Part-3
Lunch at the was a meal, with a of full-mouthed and talking. Hubert Penrose and his their food in a at one end of the table; in the afternoon, work was on else and the fifty-odd men and of the their on the University. By the middle of the afternoon, the seventh had been examined, and sketched, and the in the square with tarpaulins, and Laurent Gicquel and his had moved in and were at work. It had been to seal the at the entrances. It took the French-Canadian most of the to all the ventilation-ducts and them. An elevator-shaft on the north was clear to the twenty-fifth floor; this would give to the top of the building; another shaft, from the center, would take of the below. Nobody to trust the elevators, themselves; it was the next a of[Pg 32] and the necessary be in the machine shops the ship and sent by landing-rocket. By that time, the was finished, the nuclear-electric energy-converters were in place, and the set up.
Martha was in the basement, an hour or so the day after, when a of Space Force officers came out of the elevator, lights with them. She was still using oxygen-equipment; it was a moment she that the had no masks, and that one of them was smoking. She took off her own helmet-speaker, throat-mike and and her tank-pack, cautiously. The air was chilly, and musty-acrid with the odor of antiquity—the Martian odor she had smelled—but when she a cigarette, the clear and and the tobacco and evenly.
The archaeologists, many of the other scientists, a of the Space Force officers and the two news-correspondents, Sid Chamberlain and Gloria Standish, moved in that evening, setting up in rooms. They electric and a in the old Library Reading Room, and put in a and counter. For a days, the place was full of noise and activity, then, gradually, the Space Force people and all but a of the returned to their own work. There was still the of the more of the already explored, and them up in for the arrival, in a year and a half, of the[Pg 33] five hundred members of the main expedition. There was work to be done the landing for the ship's craft, and new chemical-fuel tanks.
There was the work of the city's of the next more water the called in of Schiaparelli's Italian word, though this was than anticipated. The Canal-Builders must have a time when their would no longer be of work, and had prepared against it. By the day after the University had been habitable, the work there was being done by Selim, Tony Lattimer and herself, with a dozen Space Force officers, mostly girls, and four or five civilians, helping.
They up from the bottom, the floor-surfaces into numbered squares, and and sketching and photographing. They of and sent them up to the ship for Carbon-14 and analysis; they opened and and bottles, and that in them had evaporated, through the of and metal and plastic if there were no other way. Wherever they looked, they of activity and resumed. A with a of metal in it, cut through and the it. Pots and with of food in them; a cut of meat on a table, with the knife at hand. Toilet articles on washstands; beds, the to at a touch but still the of the sleeper's body; papers and materials on desks, as though the had up, meaning to return and in a fifty-thousand-year-ago moment.
It her. Irrationally, she to that the Martians had left this place; that they were still around her, every time she up something they had down. They her dreams, now, of their writing. At first, who had moved into the University had taken a room, happy to the and of of the huts. After a nights, she was when Gloria Standish moved in with her, and the newswoman's that she without somebody to talk to asleep. Sachiko Koremitsu joined them the next evening, and going to bed, the girl officer and her pistol, that she was some may have into it.
The others it, too. Selim Ohlmhorst the of and looking him, as though trying to somebody or something that was him. Tony Lattimer, having[Pg 34] a drink at the that had been from the librarian's in the Reading Room, set his and swore.
"You know what this place is? It's an Marie Celeste!" he declared. "It was right up to the end—we've all the shifts these people used to keep a going here—but what was the end? What to them? Where did they go?"
"You didn't them to be waiting out front, with a red and a big banner, Welcome Terrans, did you, Tony?" Gloria Standish asked.
"No, of not; they've all been for fifty thousand years. But if they were the last of the Martians, why haven't we their bones, at least? Who them, after they were dead?" He looked at the glass, a bubble-thin goblet, found, with hundreds of others like it, in a above, as though with himself to have another drink. Then he voted in the and for the pitcher. "And every door on the old ground level is either or from the inside. How did they out? And why did they leave?"
The next day, at lunch, Sachiko Koremitsu had the answer to the second question. Four or five had come by from the ship, and she had been the with them, in oxy-masks, at the top of the building.
"Tony, I you said those were in good shape," she began, of Lattimer. "They aren't. They're in the most I saw. What happened, up there, was that the supports of the wind-rotor gave way, and weight the main shaft, and under it."
"Well, after fifty thousand years, you can something like that," Lattimer retorted. "When an says something's in good shape, he doesn't necessarily it'll start as soon as you a in."
"You didn't notice that it when the power was on, did you," one of the asked, at Lattimer's tone. "Well, it was. Everything's out or or together; I saw one eight across melted clean in two. It's a we didn't in good shape, speaking. I saw a of things, in of what we're using now. But it'll take a of years to out and what it looked like originally."
"Did it look as though anybody'd any attempt to it?" Martha asked.
Sachiko her head. "They must have taken one look at it and up. I don't there would have been any possible way to repair anything."
"Well, that why they left.[Pg 35] They needed electricity for lighting, and heating, and all their was electrical. They had a good life, here, with power; without it, this place wouldn't have been habitable."
"Then why did they from the inside, and how did they out?" Lattimer wanted to know.
"To keep other people from in and looting. Last man out the last door and a rope from upstairs," Ohlmhorst suggested. "This Houdini-trick doesn't worry me too much. We'll out eventually."
"Yes, about the time Martha reading Martian," Lattimer scoffed.
"That may be just when we'll out," Ohlmhorst seriously. "It wouldn't me if they left something in when they this place."
"Are you to this pipe of hers as a possibility, Selim?" Lattimer demanded. "I know, it would be a thing, but don't just they're wonderful. Only they're possible, and this isn't. Let me that Hittitologist, Johannes Friedrich: 'Nothing can be out of nothing.' Or that later but not less Hittitologist, Selim Ohlmhorst: 'Where are you going to your bilingual?'"
"Friedrich to see the Hittite language and read," Ohlmhorst him.
"Yes, when they Hittite-Assyrian bilinguals." Lattimer a of coffee-powder into his cup and added water. "Martha, you ought to know, than anybody, how little you have. You've been for years in the Indus Valley; how many of Harappa have you or else been able to read?"
"We a university, with a half-million-volume library, at Harappa or Mohenjo-Daro."
"And, the day we entered this building, we for words," Selim Ohlmhorst added.
"And you've another word since," Lattimer added. "And you're only sure of meaning, not meaning of word-elements, and you have a dozen different for each word."
"We a start," 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 of my life here. It will, anyhow."
"You you've your mind about going home on the Cyrano?" Martha asked. "You'll on here?"
The old man nodded. "I can't this. There's too much to discover. The old dog will have to learn a of new tricks, but this is where my work will be, from now on."
Lattimer was shocked. "You're[Pg 36] nuts!" he cried. "You you're going to away you've in Hittitology and start all over again here on Mars? Martha, if you've talked him into this decision, you're a criminal!"
"Nobody talked me into anything," Ohlmhorst said roughly. "And as for away what I've in Hittitology, I don't know what the 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 and and and history. And I'm not a or a historian; I'm a pick-and-shovel archaeologist—a and grave-robber and junk-picker—and there's more pick-and-shovel work on this than I do in a hundred lifetimes. This is something new; I was a to think I turn my on it and go to about Hittite kings."
"You have anything you wanted, in Hittitology. There are a dozen that'd sooner have you than a football team. But no! You have to be the top man in Martiology, too. You can't that for else—" Lattimer his chair and got to his feet, the table with an that was almost a of exasperation.
Maybe his were too much for him. Maybe he realized, as Martha did, what he had betrayed. She sat, the of the others, looking at the ceiling, as embarrassed as though Lattimer had something dirty on the table in 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 with him the he had already in Hittitology, into the leading role that Lattimer had for himself. Ivan Fitzgerald's to her—when you want to be a big shot, you can't the possibility of else being a big shot. His of her own comprehensible, too. It wasn't that he was that she would learn to read the Martian language. He had been that she would.
