Omnilingual

next day, at lunch, Sachiko Koremitsu had the answer to the secondquestion. Four or five electrical engineers had come down by rocket fromthe ship, and she had been spending the morning with them, in oxy-masks,at the top of the building.

  "Tony, I thought you said those generators were in good shape," shebegan, catching sight of Lattimer. "They aren't. They're in the mostunholy mess I ever saw. What happened, up there, was that the supportsof the wind-rotor gave way, and weight snapped the main shaft, andsmashed everything under it."

  "Well, after fifty thousand years, you can expect something like that,"Lattimer retorted. "When an archaeologist says something's in goodshape, he doesn't necessarily mean it'll start as soon as you shove aswitch in."

  "You didn't notice that it happened when the power was on, did you," oneof the engineers asked, nettled at Lattimer's tone. "Well, it was.Everything's burned out or shorted or fused together; I saw one busbareight inches across melted clean in two. It's a pity we didn't findthings in good shape, even archaeologically speaking. I saw a lot ofinteresting things, things in advance of what we're using now. But it'lltake a couple of years to get everything sorted out and figure what itlooked like originally."

  "Did it look as though anybody'd made any attempt to fix it?" Marthaasked.

  Sachiko shook her head. "They must have taken one look at it and givenup. I don't believe there would have been any possible way to repairanything."

  "Well, that explains why they left. They needed electricity forlighting, and heating, and all their industrial equipment waselectrical. They had a good life, here, with power; without it, thisplace wouldn't have been habitable."

  "Then why did they barricade everything from the inside, and how didthey get out?" Lattimer wanted to know.

  "To keep other people from breaking in and looting. Last man outprobably barred the last door and slid down a rope from upstairs," vonOhlmhorst suggested. "This Houdini-trick doesn't worry me too much.We'll find out eventually."

  "Yes, about the time Martha starts reading Martian," Lattimer scoffed.

  "That may be just when we'll find out," von Ohlmhorst replied seriously."It wouldn't surprise me if they left something in writing when theyevacuated this place."

  "Are you really beginning to treat this pipe dream of hers as a seriouspossibility, Selim?" Lattimer demanded. "I know, it would be a wonderfulthing, but wonderful things don't happen just because they're wonderful.Only because they're possible, and this isn't. Let me quote thatdistinguished Hittitologist, Johannes Friedrich: 'Nothing can betranslated out of nothing.' Or that later but not less distinguishedHittitologist, Selim von Ohlmhorst: 'Where are you going to get yourbilingual?'"

  "Friedrich lived to see the Hittite language deciphered and read," vonOhlmhorst reminded him.

  "Yes, when they found Hittite-Assyrian bilinguals." Lattimer measured aspoonful of coffee-powder into his cup and added hot water. "Martha, youought to know, better than anybody, how little chance you have. You'vebeen working for years in the Indus Valley; how many words of Harappahave you or anybody else ever been able to read?"

  "We never found a university, with a half-million-volume library, atHarappa or Mohenjo-Daro."

  "And, the first day we entered this building, we established meaningsfor several words," Selim von Ohlmhorst added.

  "And you've never found another meaningful word since," Lattimer added."And you're only sure of general meaning, not specific meaning ofword-elements, and you have a dozen different interpretations for eachword."

  "We made a start," von Ohlmhorst maintained. "We have Grotefend's wordfor 'king.' But I'm going to be able to read some of those books, overthere, if it takes me the rest of my life here. It probably will,anyhow."

  "You mean you've changed your mind about going home on the _Cyrano_?"Martha asked. "You'll stay on here?"

  The old man nodded. "I can't leave this. There's too much to discover.The old dog will have to learn a lot of new tricks, but this is where mywork will be, from now on."

  Lattimer was shocked. "You're nuts!" he cried. "You mean you're goingto throw away everything you've accomplished in Hittitology and startall over again here on Mars? Martha, if you've talked him into thiscrazy decision, you're a criminal!"

  "Nobody talked me into anything," von Ohlmhorst said roughly. "And asfor throwing away what I've accomplished in Hittitology, I don't knowwhat the devil you're talking about. Everything I know about the HittiteEmpire is published and available to anybody. Hittitology's likeEgyptology; it's stopped being research and archaeology and becomescholarship and history. And I'm not a scholar or a historian; I'm apick-and-shovel field archaeologist--a highly skilled and specializedgrave-robber and junk-picker--and there's more pick-and-shovel work onthis planet than I could do in a hundred lifetimes. This is somethingnew; I was a fool to think I could turn my back on it and go back toscribbling footnotes about Hittite kings."

  "You could have anything you wanted, in Hittitology. There are a dozenuniversities that'd sooner have you than a winning football team. Butno! You have to be the top man in Martiology, too. You can't leave thatfor anybody else--" Lattimer shoved his chair back and got to his feet,leaving the table with an oath that was almost a sob of exasperation.

  Maybe his feelings were too much for him. Maybe he realized, as Marthadid, what he had betrayed. She sat, avoiding the eyes of the others,looking at the ceiling, as embarrassed as though Lattimer had flungsomething dirty on the table in front of them. Tony Lattimer had,desperately, wanted Selim to go home on the _Cyrano_. Martiology was anew field; if Selim entered it, he would bring with him the reputationhe had already built in Hittitology, automatically stepping into theleading role that Lattimer had coveted for himself. Ivan Fitzgerald'swords echoed back to her--when you want to be a big shot, you can't bearthe possibility of anybody else being a bigger big shot. His derision ofher own efforts became comprehensible, too. It wasn't that he wasconvinced that she would never learn to read the Martian language. Hehad been afraid that she would.

  * * * * *

  Ivan Fitzgerald finally isolated the germ that had caused the Finchleygirl's undiagnosed illness. Shortly afterward, the malady turned into amild fever, from which she recovered. Nobody else seemed to have caughtit. Fitzgerald was still trying to find out how the germ had beentransmitted.

  They found a globe of Mars, made when the city had been a seaport. Theylocated the city, and learned that its name had been Kukan--or somethingwith a similar vowel-consonant ratio. Immediately, Sid Chamberlain andGloria Standish began giving their telecasts a Kukan dateline, andHubert Penrose used the name in his official reports. They also found aMartian calendar; the year had been divided into ten more or less equalmonths, and one of them had been Doma. Another month was Nor, and thatwas a part of the name of the scientific journal Martha had found.

  Bill Chandler, the zoologist, had been going deeper and deeper into theold sea bottom of Syrtis. Four hundred miles from Kukan, and at fifteenthousand feet lower altitude, he shot a bird. At least, it was asomething with wings and what were almost but not quite feathers, thoughit was more reptilian than avian in general characteristics. He and IvanFitzgerald skinned and mounted it, and then dissected the carcass almosttissue by tissue. About seven-eighths of its body capacity was lungs; itcertainly breathed air containing at least half enough oxygen to supporthuman life, or five times as much as the air around Kukan.

  That took the center of interest away from archaeology, and started anew burst of activity. All the expedition's aircraft--four jetticoptersand three wingless airdyne reconnaissance fighters--were thrown intointensified exploration of the lower sea bottoms, and the bio-scienceboys and girls were wild with excitement and making new discoveries oneach flight.

  The University was left to Selim and Martha and Tony Lattimer, thelatter keeping to himself while she and the old Turco-German workedtogether. The civilian specialists in other fields, and the Space Forcepeople who had been holding tape lines and making sketches and snappingca
meras, were all flying to lower Syrtis to find out how much oxygenthere was and what kind of life it supported.

  Sometimes Sachiko dropped in; most of the time she was busy helping IvanFitzgerald dissect specimens. They had four or five species of whatmight loosely be called birds, and something that could easily beclassed as a reptile, and a carnivorous mammal the size of a cat withbirdlike claws, and a herbivore almost identical with the piglike thingin the big _Darfhulva_ mural, and another like a gazelle with a singlehorn