Chapter V

Edholm continued: "You will all return to headquarters. I shall remain here to examine the bomb fragments."

Roy Auckland cleared his throat, "On the contrary, Captain, since I am in charge of the investigation I'm going to have to veto one thing you've said and amend another. There will be a full report only when I am satisfied that the case is solved, and then everyone will hear it. Until then, I shall tell any of you as much as suits my purposes. And until then, everyone is under suspicion, including the captain."

He lifted a hand as Edholm bristled. "When I say everyone is under suspicion, I do not mean that I consider the guilt of everyone equally probable but rather that I am not starting out with the assumption that anyone is to be considered above suspicion. That is the amendment. From time to time, you will all be asked to assist.

"Right now I would like Doctor James to take charge while Captain Edholm and I examine the room in question. That is the veto. Please get ready to return to headquarters, but no one will leave until we return."

He followed Edholm inside the doorway and felt the strangeness of the room, which was as he had seen it in the pictures. There was one difference, however; over near the wall that faced the adjoining unit, a section of the floor had slid back, revealing a flight of steps leading down.

"You can't wish the lights out so long as this is open," Edholm said. "There's one flight leading down, and another leading up to the next building. This is the only way to get from one of these units to another without going outside."

At the end of the steps was an entrance like the entrance outside. They passed through and Edholm turned and faced it. "Watch," he said. He lowered his head as if in deep concentration, and the opening closed. "I have shut the door and turned off the lights in the upstairs room."

Now he saw the walls around him, filled with designs in color, and groups of dots and bars and lines. It was like nothing he had ever seen before except perhaps a collection of abstractionist paintings, and he had to force himself not to stare at them and try to trace the shapes and make them fall into some sort of pattern. The alienness of it was both pleasing and disturbing. Auckland shook his head and forced himself to ignore the murals. Edholm, he saw, paid no attention to them at all.

The peculiar blocks were scattered about the floor, one of them resting by the far wall. The wall of blocks, he saw, had not been entirely knocked down.

Edholm pointed to the single block. "That one was propelled with a lot of force, though it didn't dent the wall or even damage the surface," he said. "Just how badly it would have hurt anyone it hit is hard to tell. If it had only made some sort of mark, we'd have something to go on."

"We have quite a bit to go on," replied Auckland, picking the block up, astonished at its lightness. He took a stylus out of his pocket and tapped it. "Doesn't sound hollow, though."

It took a while to gather the fragments of the improvised bomb. "Any ideas about these?" he asked the captain.

Edholm nodded. "Yes. I can tell you that it was rigged from various toys and gadgets we brought with us for the Vaec. Extremely simple. An explosive pellet was put in a mousetrap, and the trap was attached to a little windup timer. When the timer went off, it released the trap and exploded the pellet. Want to take the remains back to headquarters?"

Auckland shook his head. "No. It's simple enough for anyone, including me, to have rigged. These little timers all make a ticking sound, don't they."

"Yes. Well, no, we did have a few silent ones, but the Vaec didn't care for them so much."

"Very interesting. And everyone, of course, has access to the store rooms. I take it the Vaec find mousetraps amusing, too." Edholm nodded. "Tell me, if a pellet were exploded out in the middle of the room, do you think the concussion would be fatal to us?"

Edholm mused for a moment. "It would shatter our eardrums, that's certain. Whether one of them would kill us, I'm not sure. Wouldn't want to take a chance on it. Of course, there may have been more than one pellet attached to the trap."

"We heard it go off from a considerable distance. I take it that Doc left all the doors open when he came out of the cellar."

"They make a lot of noise. The Vaec used them for fireworks--Leitfred gave them some on his second trip here. But they seem to have lost interest in them. I suppose it's because these things are a bit too dangerous for practical jokes. Anything else you want to look at here?"

"No, we may as well head back." It was clear that the improvised bomb might have been dangerous had James been in the room, but the question of how dangerous remained open. That would require tests, and he made a note to have Ekem-ve take care of it.

In his quarters, Roy Auckland spoke into the microphone of his recorder as he riffled through the personal dossiers of the expedition members.

"Question one," he said. "Why is Shirley Mason with this expedition? Why did she resign from the space service to join it, when she had a far more promising career ahead of her, since she received the citation for bravery beyond the call of duty, trying to rescue a sick passenger in the wreck of the spaceship _Scriabin_?

"Question two: What is Calvin Burleigh's present connection with the Fowler Committee on Alien Contacts? When he was committee chairman, the line was that Earthmen should run away fast the moment they saw aliens not clearly their equal, lest fallen and wicked human beings corrupt simple and pure natives. He is the only one here who refers to the Vaec as natives and acts as if he would like to put an end to the expedition.

"Question three: Would Edholm also like to stop the work? He testified before the Fowler Committee and tried to get this planet declared off-limits for Earthmen. But he does not regard the Vaec as primitives. He seems to distrust them, for all his politeness toward them.

"Question four: What is Amelia James' real attitude towards her husband? She met him at Sanderson's Rest in Alaska shortly after the Marlene affair, and they have been married over thirty years. He does not seem to take her infidelities seriously, but relations between him and Glamis and Burleigh show signs of strain. Is he jealous? Would Amelia like to be free of--"

The intercom buzzed, and Auckland switched off the microphone and turned the room speaker on. Dr. Howard James's voice came through, excitedly.

"Will everyone please come to the recreation room? I have something to show all of you."

* * * * *

Everyone else was there, except James, when Auckland arrived in the rec-room. Dr. James entered a moment later, bouncing in with the air of one who has found the Lost Chord. Auckland felt an irresistible urge to needle him at the earliest opportunity. Could this, and this alone, be the meaning of Glamis's behavior toward the chief?

It was possible, but Glamis wasn't wearing his usual sardonic smile as Howard James held up an object they all recognized as one of the books found in the villa. James placed it on the table silently, and they all gathered around him.

Looking at the object gave Auckland that feeling of looking at tomorrow again. There was a simplicity and beauty and implication of durability in the covering material that made all Earthmade books, even the finest, seem shabby and impertinent by comparison. As if the books of Earth were a mockery and negation of the very idea of bookmaking. There was the breath of eternity in this object and Auckland thought, _Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words will never pass away_.

James opened the book, and the substance on which the contents were impressed augmented the impression of the outside. He did not have to touch the pages; he had handled these volumes and knew that the pages were light, flexible, and impervious to any ordinary application of heat or moisture. The spark from a cigarette could fall upon them; water, acids, alkalines, grease could be spilled on them and wiped away, leaving no trace. They were almost white, taking on a slight tone which varied with the light falling upon them.

He looked at the matter on the pages, and it was like a glimpse of yesterday--yesterday's yesterday.

He thought of illuminated manuscripts, because he knew without any further evidence that these pages had not been "printed" or otherwise reproduced by mass mechanical means. This was handmade.

James turned a page and it lay there flat. The books could be opened and left thus at any page. There was no tendency in the book to close itself, yet no matter how hard one pressed upon open pages at any point, the binding remained unharmed. He looked at the dots and lines and bars, some in different colors, that made up the left column, then gasped at what he saw in the right column. It was....

"Looks familiar," came Glamis' voice, breaking into his thoughts.

James nodded appreciatively. "I was hoping you would say that, Ken. Go on don't let me suggest what it looks like."

"Reminds me of Old Martian."

"My thought, too," said Burleigh in an awed voice.

Auckland looked at Shirley and then at Amelia. Both of them ignored the book on the table. Both of them were watching Kenneth Glamis. Shirley's face was calm but it made him think of a mask. Amelia's ripe lips were parted slightly and she was having more trouble in suppressing emotion.

Edholm said dryly, "Gentlemen, it _is_ Old Martian." He nodded at James stiffly, reluctant approval in his voice. "You have found a Rosetta stone, sir."

Auckland felt himself breathing more quickly, as the feeling came to him that he was present at a moment of history. When men first explored Mars, they found traces of a long-vanished civilization and a few decipherable inscriptions that were close enough to Sanskrit to translate more or less intelligibly. The indication was clear that either the Martians had once been on earth, or that Earthmen had set up a civilization on Mars. A civilization, not just a colony. Colonies do not develop the type of art forms that were found on Mars until they have passed the stage of dependence and are no longer colonies. There were factions among Earth's archaeologists as to which was the case; at the moment, the party which believed the Old Martians to have migrated from Earth was in ascendancy.

Later explorations uncovered fragments of records, partial translations suggesting that the Old Martians--to distinguish them from the simple, insectoid creatures now dwelling on the fourth planet--had had something like a stellar empire. The records referred to contact and friendly relations with another (humanoid?) culture, which also covered many worlds.

You had to put a question mark after "humanoid," because there was no description of either the other beings or the Old Martians themselves. The phrases describing these other beings broke down to "much like ourselves in form," which meant that these others were humanoid if the Old Martians themselves were human or humanoid.

Where the Old Martians had gone, or why, was still a riddle. There was a fragment of what was believed to be a poem, of which one line read something like "when we bid farewell to this system." Context suggested that "this system" was our own solar system, and opinion was that the Old Martians had migrated en masse to the planets of another sun or suns.

"The evidence," James was saying in a satisfied tone of voice, "is entirely circumstantial. But circumstantial evidence can sometimes be very convincing, I refer you to the classic example of the trout in the milk, which is still used in elementary law. Now you must admit that the circumstances indicate a connection between the Vaec and the villa. We have seen the numerous similarities.

"And I further suggest the similarity of pointlessness. The Vaec do innumerable things which seem pointless or childish to us, and the wall of blocks we found seem to be the same sort of pointlessness."

"Meaning, really, that we just do not see the point," said Edholm. "I think there is a lot before our eyes that we are just not seeing."

"Of course," James agreed. "We haven't the proper perspective. A trout in the milk is convincing evidence that water was added to the milk. But it does not positively state why, nor again, how much. To torture the analogy, in some milieus the trout may have added because people like the flavor trout gives to the milk. In others, the trout may be accidental, but the addition of water is considered desirable. In the frame where such things happened in our own history alone, was it proof of adulteration with intent to deceive?"

"And what do you think this volume may indicate, in addition to being a Rosetta stone, Doctor?" asked Auckland.

James smiled. "I expect to find some indication that the Vaec here are remnants of that other culture referred to in the Old Martian fragments. Oh, by the way, did Ekem-ve bring the box I asked for?"

"It's in the lab," said Shirley.

"Good. I was going to study it tonight, compare the designs with the designs in the photos I've taken of those murals in the villa. I think we may find some definite connection between the Vaec and the builders of the villa."

"My guess is that you will find a very close resemblance," said Glamis. His voice wasn't mocking, but he was secretly amused about something, Auckland thought.

"Well, that can wait," James said. "I'm going to take this book to look over tonight. Want to see if there is any noticeable similarity at any point in the characters of the two scripts." He picked up the book and started out.

Glamis looked after him and said lightly, "For a man who's apparently escaped two assassination attempts in one day--"

"The assassin overlooked one essential," broke in Burleigh. "If he had left that book lying on the floor, he could have put his bomb in the middle of the room, and James would have never heard it."

Amelia James, who had started toward the door, paused and threw a withering glance at the two men. Then her eyes met Auckland's and her lips parted. She didn't speak but her eyes said, "Please come with me."