looked into a couple--all just thesame, broken at the top and empty. I examined a brick or two as well;they were silica, and old as creation itself!"
"How you know?" asked Leroy.
"They were weathered--edges rounded. Silica doesn't weather easily evenon earth, and in this climate--!"
"How old you think?"
"Fifty thousand--a hundred thousand years. How can I tell? The littleones we saw in the morning were older--perhaps ten times as old.Crumbling. How old would that make _them_? Half a million years? Whoknows?" Jarvis paused a moment. "Well," he resumed, "we followed theline. Tweel pointed at them and said 'rock' once or twice, but he'd donethat many times before. Besides, he was more or less right about these.
"I tried questioning him. I pointed at a pyramid and asked 'People?' andindicated the two of us. He set up a negative sort of clucking and said,'No, no, no. No one-one-two. No two-two-four,' meanwhile rubbing hisstomach. I just stared at him and he went through the business again.'No one-one-two. No two-two-four.' I just gaped at him."
"That proves it!" exclaimed Harrison. "Nuts!"
"You think so?" queried Jarvis sardonically. "Well, I figured it outdifferent! 'No one-one-two!' You don't get it, of course, do you?"
"Nope--nor do you!"
"I think I do! Tweel was using the few English words he knew to put overa very complex idea. What, let me ask, does mathematics make you thinkof?"
"Why--of astronomy. Or--or logic!"
"That's it! 'No one-one-two!' Tweel was telling me that the builders ofthe pyramids weren't people--or that they weren't intelligent, that theyweren't reasoning creatures! Get it?"
"Huh! I'll be damned!"
"You probably will."
"Why," put in Leroy, "he rub his belly?"
"Why? Because, my dear biologist, that's where his brains are! Not inhis tiny head--in his middle!"
"_C'est_ impossible!"
"Not on Mars, it isn't! This flora and fauna aren't earthly; yourbiopods prove that!" Jarvis grinned and took up his narrative. "Anyway,we plugged along across Xanthus and in about the middle of theafternoon, something else queer happened. The pyramids ended."
"Ended!"
"Yeah; the queer part was that the last one--and now they wereten-footers--was capped! See? Whatever built it was still inside; we'dtrailed 'em from their half-million-year-old origin to the present.
"Tweel and I noticed it about the same time. I yanked out my automatic(I had a clip of Boland explosive bullets in it) and Tweel, quick as asleight-of-hand trick, snapped a queer little glass revolver out of hisbag. It was much like our weapons, except that the grip was larger toaccommodate his four-taloned hand. And we held our weapons ready whilewe sneaked up along the lines of empty pyramids.
"Tweel saw the movement first. The top tiers of bricks were heaving,shaking, and suddenly slid down the sides with a thin crash. Andthen--something--something was coming out!
"A long, silvery-grey arm appeared, dragging after it an armored body.Armored, I mean, with scales, silver-grey and dull-shining. The armheaved the body out of the hole; the beast crashed to the sand.
"It was a nondescript creature--body like a big grey cask, arm and asort of mouth-hole at one end; stiff, pointed tail at the other--andthat's all. No other limbs, no eyes, ears, nose--nothing! The thingdragged itself a few yards, inserted its pointed tail in the sand,pushed itself upright, and just sat.
"Tweel and I watched it for ten minutes before it moved. Then, with acreaking and rustling like--oh, like crumpling stiff paper--its armmoved to the mouth-hole and out came a brick! The arm placed the brickcarefully on the ground, and the thing was still again.
"Another ten minutes--another brick. Just one of Nature's bricklayers.I was about to slip away and move on when Tweel pointed at the thing andsaid 'rock'! I went 'huh?' and he said it again. Then, to theaccompaniment of some of his trilling, he said, 'No--no--,' and gave twoor three whistling breaths.
"Well, I got his meaning, for a wonder! I said, 'No breath?' anddemonstrated the word. Tweel was ecstatic; he said, 'Yes, yes, yes! No,no, no breet!' Then he gave a leap and sailed out to land on his noseabout one pace from the monster!
"I was startled, you can imagine! The arm was going up for a brick, andI expected to see Tweel caught and mangled, but--nothing happened! Tweelpounded on the creature, and the arm took the brick and placed it neatlybeside the first. Tweel rapped on its body again, and said 'rock,' and Igot up nerve enough to take a look myself.
"Tweel was right again. The creature was rock, and it didn't breathe!"
"How you know?" snapped Leroy, his black eyes blazing interest.
"Because I'm a chemist. The beast was made of silica! There must havebeen pure silicon in the sand, and it lived on that. Get it? We, andTweel, and those plants out there, and even the biopods are _carbon_life; this thing lived by a different set of chemical reactions. It wassilicon life!"
"_La vie silicieuse!_" shouted Leroy. "I have suspect, and now it isproof! I must go see! _Il faut que je--_"
"All right! All right!" said Jarvis. "You can go see. Anyhow, there thething was, alive and yet not alive, moving every ten minutes, and thenonly to remove a brick. Those bricks were its waste matter. See,Frenchy? We're carbon, and our waste is carbon dioxide, and this thingis silicon, and _its_ waste is silicon dioxide--silica. But silica is asolid, hence the bricks. And it builds itself in, and when it iscovered, it moves over to a fresh place to start over. No wonder itcreaked! A living creature half a million years old!"
"How you know how old?" Leroy was frantic.
"We trailed its pyramids from the beginning, didn't we? If this weren'tthe original pyramid builder, the series would have ended somewherebefore we found him, wouldn't it?--ended and started over with the smallones. That's simple enough, isn't it?
"But he reproduces, or tries to. Before the third brick came out, therewas a little rustle and out popped a whole stream of those littlecrystal balls. They're his spores, or eggs, or seeds--call 'em what youwant. They went bouncing by across Xanthus just as they'd bounced by usback in the Mare Chronium. I've a hunch how they work, too--this is foryour information, Leroy. I think the crystal shell of silica is no morethan a protective covering, like an eggshell, and that the activeprinciple is the smell inside. It's some sort of gas that attackssilicon, and if the shell is broken near a supply of that element, somereaction starts that ultimately develops into a beast like that one."
"You should try!" exclaimed the little Frenchman. "We must break one tosee!"
"Yeah? Well, I did. I smashed a couple against the sand. Would you liketo come back in about ten thousand years to see if I planted somepyramid monsters? You'd most likely be able to tell by that time!"Jarvis paused and drew a deep breath. "Lord! That queer creature! Do youpicture it? Blind, deaf, nerveless, brainless--just a mechanism, andyet--immortal! Bound to go on making bricks, building pyramids, as longas silicon and oxygen exist, and even afterwards it'll just stop. Itwon't be dead. If the accidents of a million years bring it its foodagain, there it'll be, ready to run again, while brains andcivilizations are part of the past. A queer beast--yet I met a strangerone!"
"If you did, it must have been in your dreams!" growled Harrison.
"You're right!" said Jarvis soberly. "In a way, you're right. Thedream-beast! That's the best name for it--and it's the most fiendish,terrifying creation one could imagine! More dangerous than a lion, moreinsidious than a snake!"
"Tell me!" begged Leroy. "I must go see!"
"Not _this_ devil!" He paused again. "Well," he resumed, "Tweel and Ileft the pyramid creature and plowed along through Xanthus. I was tiredand a little disheartened by Putz's failure to pick me up, and Tweel'strilling got on my nerves, as did his flying nosedives. So I just strodealong without a word, hour after hour across that monotonous desert.
"Toward mid-afternoon we came in sight of a low dark line on thehorizon. I knew what it was. It was a canal; I'd crossed it in therocket and it meant that we were just one-third of the way acr
ossXanthus. Pleasant thought, wasn't it? And still, I was keeping up toschedule.
"We approached the canal slowly; I remembered that this one was borderedby a wide fringe of vegetation and that Mud-heap City was on it.
"I was tired, as I said. I kept thinking of a good hot meal, and thenfrom that I jumped to reflections of how nice and home-like even Borneowould seem after this crazy