Omnilingual

waspointing at the diagram on the right.

  "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 asolid mass. No indication of proton-and-neutron structure. I'll bet,when you come to translate their scientific books, you'll find that theytaught that the atom was the ultimate and indivisible particle. Thatexplains why you people never found any evidence that the Martians usednuclear energy."

  "That's a uranium atom," Captain Miles mentioned.

  "It is?" Sid Chamberlain asked, excitedly. "Then they did know aboutatomic energy. Just because we haven't found any pictures of A-bombmushrooms doesn't mean--"

  She turned to look at the other wall. Sid's signal reactions weresetting away from him again; uranium meant nuclear power to him, and thetwo words were interchangeable. As she studied the arrangement of thenumbers and words, she could hear Tranter saying:

  "Nuts, Sid. We knew about uranium a long time before anybody found outwhat could be done with it. Uranium was discovered on Terra in 1789, byKlaproth."

  There was something familiar about the table on the left wall. She triedto remember what she had been taught in school about physics, and whatshe had picked up by accident afterward. The second column was acontinuation of the first: there were forty-six items in each, each itemnumbered 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 showsthat they hadn't created any of the transuranics. A student could go tothat thing and point out the outer electron of any of the ninety-twoelements."

  * * * * *

  Ninety-two! That was it; there were ninety-two items in the table on theleft wall! Hydrogen was Number One, she knew; One, _Sarfaldsorn_. Heliumwas Two; that was _Tirfaldsorn_. She couldn't remember which elementcame next, but in Martian it was _Sarfalddavas_. _Sorn_ must meanmatter, or substance, then. And _davas_; she was trying to think of whatit could be. She turned quickly to the others, catching hold of HubertPenrose's arm with one hand and waving her clipboard with the other.

  "Look at this thing, over here," she was clamoring excitedly. "Tell mewhat 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, beginningto set down the Arabic digits and their Martian equivalents. "It'sdecimal 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 andhelium; what's _tirfalddavas_, the third one?"

  "Lithium," Tranter said. "The atomic weights aren't run out past thedecimal point. Hydrogen's one plus, if that double-hook dingus is a plussign; 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 aMartian minus sign?"

  "Of course! Look! A plus sign is a hook, to hang things together; aminus sign is a knife, to cut something off from something--see, thelittle 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'snine-point-oh-two."

  Sid Chamberlain had been disgruntled because he couldn't get a storyabout the Martians having developed atomic energy. It took him a fewminutes to understand the newest development, but finally it dawned onhim.

  "Hey! You're reading that!" he cried. "You're reading Martian!"

  "That's right," Penrose told him. "Just reading it right off. I don'tget the two items after the atomic weight, though. They look like monthsof the Martian calendar. What ought they to be, Mort?"

  * * * * *

  Tranter hesitated. "Well, the next information after the atomic weightought 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 outershell," Tranter told her. "Helium's period one, too, but it has theouter--only--electron shell full, so it's in the group of inertelements."

  "_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 thirdelement, lithium, is Period Two, Group One. That check?"

  "It certainly does. _Sanv, Trav_; _Sanv's_ the second month. What's thefirst element in Period Three?"

  "Sodium. Number Eleven."

  That's right; it's _Krav, Trav_. Why, the names of the months are simplynumbers, 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 formetal, and _sornhulva_ is chemistry and / or physics, I'll bet TadavasSornhulva is literally translated as: Of-Metal Matter-Knowledge.Metallurgy, in other words. I wonder what Mastharnorvod means." Itsurprised her that, after so long and with so much happening in themeantime, he could remember that. "Something like 'Journal,' or'Review,' or maybe 'Quarterly.'"

  "We'll work that out, too," she said confidently. After this, nothingseemed impossible. "Maybe we can find--" Then she stopped short. "Yousaid 'Quarterly.' I think it was 'Monthly,' instead. It was dated for aspecific month, the fifth one. And if _nor_ is ten, Mastharnorvod couldbe 'Year-Tenth.' And I'll bet we'll find that _masthar_ is the word foryear." She looked at the table on the wall again. "Well, let's get allthese words down, with translations for as many as we can."

  "Let's take a break for a minute," Penrose suggested, getting out hiscigarettes. "And then, let's do this in comfort. Jeff, suppose you andSid go across the hall and see what you find in the other room in theway of a desk or something like that, and a few chairs. There'll be alot of work to do on this."

  Sid Chamberlain had been squirming as though he were afflicted withants, 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 thereservoirs or those statues or this building, or even the animals andthe dead Martians! Wait till Selim and Tony see this! Wait till Tonysees it; I want to see his face! And when I get this on telecast, allTerra'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 tosend 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 lookat your script, before you go too far overboard on the telecast. This isjust a beginning; it'll take years and years before we're able to readany 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 peoplethere will work on it. We'll send them everything we can ... everythingwe work out, and copies of books, and copies of your word-lists--"

  And there would be other tables--astronomical tables, tables in physicsand mechanics, for instance--in which words and numbers were equivalent.The library stacks, below, would be full of them. Transliterate theminto Roman alphabet spellings and Arabic numerals, and somewhere,somebody would spot each numerical significance, as Hubert Penrose andMort Tranter and she had done with the table of elements. And pick outall the chemistry textbooks in the Library; new words would take onmeaning from contexts in which the names of elements appeared. She'dhave to start studying chemistry and physics, hersel
f--

  * * * * *

  Sachiko Koremitsu peeped in through the door, then stepped inside.

  "Is there anything I can do--?" she began. "What's happened? Somethingimportant?"

  "Important?" Sid Chamberlain exploded. "Look at that, Sachi! We'rereading it! Martha's found out how to read