back.
Pelorat, about a hundred meters to his right, said sharply, “Look at that.”
Trevize’s ears rang. He said, “Don’t shout, Janov. I can hear your whispers clearly no matter how far away you are. What is it?”
Pelorat, his voice moderating at once, said, “This building is the ‘Hall of the Worlds.’ At least, that’s what I think the inscription reads.”
Trevize joined him. Before them was a three-story structure, the line of its roof irregular and loaded with large fragments of rock, as though some sculptured object that had once stood there had fallen to pieces.
“Are you sure?” said Trevize.
“If we go in, we’ll find out.”
They climbed five low, broad steps, and crossed a space-wasting plaza. In the thin air, their metal-shod footsteps made a whispering vibration rather than a sound.
“I see what you mean by ‘large, useless, and expensive,’?” muttered Trevize.
They entered a wide and high hall, with sunlight shining through tall windows and illuminating the interior too harshly where it struck and yet leaving things obscure in the shadow. The thin atmosphere scattered little light.
In the center was a larger than life-size human figure in what seemed to be a synthetic stone. One arm had fallen off. The other arm was cracked at the shoulder and Trevize felt that if he tapped it sharply that arm, too, would break off. He stepped back as though getting too near might tempt him into such unbearable vandalism.
“I wonder who that is?” said Trevize. “No markings anywhere. I suppose those who set it up felt that his fame was so obvious he needed no identification, but now—” He felt himself in danger of growing philosophical and turned his attention away.
Pelorat was looking up, and Trevize’s glance followed the angle of Pelorat’s head. There were markings— carvings—on the wall which Trevize could not read.
“Amazing,” said Pelorat. “Twenty thousand years old, perhaps, and, in here, protected somewhat from sun and damp, they’re still legible.”
“Not to me,” said Trevize.
“It’s in old script and ornate even for that. Let’s see now—seven—one—two—” His voice died away in a mumble, and then he spoke up again. “There are fifty names listed and there are supposed to have been fifty Spacer worlds and this is ‘The Hall of the Worlds.’ I assume those are the names of the fifty Spacer worlds, probably in the order of establishment. Aurora is first and Solaria is last. If you’ll notice, there are seven columns, with seven names in the first six columns and then eight names in the last. It is as though they had planned a seven-by-seven grid and then added Solaria after the fact. My guess, old chap, is that that list dates back to before Solaria was terraformed and populated.”
“And which one is this planet we’re standing on? Can you tell?”
Pelorat said, “You’ll notice that the fifth one down in the third column, the nineteenth in order, is inscribed in letters a little larger than the others. The listers seem to have been self-centered enough to give themselves some pride of place. Besides—”
“What does the name read?”
“As near as I can make out, it says Melpomenia. It’s a name I’m totally unfamiliar with.”
“Could it represent Earth?”
Pelorat shook his head vigorously, but that went unseen inside his helmet. He said, “There are dozens of words used for Earth in the old legends. Gaia is one of them, as you know. So is Terra, and Erda, and so on. They’re all short. I don’t know of any long name used for it, or anything even resembling a short version of Melpomenia.”
“Then we’re standing on Melpomenia, and it’s not Earth.”
“Yes. And besides—as I started to say earlier—an even better indication than the larger lettering is that the co-ordinates of Melpomenia are given as 0, 0, 0, and you would expect co-ordinates to be referred to one’s own planet.”
“Co-ordinates?” Trevize sounded dumbfounded. “That list gives the co-ordinates, too?”
“They give three figures for each and I presume those are co-ordinates. What else can they be?”
Trevize did not answer. He opened a small compartment in the portion of the space suit that covered his right thigh and took out a compact device with wire connecting it to the compartment. He put it up to his eyes and carefully focused it on the inscription on the wall, his sheathed fingers making a difficult job out of something that would ordinarily have been a moment’s work.
“Camera?” asked Pelorat unnecessarily.
“It will feed the image directly into the ship’s computer,” said Trevize.
He took several photographs from different angles, then said, “Wait! I’ve got to get higher. Help me, Janov.”
Pelorat clasped his hands together, stirrup-fashion, but Trevize shook his head. “That won’t support my weight. Get on your hands and knees.”
Pelorat did so, laboriously, and, as laboriously, Trevize, having tucked the camera into its compartment again, stepped on Pelorat’s shoulders and from them on to the pedestal of the statue. He tried to rock the statue carefully to judge its firmness, then placed his foot on one bent knee and used it as a base for pushing himself upward and catching the armless shoulder. Wedging his toes against some unevenness at the chest, he lifted himself and, finally, after several grunts, managed to sit on the shoulder. To those long-dead who had revered the statue and what it represented, what Trevize did would have seemed blasphemy, and Trevize was sufficiently influenced by that thought to try to sit lightly.
“You’ll fall and hurt yourself,” Pelorat called out anxiously.
“I’m not going to fall and hurt myself, but
Trevize froze, his first impulse being that of finding a place to hide before the watchman came and caught him. Amazing, he thought afterward, how quickly one relives the days of one’s childhood in a situation like that— when you’ve accidentally broken something that looks important. It lasted only a moment, but it cut deeply.
Pelorat’s voice was hollow, as befitted one who had witnessed and even abetted an act of vandalism, but he managed to find words of comfort. “It’s—it’s all right, Golan. It was about to come down by itself, anyway.”
He walked over to the pieces on the pedestal and floor as though he were going to demonstrate the point, reached out for one of the larger fragments, and then said, “Golan, come here.”
Trevize approached and Pelorat, pointing at a piece of stone that had clearly been the portion of the arm that had been joined to the shoulder, said, “What is this?”
Trevize stared. There was a patch of fuzz, bright green in color. Trevize rubbed it gently with his suited finger. It scraped off without trouble.
“It looks a lot like moss,” he said.
“The life-without-mind that you mentioned?”
“I’m not completely sure how far without mind. Bliss, I imagine, would insist that this had consciousness, too—but she would claim this stone also had it.”
Pelorat said, “Do you suppose that moss stuff is what’s crumbling the rock?”
Trevize said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it helped. The world has plenty of sunlight and it has some water. Half what atmosphere it has is water vapor. The rest is nitrogen and inert gases. Just a trace of carbon dioxide, which would lead one to suppose there’s no plant life—but it could be that the carbon dioxide is low because it is virtually all incorporated into the rocky crust. Now if this rock has some carbonate in it, perhaps this moss breaks it down by secreting acid, and then makes use of the carbon dioxide generated. This may be the dominant remaining form of life on this planet.”
“Fascinating,” said Pelorat.
“Undoubtedly,” said Trevize, “but only in a limited way. The co-ordinates of the Spacer worlds are rather more interesting but what we really want are the coordinates of
