Mort Tranter and she had done with the table of elements. And pick out +all the chemistry textbooks in the Library; new words would take on +meaning from contexts in which the names of elements appeared. She'd +have to start studying chemistry and physics, herself-- + + * * * * * + +Sachiko Koremitsu peeped in through the door, then stepped inside. + +"Is there anything I can do--?" she began. "What's happened? Something +important?" + +"Important?" Sid Chamberlain exploded. "Look at that, Sachi! We're +reading it! Martha's found out how to read Martian!" He grabbed Captain +Miles by the arm. "Come on, Jeff; let's go. I want to call the others--" +He was still babbling as he hurried from the room. + +Sachi looked at the inscription. "Is it true?" she asked, and then, +before Martha could more than begin to explain, flung her arms around +her. "Oh, it really is! You are reading it! I'm so happy!" + +She had to start explaining again when Selim von Ohlmhorst entered. This +time, she was able to finish. + +"But, Martha, can you be really sure? You know, by now, that learning to +read this language is as important to me as it is to you, but how can +you be so sure that those words really mean things like hydrogen and +helium and boron and oxygen? How do you know that their table of +elements was anything like ours?" + +Tranter and Penrose and Sachiko all looked at him in amazement. + +"That isn't just the Martian table of elements; that's _the_ table of +elements. It's the only one there is." Mort Tranter almost exploded. +"Look, hydrogen has one proton and one electron. If it had more of +either, it wouldn't be hydrogen, it'd be something else. And the same +with all the rest of the elements. And hydrogen on Mars is the same as +hydrogen on Terra, or on Alpha Centauri, or in the next galaxy--" + +"You just set up those numbers, in that order, and any first-year +chemistry student could tell you what elements they represented." +Penrose said. "Could if he expected to make a passing grade, that is." + +The old man shook his head slowly, smiling. "I'm afraid I wouldn't make +a passing grade. I didn't know, or at least didn't realize, that. One of +the things I'm going to place an order for, to be brought on the +_Schiaparelli_, will be a set of primers in chemistry and physics, of +the sort intended for a bright child of ten or twelve. It seems that a +Martiologist has to learn a lot of things the Hittites and the Assyrians +never heard about." + +Tony Lattimer, coming in, caught the last part of the explanation. He +looked quickly at the walls and, having found out just what had +happened, advanced and caught Martha by the hand. + +"You really did it, Martha! You found your bilingual! I never believed +that it would be possible; let me congratulate you!" + +He probably expected that to erase all the jibes and sneers of the past. +If he did, he could have it that way. His friendship would mean as +little to her as his derision--except that his friends had to watch +their backs and his knife. But he was going home on the _Cyrano_, to be +a big shot. Or had this changed his mind for him again? + +"This is something we can show the world, to justify any expenditure of +time and money on Martian archaeological work. When I get back to Terra, +I'll see that you're given full credit for this achievement--" + +On Terra, her back and his knife would be out of her watchfulness. + +"We won't need to wait that long," Hubert Penrose told him dryly. "I'm +sending off an official report, tomorrow; you can be sure Dr. Dane will +be given full credit, not only for this but for her previous work, +which made it possible to exploit this discovery." + +"And you might add, work done in spite of the doubts and discouragements +of her colleagues," Selim von Ohlmhorst said. "To which I am ashamed to +have to confess my own share." + +"You said we had to find a bilingual," she said. "You were right, too." + +"This is better than a bilingual, Martha," Hubert Penrose said. +"Physical science expresses universal facts; necessarily it is a +universal language. Heretofore archaeologists have dealt only with +pre-scientific cultures." + + +THE END + + +[Transcriber's Note: The following errors in the original have been +corrected in this version. + +Page 11: fixitive to fixative +crushed. to crushed." + +Page 13: photostated to photostatted + +Page 21: jeapordizing to jeopardizing + +Page 22: ricochetted to ricocheted + +Page 26: aquaducts to aqueducts + +Page 27: testtube to test tube + +Page 28: evaportation to evaporation + +Page 33: aquaducts to aqueducts + +Page 35: And you've never to "And you've never + +Page 36: Finchly to Finchley + +Page 37: eights to eighths + +Page 39: Egyptiology to Egyptology + +Page 42: There's an uncorrected error here: the third element is +"Sarfalddavas" above but "tirfalddavas" below. This wasn't changed in +later versions of the text, so it's not clear which is correct. The +capitalized one would be consistent with the other names, and the "Sar-" +implies a relationship with the first element, which _is_ in the same +group. Or maybe the character misspoke, in her excitement? + +Page 45: big-shot to big shot + +Page 46: archeologists to archaeologists + +] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OMNILINGUAL *** + +***** This file should be named 19445.txt or 19445.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/4/4/19445/ + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Greg Weeks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/19445.zip b/19445.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c252f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/19445.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff87891 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #19445 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19445) |
