The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe AlienThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world 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 atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The AlienAuthor: Raymond F. JonesRelease date: December 28, 2015 [eBook #50783]Most recently updated: October 22, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALIEN ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world 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 atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The AlienAuthor: Raymond F. JonesRelease date: December 28, 2015 [eBook #50783]Most recently updated: October 22, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Alien
Author: Raymond F. Jones
Author: Raymond F. Jones
Release date: December 28, 2015 [eBook #50783]Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALIEN ***
THE ALIENA Gripping Novel of Discovery and Conquest in Interstellar Spaceby Raymond F. JonesA Complete ORIGINAL Book, UNABRIDGEDWORLD EDITIONS, Inc.105 WEST 40th STREETNEW YORK 18, NEW YORKCopyright 1951byWORLD EDITIONS, Inc.PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.THE GUINN CO., Inc.New York 14, N.Y.[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A Gripping Novel of Discovery and Conquest in Interstellar Space
by Raymond F. Jones
A Complete ORIGINAL Book, UNABRIDGED
WORLD EDITIONS, Inc.105 WEST 40th STREETNEW YORK 18, NEW YORK
Copyright 1951byWORLD EDITIONS, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.THE GUINN CO., Inc.New York 14, N.Y.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Just speculate for a moment on the enormous challenge to archeology when interplanetary flight is possible ... and relics are found of a race extinct for half a million years! A race, incidentally, that was scientifically so far in advance of ours that they held the secret of the restoration of life!
One member of that race can be brought back after 500,000 years of death....
That's the story told by this ORIGINAL book-length novel, which has never before been published! You can expect a muscle-tightening, sweat-producing, mind-prodding adventure in the future when you read it!
Contents
CHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Out beyond the orbit of Mars theLavoisierwallowed cautiously through the asteroid fields. Aboard the laboratory ship few of the members of the permanent Smithson Asteroidal Expedition were aware that they were in motion. Living in the field one or two years at a time, there was little that they were conscious of except the half-million-year-old culture whose scattered fragments surrounded them on every side.
The only contact with Earth at the moment was the radio link by which Dr. Delmar Underwood was calling Dr. Illia Morov at Terrestrial Medical Central.
Illia's blonde, precisely coiffured hair was only faintly golden against, the stark white of her surgeons' gown, which she still wore when she answered. Her eyes widened with an expression of pleasure as her face came into focus on the screen and she recognized Underwood.
"Del! I thought you'd gone to sleep with the mummies out there. It's been over a month since you called. What's new?"
"Not much. Terry found some new evidence of Stroid III. Phyfe has a new scrap of metal with inscriptions, and they've found something that almost looks as if it might have been an electron tube five hundred thousand years ago. I'm working on that. Otherwise all is peaceful and it's wonderful!"
"Still the confirmed hermit?" Illia's eyes lost some of their banter, but none of their tenderness.
"There's more peace and contentment out here than I'd ever dreamed of finding. I want you to come out here, Illia. Come out for a month. If you don't want to stay and marry me, then you can go back and I won't say another word."
She shook her head in firm decision. "Earth needs its scientists desperately. Too many have run away already. They say the Venusian colonies are booming, but I told you a year ago that simply running away wouldn't work. I thought by now you would have found it out for yourself."
"And I told you a year ago," Underwood said flatly, "that the only possible choice of a sane man is escape."
"You can't escape your own culture, Del. Why, the expedition that provided the opportunity for you to become a hermit is dependent on Earth. If Congress should cut the Institute's funds, you'd be dropped right back where you were. You can't get away."
"There are always the Venusian colonies."
"You know it's impossible to exist there independent of Earth."
"I'm not talking about the science and technology. I'm talking about the social disintegration. Certainly a scientist doesn't need to take that with him when he's attempting to escape it."
"The culture is not to blame," said Illia earnestly, "and neither is humanity. You don't ridicule a child for his clumsiness when he is learning to walk."
"I hope the human race is past its childhood!"
"Relatively speaking, it isn't. Dreyer says we're only now emerging from the cave man stage, and that could properly be called mankind's infancy, I suppose. Dreyer calls it the 'head man' stage."
"I thought he was a semanticist."
"You'd know if you'd ever talked with him. He'll tear off every other word you utter and throw it back at you. His 'head man' designation is correct, all right. According to him, human beings in this stage need some leader or 'head man' stronger than themselves for guidance, assumption of responsibility, and blame, in case of failure of the group. These functions have never in the past been developed in the individual so that he could stand alone in control of his own ego. But it's coming—that's the whole import of Dreyer's work."
"And all this confusion and instability are supposed to have something to do with that?"
"It's been growing for decades. We've seen it reach a peak in our own lifetimes. The old fetishes have failed, the head men have been found to be hollow gods, and men's faith has turned to derision. Presidents, dictators, governors, and priests—they've all fallen from their high places and the masses of humanity will no longer believe in any of them."
"Andthatis development of the race?"
"Yes, because out of it will come a people who have found in themselves the strength they used to find in the 'head men.' There will come a race in which the individual can accept the responsibility which he has always passed on to the 'head man,' the 'head man' is no longer necessary."
"And so—the ultimate anarchy."
"The 'head man' concept has, but first he has to find out that has nothing to do with government. With human beings capable of independent, constructive behavior, actual democracy will be possible for the first time in the world's history."
"If all this is to come about anyway, according to Dreyer, why not try to escape the insanity of the transition period?"
Illia Morov's eyes grew narrow in puzzlement as she looked at Underwood with utter incomprehension. "Doesn't it matter at all that the race is in one of the greatest crises of all history? Doesn't it matter that you have a skill that is of immense value in these times? It's peculiar that it is those of you in the physical sciences who are fleeing in the greatest numbers. The Venusian colonies must have a wonderful time with physicists trampling each other to get away from it all—and Earth almost barren of them. Do the physical sciences destroy every sense of social obligation?"
"You forget that I don't quite accept Dreyer's theories. To me this is nothing but a rotting structure that is finally collapsing from its own inner decay. I can't see anything positive evolving out of it."
"I suppose so. Well, it was nice of you to call, Del. I'm always glad to hear you. Don't wait so long next time."
"Illia—"
But she had cut the connection and the screen slowly faded into gray, leaving Underwood's argument unfinished. Irritably, he flipped the switch to the public news channels.
Where was he wrong? The past year, since he had joined the expedition as Chief Physicist, was like paradise compared with living in the unstable, irresponsible society existing on Earth. He knew it was a purely neurotic reaction, this desire to escape. But application of that label solved nothing, explained nothing—and carried no stigma. The neurotic reaction was the norm in a world so confused.
He turned as the news blared abruptly with its perpetual urgency that made him wonder how the commentators endured the endless flow of crises.
The President had been impeached again—the third one in six months.
There were no candidates for his office.
A church had been burned by its congregation.
Two mayors had been assassinated within hours of each other.
It was the same news he had heard six months ago. It would be the same again tomorrow and next month. The story of a planet repudiating all leadership. A lawlessness that was worse than anarchy, because there was still government—a government that could be driven and whipped by the insecurities of the populace that elected it.
Dreyer called it a futile search for a 'head man' by a people who would no longer trust any of their own kind to be 'head man.' And Underwood dared not trust that glib explanation.
Many others besides Underwood found they could no longer endure the instability of their own culture. Among these were many of the world's leading scientists. Most of them went to the jungle lands of Venus. The scientific limitations of such a frontier existence had kept Underwood from joining the Venusian colonies, but he'd been very close to going just before he got the offer of Chief Physicist with the Smithson Institute expedition in the asteroid fields. He wondered now what he'd have done if the offer hadn't come.
The interphone annunciator buzzed. Underwood turned off the news as the bored communications operator in the control room announced, "Doc Underwood. Call for Doc Underwood."
Underwood cut in. "Speaking," he said irritably.
The voice of Terry Bernard burst into the room. "Hey, Del! Are you going to get rid of that hangover and answer your phone or should we embalm the remains and ship 'em back?"
"Terry! You fool, what do you want? Why didn't you say it was you? I thought maybe it was that elephant-foot Maynes, with chunks of mica that he thought were prayer sticks."
"The Stroids didn't use prayer sticks."
"All right, skip it. What's new?"
"Plenty. Can you come over for a while? I think we've really got something here."
"It'd better be good. We're taking the ship to Phyfe. Where are you?"
"Asteroid C-428. It's about 2,000 miles from you. And bring all the hard-rock mining tools you've got. We can't get into this thing."
"Isthatall you want? Use your double coated drills."
"We wore five of them out. No scratches on the thing, even."
"Well, use the Atom Stream, then. It probably won't hurt the artifact."
"I'll say it won't. It won't even warm the thing up. Any other ideas?"
Underwood's mind, which had been half occupied with mulling over his personal problems while he talked with Terry, swung startledly to what the archeologist was saying. "You mean that you've found a material the Atom Stream won't touch? That's impossible! The equations of the Stream prove—"
"I know.Nowwill you come over?"
"Why didn't you say so in the first place? I'll bring the whole ship."
Underwood cut off and switched to the Captain's line. "Captain Dawson? Underwood. Will you please take the ship to the vicinity of Asteroid C-428 as quickly as possible?"
"I thought Doctor Phyfe—"
"I'll answer for it. Please move the vessel."
Captain Dawson acceded. His instructions were to place the ship at Underwood's disposal.
Soundlessly and invisibly, the distortion fields leaped into space about the massive laboratory ship and theLavoisiermoved effortlessly through the void. Its perfect inertia controls left no evidence of its motion apparent to the occupants with the exception of the navigators and pilots. The hundreds of delicate pieces of equipment in Underwood's laboratories remained as steadfast as if anchored to tons of steel and concrete deep beneath the surface of Earth.
Twenty minutes later they hove in sight of the small, black asteroid that glistened in the faint light of the faraway Sun. The spacesuited figures of Terry Bernard and his assistant, Batch Fagin, clung to the surface, moving about like flies on a blackened, frozen apple.
Underwood was already in the scooter lock, astride the little spacescooter which they used for transportation between ships of the expedition and between asteroids.
The pilot jockeyed theLavoisieras near as safely desirable, then signaled Underwood. The physicist pressed the control that opened the lock in the side of the vessel. The scooter shot out into space, bearing him astride it.
"Ride 'em, cowboy!" Terry Bernard yelled into the intercom. He gave a wild cowboy yell that pierced Underwood's ears. "Watch out that thing doesn't turn turtle with you."
Underwood grinned to himself. He said, "Your attitude convinces me of a long held theory that archeology is no science. Anyway, if your story of a material impervious to the Atom Stream is wrong, you'd better get a good alibi. Phyfe had some work he wanted to do aboard today."
"Come and see for yourself. This is it."
As the scooter approached closer to the asteroid, Underwood could glimpse the strangeness of the thing. It looked as if it had been coated with the usual asteroid material of nickel iron debris, but Terry had cleared this away from more than half the surface.
The exposed half was a shining thing of ebony, whose planes and angles were machined with mathematical exactness. It looked as if there were at least a thousand individual facets on the one hemisphere alone.
At the sight of it, Underwood could almost understand the thrill of discovery that impelled these archeologists to delve in the mysteries of space for lost kingdoms and races. This object which Terry had discovered was a magnificent artifact. He wondered how long it had circled the Sun since the intelligence that formed it had died. He wished now that Terry had not used the Atom Stream, for that had probably destroyed the validity of the radium-lead relationship in the coating of debris that might otherwise indicate something of the age of the thing.
Terry sensed something of Underwood's awe in his silence as he approached. "What do you think of it, Del?"
"It's—beautiful," said Underwood. "Have you any clue to what it is?"
"Not a thing. No marks of any kind on it."
The scooter slowed as Del Underwood guided it near the surface of the asteroid. It touched gently and he unstrapped himself and stepped off. "Phyfe will forgive all your sins for this," he said. "Before you show me the Atom Stream is ineffective, let's break off a couple of tons of the coating and put it in the ship. We may be able to date the thing yet. Almost all these asteroids have a small amount of radioactivity somewhere in them. We can chip some from the opposite side where the Atom Stream would affect it least."
"Good idea," Terry agreed. "I should have thought of that, but when I first found the single outcropping of machined metal, I figured it was very small. After I found the Atom Stream wouldn't touch it, I was overanxious to undercover it. I didn't realize I'd have to burn away the whole surface of the asteroid."
"We may as well finish the job and get it completely uncovered. I'll have some of my men from the ship come on over."
It took the better part of an hour to chip and drill away samples to be used in a dating attempt. Then the intense fire of the Atom Stream was turned upon the remainder of the asteroid to clear it.
"We'd better be on the lookout for a soft spot." Terry suggested. "It's possible this thing isn't homogeneous, and Papa Phyfe would be very mad if we burned it up after making such a find."
From behind his heavy shield which protected him from the stray radiation formed by the Atom Stream, Delmar Underwood watched the biting fire cut between the gemlike artifact and the metallic alloys that coated it. The alloys cracked and fell away in large chunks, propelled by the explosions of matter as the intense heat vaporized the metal almost instantly.
The spell of the ancient and the unknown fell upon him and swept him up in the old mysteries and the unknown tongues. Trained in the precise methods of the physical sciences, he had long fought against the fascination of the immense puzzles which the archeologists were trying to solve, but no man could long escape. In the quiet, starlit blackness there rang the ancient memories of a planet vibrant with life, a planet of strange tongues and unknown songs—a planet that had died so violently that space was yet strewn with its remains—so violently that somewhere the echo of its death explosion must yet ring in the far vaults of space.
Underwood had always thought of archeologists as befogged antiquarians poking among ancient graves and rubbish heaps, but now he knew them for what they were—poets in search of mysteries. The Bible-quoting of Phyfe and the swearing of red-headed Terry Bernard were merely thin disguises for their poetic romanticism.
Underwood watched the white fire of the Atom Stream through the lead glass of the eye-protecting lenses. "I talked to Illia today," he said. "She says I've run away."
"Haven't you?" Terry asked.
"I wouldn't call it that."
"It doesn't make much difference what you call it. I once lived in an apartment underneath a French horn player who practised eight hours a day. I ran away. If the whole mess back on Earth is like a bunch of horn blowers tootling above your apartment, I say move, and why make any fuss about it? I'd probably join the boys on Venus myself if my job didn't keep me out here. Of course it's different with you. There's Illia to be convinced—along with your own conscience."
"She quotes Dreyer. He's one of your ideals, isn't he?"
"No better semanticist ever lived," Terry said flatly. "He takes the long view, which is that everything will come out in the wash. I agree with him, so why worry—knowing that the variants will iron themselves out, and nothing I can possibly do will be noticed or missed? Hence, I seldom worry about my obligations to mankind, as long as I stay reasonably law-abiding. Do likewise, Brother Del, and you'll live longer, or at least more happily."
Underwood grinned in the blinding glare of the Atom Stream. He wished life were as simple as Terry would have him believe. Maybe it would be, he thought—if it weren't for Illia.
As he moved his shield slowly forward behind the crumbling debris, Underwood's mind returned to the question of who created the structure beneath their feet, and to what alien purpose. Its black, impenetrable surfaces spoke of excellent mechanical skill, and a high science that could create a material refractory to the Atom Stream. Who, a half million years ago, could have created it?
The ancient pseudo-scientific Bode's Law had indicated a missing planet which could easily have fitted into the Solar System in the vicinity of the asteroid belt. But Bode's Law had never been accepted by astronomers—until interstellar archeology discovered the artifacts of a civilization on many of the asteroids.
The monumental task of exploration had been undertaken more than a generation ago by the Smithson Institute. Though always handicapped by shortage of funds, they had managed to keep at least one ship in the field as a permanent expedition.
Dr. Phyfe, leader of the present group, was probably the greatest student of asteroidal archeology in the System. The younger archeologists labeled him benevolently Papa Phyfe, in spite of the irascible temper which came, perhaps, from constantly switching his mind from half a million years ago to the present.
In their use of semantic correlations, Underwood was discovering, the archeologists were far ahead of the physical scientists, for they had an immensely greater task in deducing the mental concepts of alien races from a few scraps of machinery and art.
Of all the archeologists he had met, Underwood had taken the greatest liking to Terry Bernard. An extremely competent semanticist and archeologist, Terry nevertheless did not take himself too seriously. He did not even mind Underwood's constant assertion that archeology was no science. He maintained that it was fun, and that was all that was necessary.
At last, the two groups approached each other from opposite sides of the asteroid and joined forces in shearing off the last of the debris. As they shut off the fearful Atom Streams, the scientists turned to look back at the thing they had cleared.
Terry said quietly, "See why I'm an archeologist?"
"I think I do—almost," Underwood answered.
The gemlike structure beneath their feet glistened like polished ebony. It caught the distant stars in its thousand facets and cast them until it gleamed as if with infinite lights of its own.
The workmen, too, were caught in its spell, for they stood silently contemplating the mystery of a people who had created such beauty.
The spell was broken at last by a movement across the heavens. Underwood glanced up. "Papa Phyfe's coming on the warpath. I'll bet he's ready to trim my ears for taking the lab ship without his consent."
"You're boss of the lab ship, aren't you?" said Terry.
"It's a rather flexible arrangement—in Phyfe's mind, at least. I'm boss until he decides he wants to do something."
The headquarters ship slowed to a halt and the lock opened, emitting the fiery burst of a motor scooter which Doc Phyfe rode with angry abandon.
"You, Underwood!" His voice came harshly through the phones. "I demand an explanation of—"
That was as far as he got, for he glimpsed the thing upon which the men were standing, and from his vantage point it looked all the more like a black jewel in the sky. He became instantly once more the eager archeologist instead of expedition administrator, a role he filled with irritation.
"What have you got there?" he whispered.
Terry answered. "We don't know. I asked Dr. Underwood's assistance in uncovering the artifact. If it caused you any difficulty, I'm sorry; it's my fault."
"Pah!" said Phyfe. "A thing like this is of utmost importance. You should have notified me immediately."
Terry and Underwood grinned at each other. Phyfe reprimanded every archeologist on the expedition for not notifying him immediately whenever anything from the smallest machined fragment of metal to the greatest stone monuments were found. If they had obeyed, he would have done nothing but travel from asteroid to asteroid over hundreds of thousands of miles of space.
"You were busy with your own work," said Terry.
But Phyfe had landed, and as he dismounted from the scooter, he stood in awe. Terry, standing close to him, thought he saw tears in the old man's eyes through the helmet of the spaceship.
"It's beautiful!" murmured Phyfe in worshipping awe. "Wonderful. The most magnificent find in a century of asteroidal archeology. We must make arrangements for its transfer to Earth at once."
"If I may make a suggestion," said Terry, "you recall that some of the artifacts have not survived so well. Decay in many instances has set in—"
"Are you trying to tell me that this thing can decay?" Phyfe's little gray Van Dyke trembled violently.
"I'm thinking of the thermal transfer. Doctor Underwood is better able to discuss that, but I should think that a mass of this kind, which is at absolute zero, might undergo unusual stresses in coming to Earth normal temperatures. True, we used the Atom Stream on it, but that heat did not penetrate enough to set up great internal stresses."
Phyfe looked hesitant and turned to Underwood. "What is your opinion?"
Underwood didn't get it until he caught Terry's wink behind Phyfe's back. Once it left space and went into the museum laboratory, Terry might never get to work on the thing again. That was the perpetual gripe of the field men.
"I think Doctor Bernard has a good point," said Underwood. "I would advise leaving the artifact here in space until a thorough examination has been made. After all, we have every facility aboard theLavoisierthat is available on Earth."
"Very well," said Phyfe. "You may proceed in charge of the physical examination of the find, Doctor Underwood. You, Doctor Bernard, will be in charge of proceedings from an archeological standpoint. Will that be satisfactory to everyone concerned?"
It was far more than Terry had expected.
"I will be on constant call," said Phyfe. "Let me know immediately of any developments." Then the uncertain mask of the executive fell away from the face of the little old scientist and he regarded the find with humility and awe. "It's beautiful," he murmured again, "beautiful."
Phyfe remained near the site as Underwood and Terry set their crew to the routine task of weighing, measuring, and photographing the object, while Underwood considered what else to do.
"You know, this thing has got me stymied, Terry. Since it can't be touched by an Atom Stream, that means there isn't a single analytical procedure to which it will respond—that I know of, anyway. Does your knowledge of the Stroids and their ways of doing things suggest any identification of it?"
Terry shook his head as he stood by the port of the laboratory ship watching the crews at work outside. "Not a thing, but that's no criterion. We know so little about the Stroids that almost everything we find has a function we never heard of before. And of course we've found many objects with totally unknown functions. I've been thinking—what if this should turn out to be merely a natural gem from the interior of the planet, maybe formed at the time of its destruction, but at least an entirely natural object rather than an artifact?"
"It would be the largest crystal formation ever encountered, and the most perfect. I'd say the chances of its natural formation are negligible."
"But maybe this is the one in a hundred billion billion or whatever number chance it may be."
"If so, its value ought to be enough to balance the Terrestrial budget. I'm still convinced that it must be an artifact, though its material and use are beyond me. We can start with a radiation analysis. Perhaps it will respond in some way that will give us a clue."
When the crew had finished the routine check, Underwood directed his men to set up the various types of radiation equipment contained within the ship. It was possible to generate radiation through almost the complete spectrum from single cycle sound waves to hard cosmic rays.
The work was arduous and detailed. Each radiator was slowly driven through its range, then removed and higher frequency equipment used. At each fraction of an octave, the object was carefully photographed to record its response.
After watching the work for two days, Terry wearied of the seemingly non-productive labor. "I suppose you know what you're doing, Del," he said. "But is it getting you anywhere at all?"
Underwood shook his head. "Here's the batch of photographs. You'll probably want them to illustrate your report. The surfaces of the object are mathematically exact to a thousandth of a millimeter. Believe me, that's some tolerance on an object of this size. The surfaces are of number fifteen smoothness, which means they are plane within a hundred-thousandth of a millimeter. The implications are obvious. The builders who constructed that were mechanical geniuses."
"Did you get any radioactive dating?"
"Rather doubtfully, but the indications are around half a million years."
"That checks with what we know about the Stroids."
"It would appear that their culture is about on a par with our own."
"Personally, I think they were ahead of us," said Terry. "And do you see what that means to us archeologists? It's the first time in the history of the science that we've had to deal with the remains of a civilization either equal or superior to our own. The problems are multiplied a thousand times when you try to take a step up instead of a step down."
"Any idea of what the Stroids looked like?"
"We haven't found any bodies, skeletons, or even pictures, but we think they were at least roughly anthropomorphic. They were farther from the Sun than we, but it was younger then and probably gave them about the same amount of heat. Their planet was larger and the Stroids appear to have been somewhat larger as individuals than we, judging from the artifacts we've discovered. But they seem to have had a suitable atmosphere of oxygen diluted with appropriate inert gases."
They were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a laboratory technician who brought in a dry photographic print still warm from the developing box.
He laid it on the desk before Underwood. "I thought you might be interested in this."
Underwood and Terry glanced at it. The picture was of the huge, gemlike artifact, but a number of the facets seemed to be covered with intricate markings of short, wavy lines.
Underwood stared closer at the thing. "What the devil are those? We took pictures of every facet previously and there was nothing like this. Get me an enlargement of these."
"I already have." The assistant laid another photo on the desk, showing the pattern of markings as if at close range. They were clearly discernible now.
"What do you make of it?" asked Underwood.
"I'd say it looked like writing," Terry said. "But it's not like any of the other Stroid characters I've seen—which doesn't mean much, of course, because there could be thousands that I've never seen. Only how come these characters are there now, and we never noticed them before?"
"Let's go out and have a look," said Underwood. He grasped the photograph and noted the numbers of the facets on which the characters appeared.
In a few moments the two men were speeding toward the surface of their discovery astride scooters. They jockeyed above the facets shown on the photographs, and stared in vain.
"Something's the matter," said Terry. "I don't see anything here."
"Let's go all the way around on the scooters. Those guys may have bungled the job of numbering the photos."
They began a slow circuit, making certain they glimpsed all the facets from a height of only ten feet.
"It's not here," Underwood agreed at last. "Let's talk to the crew that took the shots."
They headed towards the equipment platform, floating in free space, from which Mason, one of the Senior Physicists, was directing operations. Mason signaled for the radiations to be cut off as the men approached.
"Find any clues, Chief?" he asked Underwood. "We've done our best to fry this apple, but nothing happens."
"Somethingdidhappen. Did you see it?" Underwood extended the photograph with the mechanical fingers of the spacesuit. Mason held it in a light and stared at it. "We didn't see a thing like that. And we couldn't have missed it." He turned to the members of the crew. "Anyone see this writing on the thing?"
They looked at the picture and shook their heads.
"What were you shooting on it at the time?"
Mason glanced at his records. "About a hundred and fifty angstroms."
"So there must be something that becomes visible only in a field of radiation of about that wave length," said Underwood. "Keep going and see if anything else turns up, or if this proves to be permanent after exposure to that frequency."
Back in the laboratory, they sat down at the desk and went through the file of hundreds of photographs that were now pouring out of the darkroom.
"Not a thing except that one," said Terry. "It looks like a message intended only for someone who knew what frequency would make it visible."
Underwood shook his head. "That sounds a little too melodramatic for me. Yet it is possible that this thing is some kind of repository, and we've found the key to it. But what a key! It looks as if we've got to decipher the language of the Stroids in order to use the key."
"The best men in the field have been trying to do that for only about seventy-five years. If that's what it takes, we may as well quit right now."
"You said that this was nothing like any other Stroid characters that you had seen. Maybe this belongs to a different cultural stratum. It might prove easier to crack. Who's the best man in the field on this stuff?"
"Dreyer at the semantics lab. He won't touch it any more. He says he's wasted fifteen years of his life on the Stroid inscriptions."
"I'll bet he will tackle this, if it's as new as you think it is. I've seen some of those antiquarians before. We'll get Phyfe to transmit some copies of this to him. Who's the next best man?"
"Probably Phyfe himself."
"It won't be hard to get him started on it, I'll bet."
It wasn't. The old scientist was ecstatic over the discovery of the inscriptions upon the huge gem. He took copies of the pictures into his study and spent two full days comparing them with the known records.
"It's an entirely new set of characters," he said after completing the preliminary examination. "We already have three sets of characters that seem to be in no way related. This is the fourth."
"You sent copies to Dreyer?"
"Only because you requested it. Dreyer admitted long ago that he was licked."
During the week of Phyfe's study, the work of radiation analysis had been completed. It proved completely negative with the single exception of the 150 A. radiation which rendered visible the characters on the gem. No secondary effects of any significance whatever had been noted. The material reflected almost completely nearly every frequency imposed upon it.
Thus, Underwood found himself again at the end of his resources. It was impossible to analyze material that refused to react, which was refractive to every force applied.
Underwood told Terry at the conclusion of a series of chemical tests, "If you want to keep that thing out here any longer, I'm afraid you've got to think of some more effective way of examining it than I have been able to do. From a physical standpoint this artifact is in about the same position as the language of the Stroids had been semantically—completely intractable."
"I'm not afraid of its being sent back to the museum now. Papa Phyfe's got his teeth into it and he won't let go until he cracks the key to this lingo."
Underwood didn't believe that it would ever be solved, unless by some lucky chance they came upon a sort of Rosetta Stone which would bridge the gap between the human mind and that of the alien Stroids. Even if the Stroids were somewhat anthropomorphic in makeup as the archeologists believed, there was no indication that their minds would not be so utterly alien that no bridge would even be possible.
Underwood felt seriously inclined to abandon the problem. While completely fascinating, it was hardly more soluble than was the problem of the composition of the stars in the days before the spectroscope was invented. Neither the archeologists, the semanticists, nor the physicists yet had the tools to crack the problem of the Stroids. Until the tools became available, the problem would simply have to go by the boards. The only exception was the remote possibility of a deliberate clue left by the Stroids themselves, but Underwood did not believe in miracles.
His final conviction came when word came back from Dreyer, who said, "Congratulations, Phyfe," and returned the copies of the Stroid characters with a short note.
"Well, that does it," said Underwood.
Phyfe was dismayed by Dreyer's reply. "The man's simply trying to uphold a decaying reputation by claiming the problem can't be solved. Send it to the museum and let them begin work on it. I'll give it my entire time. You will help me, if you will, Doctor Bernard."
Terry himself was becoming somewhat dismayed by the magnitude of the mystery they had uncovered. He knew Phyfe's bulldog tenacity when he tackled something and he didn't want to be tied to semantics for the rest of the term of the expedition.
Underwood, however, had become immersed in X-ray work, attempting to determine the molecular structure of the artifact from a crystallographic standpoint, to find out if it could be found it might be possible to disrupt the pattern.
After he had been at it for about a week, Terry came into the lab in a disgruntled mood at the completion of a work period.
"You look as if Papa gave you a spanking," said Underwood. "Why the downcast mood?"
"I think I'll resign and go back to the museum. It's useless to work on this puzzle any longer."
"How do you know?"
"Because it doesn't follow the laws of semantics with respect to language."
"Maybe the laws need changing."
"You know better than that. Look, you are as familiar with Carnovan's law as I am. It states that in any language there is bound to be a certain constant frequency of semantic conceptions. It's like the old frequency laws that used to be used in cryptographic analysis except a thousand times more complex. Anyway, we've made thousands of substitutions into Carnovan's frequency scale and nothing comes out. Not a thing. No concept of ego, identity, perfection, retrogression, or intercourse shows up. The only thing that registers in the slightest degree is the concept of motion, but it doesn't yield a single key word. It's almost as if it weren't even a language."
"Maybe it isn't."
"What else could it be?"
"Well, maybe this thing we've found is a monument of some kind and the inscriptions are ritualistic tributes to dead heroes or something. Maybe there's no trick at all about the radiation business. Maybe they used that frequency for common illumination and the inscription was arranged to show up just at night. The trouble with you strict semanticists is that you don't use any imagination."
"Like to try a hand at a few sessions with Papa Phyfe?"
"No, thanks, but I do think there are other possibilities that you are overlooking. I make no claim to being anything but a strictly ham semanticist, but suppose, for example, that the inscriptions are not language at all in the common sense."
"They must represent transfer of thought in some form."
"True, but look at the varied forms of thought. You are bound down to the conception of language held as far back as Korzybski. At least to the conception held by those who didn't fully understand Korzybski. You haven't considered the concept of music. It's a very real possibility, but one which would remain meaningless without the instrument. Consider also—Wait a minute, Terry! We've all been a bunch of thoroughbred dopes!"
"What is it?"
"Look at the geometrical and mechanical perfection of the artifact. That implies mathematical knowledge of a high order. The inscriptions could be mathematical measurements of some kind. That would explain the breakdown of Carnovan's principles. They don't apply to math."
"But what kind of math would be inscribed on a thing like that?"
"Who knows? We can give it a try."
It was the beginning of their sleeping period, but Terry was fired with Underwood's sudden enthusiasm. He brought in a complete copy of all the inscriptions found upon the facets of the black gem. Underwood placed them on a large table in continuous order as they appeared around the circumference.
"It's mud to me," said Terry. "I'm the world's worst mathematician."
"Look!" exclaimed Underwood. "Here's the beginning of it." He suddenly moved some of the sheets so that one previously in the middle formed the beginning of the sequence. "What does it look like to you?"
"I've seen that until I dream of it. It's one Phyfe tried to make the most of in his frequency determinations. It looks like nothing more than some widgets alongside a triangle."
"That's exactly what it is, and no wonder Phyfe found it had a high frequency. That is nothing more nor less than an explanation of the Stroid concept of the differential. This widget over here must be the sign of the derivative corresponding to our dy/dx."
Hastily, Underwood scrawled some symbols on a scratch pad, using combinations of "x"s and "y"s and the strange, unknown symbols of the Stroids.
"It checks. They're showing us how to differentiate! Not only that, we have the key to their numerical system in the exponentials, because they've given us the differentiation of a whole series of power expressions here. Now, somewhere we ought to find an integral expression which we could check back with differentiation. Here it is!"
Terry, left behind now, went to the galley and brewed a steaming pot of coffee and brought it back. He found Underwood staring unseeingly ahead of him into the dark, empty corners of the lab.
"What is it?" Terry exclaimed. "What have you found?"
"I'm not sure. Do you know what the end product of all this math is?"
"What?"
"A set of wave equations, but such wave equations as any physicist would be thought crazy to dream up. Yet, in light of some new manipulations introduced by the Stroids, they seem feasible."
"What can we do with them?"
"We can build a generator and see what kind of stuff comes out of it when we operate it according to this math. The Stroids obviously intended that someone find this and learn to produce the radiation described. For what purpose we can only guess—but we might find out."
"Do we have enough equipment aboard to build such a generator?"
"I think so. We could cannibalize enough from equipment we already have on hand. Let's try it."
Terry hesitated. "I'm not quite sure, but—well, this stuff comes about as near as anything I ever saw to giving me what is commonly known as the creeps. Somehow these Stroids seem too—tooanxious. That sounds crazy, I know, but there's such alienness here."
"Nuts. Let's build their generator and see what they're trying to tell us."
Phyfe was exuberant. He not only gave permission to construct the generator, he demanded that all work aboard the lab ship give priority to the new project.
The design of the machine was no easy task, for Underwood was a physicist and not an engineer. However, he had two men, Moody and Hansen, in his staff who were first rate engineers. On them fell the chief burden of design after Underwood worked out the rough specifications.
One of the main laboratories with nearly ten thousand square feet of floor space was cleared for the project. As the specifications flowed from Underwood's desk, they passed over to Moody and Hansen, and from there out to the lab where the mass of equipment was gathered from all parts of the fleet.
An atomic power supply sufficient to give the large amount of energy required by the generator was obtained by robbing the headquarters ship of its auxiliary supply. Converter units were available in theLavoisieritself, but the main radiator tubes had to be cannibalized from the 150 A equipment aboard.
Slowly the mass of improvised equipment grew. It would have been a difficult task on Earth with all facilities available for such a project, but with these makeshift arrangements it was a miracle that the generator continued to develop. A score of times Underwood had to make compromises that he hoped would not alter the characteristics of the wave which, two weeks before, he would have declared impossible to generate.
When the equipment was completed and ready for a trial check, the huge lab was a mass of hay-wiring into which no one but Moody and Hansen dared go.
The completion was an anti-climax. The great project that had almost halted all other field work was finished—and no one knew what to expect when Hansen threw the switch that fed power from the converters into the giant tubes.
As a matter of fact, nothing happened. Only the faint whine of the converters and the swinging needles of meters strung all over the room showed that the beam was in operation.
On the nose of theLavoisierwas the great, ungainly radiator a hundred feet in diameter, which was spraying the unknown depths of space with the newly created power.
Underwood and Terry were outside the ship, behind the huge radiator, with a mass of equipment designed to observe the effects of the beam.
In space it was totally invisible, creating no detectable field. It seemed as inactive as a beam of ultraviolet piercing the starlit darkness.
Underwood picked up the interphone that connected them with the interior of the ship. "Swing around, please, Captain Dawson. Let the beam rotate through a one hundred and eighty degree arc."
The Captain ordered the ship around and the greatLavoisierswung on its own axis—but not in the direction Underwood had had in mind. He failed to indicate the direction, and Dawson had assumed it didn't matter.
Ponderously, the great radiator swung about before Underwood could shout a warning. And the beam came directly in line with the mysterious gem of the universe which they had found in the heart of the asteroid.
At once, the heavens were filled with intolerable light. Terry and Underwood flung themselves down upon the hull of the ship and the physicist screamed into the phones for Dawson to swing the other way.
But his warnings were in vain, for those within the ship were blinded by the great flare of light that penetrated even the protective ports of the ship. Irresistibly, theLavoisiercontinued to swing, spraying the great gem with its mysterious radiation.
Then it was past and the beam cut into space once more.
On top of the ship, Underwood and Terry found their sight slowly returning. They had been saved the full blast of the light from the gem by the curve of the ship's hull which cut it off.
Underwood stumbled to his feet, followed by Terry. The two men stood in open-mouthed un-belief at the vision that met their eyes. Where the gem had drifted in space, there was now a blistered, boiling mass of amorphous matter that surged and steamed in the void. All semblance to the glistening, faceted, ebon gem was gone as the repulsive mass heaved within itself.
"It's destroyed!" Terry exclaimed hoarsely. "The greatest archeological find of all time and we destroy it before we find out anything about it—"
"Shut up!" Underwood commanded harshly. He tried to concentrate on the happenings before him, but he could find no meaning in it. He bemoaned the fact that he had no camera, and only prayed that someone inside would have the wit to turn one on.
As the ship continued its slow swing like a senseless animal, the pulsing of the amorphous mass that had been the jewel slowly ceased. And out of the gray murkiness of it came a new quality. It began to regain rigidity—and transparency!
Underwood gasped. At the boundary lines of the facets, heavy ribs showed the tremendously reinforced structure that formed the skeleton. And each cell between the ribs was filled with thick substance that partially revealed the unknown world within.
But more than that, between one set of ribs he glimpsed what he was sure was an emptiness, a doorway to the interior!
"Come on," he called to Terry. "Look at that opening!"
They leaped astride the scooters clamped to the surface of the lab ship and sped into space between the two objects. It required only an instant to confirm his first hasty glimpse.
They navigated the scooters close to the opening and clamped them to the surface. For a moment, Underwood thought the gem might be some strange ship from far out of the Universe, for it seemed filled with mechanism of undescribable characteristics and unknown purposes. It was so filled that it was impossible to see very far into the interior even with the help of the powerful lamps on the scooters.
"The beam was the key to get into the thing," said Terry. "It was intended all along that the beam be turned on it. The beam had to be connected with the gem in some way."
"And what a way!"
The triangular opening was large enough to admit a man. Underwood and Terry knelt at the edge of it, peering down, flashing their lights about the revealed interior. The opening seemed to drop into the center of a small room that was bare.
"Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," quoted Terry. "I don't see anything down there, do you?"
"No. Why the spider recitation?"
"I don't know. Everything is too pat. I feel as if someone is watching behind us, practically breathing down our necks and urging us on the way he wants us to go. And when we get there we aren't going to like it."
"I suppose that is strictly a scientific hunch which we ignorant physicists wouldn't understand."
But Terry was serious. The whole aspect of the Stroid device was unnerving in the way it led along from step to step, as if unseen powers were guiding them, rather than using their own initiative in their work.
Underwood gave a final grunt and dropped into the hole, flashing his light rapidly about. Terry followed immediately. They found themselves in the center of a circular room twenty feet in diameter. The walls and the floor seemed to be of the same ebony-black material that had composed the outer shell of the gem before its transmutation.
The walls were literally covered from the floor to the ten-foot ceiling with inscriptions that glowed faintly in the darkness when the flashlights were not turned on them.
"Recognize any of this stuff?" asked Underwood.
"Stroid III," said Terry in awe. "The most beautiful collection of engravings that have ever been found. We've never obtained a consecutive piece even a fraction this size before. Dreyer has got to come now."
"I've got a hunch about this," said Underwood slowly. "I don't know a thing about the procedures used in deciphering an unknown lingo, but I'll bet you find that this is an instruction primer to their language, just as the inscriptions outside gave the key to their math before detailing the wave equations."
"You might be right!" Terry's eyes glowed with enthusiasm as he looked about the polished walls with the faintly glowing characters inlaid in them. "If that's the case, Papa Phyfe and I ought to be able to do the job without Dreyer."
They returned to the ship for photographic equipment and to report their finding to Phyfe. It was a little difficult for him to adjust to the view that something had been gained in the transformation of the gem. The sight of that boiling, amorphous mass in space had been to him like helplessly standing on the bank of a stream and watching a loved one drown.
But with Terry's report on the characters in Stroid III which lined the walls of the antechamber which they had penetrated, he was ready to admit that their position had improved.
Underwood was merely a by-stander as they returned to the gem. Two photographers, Carson and Enright, accompanied them along with Nichols, assistant semanticist.
Underwood stood by, in the depths of speculation, as the photographers set up their equipment and Phyfe bent down to examine the characters at close range.
Terry continued to be dogged by the feeling that they were being led by the nose into something that would end unpleasantly. He didn't know why, except that the fact of immense and meticulous preparation was evidenced on all sides. It was the reason for that preparation which made him wonder.
Phyfe said to Underwood, "Doctor Bernard tells me your opinion is that this room is a key to Stroid III. You may be right, but I fail to find any indication of it at present. What gives you that idea?"
"The whole setup," said Underwood. "First, there was the impenetrable shell. Nothing like it exists in Solarian culture today. Then there was the means by which we were able to read the inscriptions on the outside. Obviously, if heat and fission reactions as well as chemical reactions could not touch the stuff, the only remaining means of analysis was radiative. And the only peoples who could discover the inscriptions were those capable of building a generator of 150 A. radiations. We have there two highly technical requirements of anyone attempting to solve the secret of this cache—ability to generate the proper radiation, and the ability to understand their mathematics and build a second generator from their wave equations.
"Now that we're in here, there is nothing more we can do until we can understand their printed language. Obviously, they must teach it to us. This would be the place."
"You may be right," said Phyfe, "But we archeologists work with facts, not guesses. We'll know soon enough if it's true."
Underwood felt content to speculate while the others worked. There was nothing else for him to do. No way out of the anteroom was apparent, but he was confident that a way to the interior would be found when the inscriptions were deciphered.
He went out to the surface and walked slowly about, peering into the transparent depths with his light. What lay within this repository left by an ancient race that had obviously equaled or surpassed man in scientific attainments? Would it be some vast store of knowledge that would come to bless mankind with greater abundance? Or would it, rather, be a new Pandora's box, which would pour out upon the world new ills to add to its already staggering burden?
The world had about all it could stand now, Underwood reflected. For a century, Earth's scientific production had boomed. Her factories had roared with the throb of incessant production, and the utopia of all the planners of history was gradually coming to pass. Man's capacities for production had steadily increased for five hundred years, and at last the capacities for consumption were rising equally, with correspondingly less time spent in production and greater time spent in consumption.
But the utopia wasn't coming off just as the Utopians had dreamed of it. The ever present curse of enforced leisure was not respecting the new age any more than it had past ages. Men were literally being driven crazy with their super-abundance of luxury.
Only a year before, the so-called Howling Craze had swept cities and nations. It was a wave of hysteria that broke out in epidemic proportions. Thousands of people within a city would be stricken at a time by insensate weeping and despair. One member of a household would be afflicted and quickly it would spread from that man to the family, and from that family it would race the length and breadth of the streets, up and down the city, until one vast cry as of a stricken animal would assault the heavens.
Underwood had seen only one instance of the Howling Craze and he had fled from it as if pursued. It was impossible to describe its effects upon the nervous system—a whole city in the throes of hysteria.
Life was cheap, as were the other luxuries of Earth. Murders by the thousands each month were scarcely noticed, and the possession of weapons for protection had become a mark of the new age, for no man knew when his neighbor might turn upon him.
Governments rose and fell swiftly and became little more than figureheads to carry out the demands of peoples cloyed with the excesses of life. Most significant of all, however, was the inability of any leader to hold any following for more than a short time.
Of all the inhabitants of Earth, there were but a few hundred thousand scientists who were able to keep themselves on even keel, and most of these were now fleeing.
As he thought of these things, Underwood pondered what the opening of the repository of a people who sealed up their secrets half a million years ago would mean to mankind. This must be what Terry felt, he thought.
For perhaps three hours he remained on the outside of the shell, letting his mind idle under the brilliance of the stars. Suddenly, the phones in his helmet came alive with sound. It was the voice of Terry Bernard.
"We've got it, Del," he said quietly. "We can read this stuff like nursery rhymes. Come on down. It tells us how to get into the thing."
Underwood did not hurry. He rose slowly from his sitting position and stared upward at the stars, the same stars that had looked down upon the beings who had sealed up the repository. This is it, he thought. Man can never go back again.
He lowered himself into the opening.
Doctor Phyfe was strangely quiet in spite of their quick success in deciphering the language of the Stroids. Underwood wondered what was going through the old man's mind. Did he, too, sense the magnitude of this moment?
Phyfe said, "They were semanticists as well. They knew Carnovan's frequency. It's right here, the key they used to reveal their language. No one less advanced in semantics than our own civilization could have deciphered it, but with a knowledge of Carnovan's frequency, it is simple."
"Practically hand-picked us for the job," said Terry.
Phyfe's sharp eyes turned upon him suddenly behind the double protection of his spectacles and the transparent helmet of the spacesuit.
"Perhaps," said Phyfe. "Perhaps we are. At any rate, there are certain manipulations to be performed which will open this chamber and provide passage to the interior."
"Where's the door?" said Underwood.
Following the notes he had made, Terry moved about the room, directing Underwood's attention to features of the design. Delicately carved, movable levers formed an intricate combination that suddenly released a section of the floor in the exact center of the room. It depressed slowly, then revolved out of the way.
For a moment no one spoke while Phyfe moved to the opening and peered down. A stairway of the same glistening material as the walls about them led downward into the depths of the repository.
Phyfe stepped down and almost stumbled into the opening. "Watch for those steps," he warned. "They're larger than necessary for human beings."
Giants in those dayscame to Underwood's mind. He tried to vision the creatures who had walked upon this stairway and touched the hand rail that was shoulder high for him.
The repository was divided into levels and the stairway ended abruptly as they came to the level below the anteroom. The chamber in which they found themselves was crowded with artifacts of strange shapes and varying sizes. Not a thing of familiar cast greeted them. But opposite the bottom of the stairway was a pedestal and upon it rested a booklike object that proved to be hinged metallic sheets, covered with Stroid III inscriptions, when Terry climbed up to examine it. He was unable to move it, but the metal pages were locked with a simple clasp that responded to his touch.
"It looks as if we've got to read our way along," said Terry. "I suppose this will tell us how to get into the next room."
Underwood and the other expedition members moved cautiously about, examining the contents of the room. The two photographers began to make an orderly pictorial record of everything within the chamber.
Standing alone in one corner, Underwood peered at an object that appeared to be nothing but a series of opaque, polychrome globes tangent to each other and mounted on a pedestal.
Whether it were some kind of machine or monument, he could not tell.
"You feel it, too," said a sudden quiet voice behind him. Underwood whirled about in surprise. Phyfe was there behind him, his slight figure a shapeless shadow in the spacesuit.
"Feel what?"
"I've watched you, Doctor Underwood. You are a physicist and in far closer touch with the real world than I. You have seen me—I cannot even manage an expedition with efficiency—my mind lives constantly in the past, and I cannot comprehend the significance of contemporary things. Tell me what it will mean, this intrusion of an alien science into our own."
A sudden, new, and humbling respect filled Underwood. He had never dreamed that the little archeologist had such a penetrating view of himself in his relation to his environment.
"I wish I could answer that question," said Underwood, shaking his head. "I can't. Perhaps if we knew, we'd destroy the thing—or it might be that we'd shout our discovery to the Universe. But we can't know, and we wouldn't dare be the judges if we could. Whatever it is, the ancient Stroids seem to have deliberately attempted to provide for the survival of their culture." He hesitated. "That, of course is my guess."
In the darkened corner of the chamber, Phyfe nodded slowly. "You are right, of course. It is the only answer. We dare not try to be the judges."
Underwood saw that he would get nowhere in his understanding of the Stroid science by merely depending on the translations given him by Terry and Phyfe. He'd have to learn to read the Stroid inscriptions himself. He buttonholed Nichols and got the semanticist to show him the rudiments of the language. It was amazingly simple in principle and constructed along semantic lines.
The going became rapidly heavier, however, and it took them the equivalent of five days to get through the fairly elementary material disclosed in the first level below the antechamber.
The book of metal pages did little to satisfy their curiosity concerning either the ancient planet or its culture. It instructed them further in understanding the language, and addressed them as Unknown friends—the nearest human translation.
As was already apparent, the repository had been prepared to save the highest products of the ancient Stroid culture from the destruction that came upon the world. But the records did not even hint as to the nature of that destruction and they said nothing about the objects in the room.
The scientists were a bit disappointed by the little revealed to them so far, but, as expected, there were instructions to enter the next lower level. There, an entirely different situation confronted them.
The chamber into which they came after winding down a long, spiral stairway, narrow, yet with the same high steps as before, was spherical in shape and seemed to be concentric with the outer shell of the repository. It contained a single object.
The object was a cube in the center of the chamber, about two feet on a side. From the corners of the cube, long supports of complicated spring structure led to the inner surface of the spherical chamber. It appeared to be a highly effective shock mounting for whatever was contained within the cube.