Exiles of the Stars

those of our company missing which lies in your mind now.'

I clicked one tape cover against the next, hunting that which had the notation I wanted. 'Maelen, is there any way to thought-see through the cliff—behind the cat mask?'

She did not answer me at once. She must have been considering carefully before she did.

'Mind-send must have a definite goal. If I knew of some spark of life there I could focus upon it. As it is—no. But—you have thought of some way?' She had been quick to pick that up from me.

'Something I heard of—a periscope drill. It might just work here, so we could learn if we have found a treasure cache or not. Yes, here it is.' I snapped the tape into my reader, ran it along impatiently, seeking the pertinent section.

She shared my absorption in that the rather vague report which a fellow Trader, who had been chartered to supply the Zacathan expedition, had furnished me.

'It seems a complicated machine,' she commented, not entirely with favor. Her reaction might have arisen from the Thassa distaste for machines and any need to depend upon them. 'But if it works, then I can see it in use here. Also, I believe you are correct in your guess that if this is a treasure cache it will not be the only one to be found on Sekhmet.'

'Krip, do you remember how once, long ago it now seems, we spoke of treasure and you said that it could be many things on many worlds, but that each man had his own idea of what it was? Then you added that what would be precious to you was a ship of your own, that that was what your people considered true treasure. Suppose this cache, or another, were to yield enough to give you that. What would you do with such a ship—voyage, as does theLydis , seeking profit wherever chance and trade call you?'

She was right in that a ship was the Trader standard of treasure. Though it would take a sum beyond perhaps even the value of the cargo from Thoth to buy a ship for each member of theLydis's crew. And all finds would be shared. But a ship of my own. Dreams can be dreamed, but to bring them alive calls for logic and planning. I was in training as a cargomaster and, as I well knew and admitted, a long way from being ready to take full responsibility for top rating even in that berth. I was no pilot, engineer, astrogator. What would I truly do if I had credits in my belt tomorrow which would buy me the ship of my daydreaming?

Again she followed my thoughts.

'Do you remember, Krip Vorlund, how you spoke when I told youmy fancy—of taking my little people in a ship to the stars? Could such a treasure buy that ship?'

So she still held toher dream? Though perhaps it had now even less chance of realization than mine.

'It would have to be a treasure past all reckoning,' I told her soberly.

'Agreed. And I have not gone a-voyaging these past months with a closed mind. The Thassa know Yiktor in width and length, but they know not space. I have learned that there are limits of which I was unaware when I claimed to be a Moon Singer of power. We are but a small people among many, many races and species. Yet to recognize that is a good beginning. With your delving machine do you go hunting, Krip—if the time is given you.'

'Lidj thinks—' I told her what the cargomaster had said. But before I had finished, her furred head moved from side to side.

'Such a conclusion is logical. But there is this. Since I first took sentry duty here, I know we have been watched.'

'What! By whom—from where?'

'It is because I cannot answer just such questions that I have not given a warning. Whatever it is which forces my unease, it lurks beyond the edge of my probe. I can no longer far-beam-read. The Old Ones took much of my power when they reft from me my wand. There only remains enough to warn. What is here only watches; it has yet made no move. But—tell me. Krip—why is it that a cat face is upon the cliff wall?'

Her sudden change of subject startled me. And I could not give her an answer.

'This is what I mean.' Her thought-send was impatient. 'The cat is an ancient symbol of Sekhmet, for whom this planet is named. That you told me. But—were not this sun and its attendant worlds given their names originally by some Scout of your people who landed here in exploration? Therefore the cat is an off-world symbol.

'Yet here we find it—or a pattern enough like it so that you say 'cat' at once when you trace it—marking somethingnot left by settlers of your kind. Why did these unknown and forgotten earlier ones use the cat mask?'

I had not really thought of that before.

'It must be something left by the first settlers. Perhaps they tried to colonize Sekhmet before the other planets.'

'I think not. I think this is far too old. How many years has this system been settled? Do you have such a record?'

'I don't know. If they were of the first wave, perhaps a thousand years, a little less.'

'Yet I would judge that carving to be twice, maybe thrice that age. To erode stone so deeply takes a long time. At our places on Yiktor that is so. And the rest of the treasures are not of settler making; they were found by the first men to land. Still we have here a cat mask! Who, and how old, were the gods for whom this system was named—this cat-headed Sekhmet?'

'They were Terran and very old even on that world. And Terra took to space a thousand years ago.' I shook my head. 'Much history has been forgotten in the weight of years. And Terra is halfway across the galaxy from here. When such gods and goddesses were worshiped, her people had no space travel.'

'Perhaps your species did not then go forth from their parent world. But did any visit them there? The races of the Forerunners—how many such civilizations rose and fell?'

'No one knows, not even the Zacathans, who make the study of history their greatest science and art. And nowadays even Terra is half legend. I have never met a space-farer who has actually been there, or one who can claim clear descent from its people.'