"Bad."
"How bad?"
"The worst. The pile's gone."
"The _pile_!"
Mike ran aft. The door to the tube cabin stood open. The alley into
which the fifteen-pound, lead-crated pile had lately been driven, was
empty.
* * * * *
Swiftly Mike assessed the situation. A helpless ship. A derelict.
They'd entered through the aft airlock. They'd taken Professor Brandon
off that way. Then they'd closed the lock again.
That meant only one thing. Through pure cruelty, they had avoided
swift death to the ship's occupant in favor of a long, lingering one.
Only the basest of men would do a thing like that.
Mike was not acquainted with McKee or Talbott, but he knew something
about them. They were the lowest type of the human species. Only the
bloodthirsty pirates of Ganymede ever made their victims walk space.
He returned to where Nicko was clinging to the companionway
guard-rail. Nicko said, "You haven't seen it all, yet."
"Is there more?"
"That's only the beginning. They smashed everything in the control
cabin. All the navigating instruments. Even if we had a pile this boat
couldn't find its way down Main Street at high noon."
It followed, Mike thought grimly. "I'll be drummed out of the Guild
for this."
"If you ever get within shouting distance of Outer Port again, which
you won't."
Mike doubled his fists. "To stand flatfooted and let a boarder move in
and take my pile--and my client. How much of an idiot can a man be!"
Doree came up the ladder, her eyes wide with fright. "Did you find
him?"
"No--and don't start crying. Why didn't you tell me about these men?
Why didn't you give me a chance to protect my ship?"
"We--we didn't know they'd follow us. We--I didn't dream they had any
idea of--"
"They followed you. And they had the idea. They took our pile and
shoved us off on a blind orbit. They arranged for us to die out here."
"Won't we--we be found?"
"A million to one shot in these spaces."
"More than that," Nicko said. "A billion to one. It's empty out here,
lady."
Mike saw that Doree was again about to burst into tears. He took her
by the arm. "We're going to the lounge and you're going to tell me all
about this--what's been going on." He drew her toward the ladder,
calling over his shoulder. "Clean up what you can, Nicko. See what
other deviltry they arranged."
In the lounge, Mike sat Doree firmly into a chair. "Now let's not have
any tears. Just tell it the way it happened."
* * * * *
Doree had got control of herself. She sat straight, miserable, a
little pathetic, Mike thought. She said, "Lorn McKee and Dean Talbott
were Paris art collectors. Their reputations were not of the best but
when they approached father he listened to them.
"They had a strange looking scroll made of papyrus. It had writing on
it in an ancient script and they wanted father to translate it for
them."
"Would that have made it more valuable?"
"Of course. At first father was suspicious, thinking it was some kind
of a hoax. They told him the scroll had come from an Egyptian tomb but
would tell him no more relative to its origination. They brought it to
him because he was Terra's foremost authority in that field.
"Father discovered immediately that the scroll was genuine and very
old. Papyrus was a material the ancient Egyptians used."
"And--?" Mike asked impatiently.
"He refused to translate it for them because they in turn would not
tell him what they proposed to do with it. He felt it should be turned
over to the proper authorities--some university--and besides, he was
suspicious of the two men. So they went away and tried to get it
translated elsewhere. This was impossible, so they came back and
offered to sell it to father for a very low price but with the
stipulation that he keep what he learned strictly to himself.
"He wanted to make the translation and was tempted because he already
had a clue to its nature. He believed the scroll verified a theory
long in existence on Terra relative to the extraterrestrial
origination of mankind."
"You mean he thought it proved the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon came
from other planets."
"No, not so far back as that. There is little doubt they originated on
Terra. Father is a specialist in Egyptology. And it was his belief
that a great deal of their early history was purposely distorted.
There is confusion in what little can be found concerning them and
father sincerely believed they came from another planet. He was sure
they brought with them a knowledge of science far greater than any
existing upon Terra."
"And the papyrus verified his belief?"
"Completely."
"What did it tell him?"
"That the forefathers of those who later became the Egyptians, left
their native planet after a disagreement with the ruling Pharaoh and
sought a new home. They cruised for several lifetimes, raising and
educating their children and dying off, until they found Terra, a
planet almost identical to their own. The papyrus gave the location of
their home planet--hieroglyphics which father translated into a table
of accurate equations."
"How could he know they were accurate?"
Doree's head came up sharply. "If you were really aware of my father's
ability in his field, it wouldn't occur to you to ask."
* * * * *
"I don't blame you for your faith but I still think it was a gigantic
hoax--for one reason."
"And that--?"
"If the ancestors of the Egyptians came to Terra, they had to have
great scientific and technical knowledge to get there. All right--then
what happened to the knowledge and the science? The Egyptians
certainly didn't take advantage of it."
"They used some of it. No one has been able to prove conclusively how
they built the pyramids."
"Slave labor."
"That is not a complete explanation."
"All right--forget the pyramids. What happened to the rest of their
science?"
"The answer lies in a basic trend of the Egyptians as a people. They
were completely preoccupied with death rather than life. To them,
their years of living was only a period in which to prepare for
eternity. Their ambitions and talents were directed toward the
building of great tombs and the perfect preservation of bodies after
death. In the light of this does it seem so strange that they turned
their backs on all knowledge except that which aided them in dead
directions?"
* * * * *
Mike was regarding Doree with a new respect. "I owe you an apology.
You're a smart girl. You've got a brain in your head. I'm so used to
carting empty-headed females around the System that I'd forgotten
smart ones existed."
"I'm sure you mean that as a compliment, but the fact remains that
father and I blundered you into a perilous position. We should have
told you about McKee and Talbott. But we didn't think--"
"Your shortcoming was that you were honest and thought everyone else
was. That's a common failing."
"But we knew they had bad reputations."
"It's pretty obvious how their thinking went. They must have had a
clue to the contents of the papyrus. They knew your father wouldn't
act without integrity but they banked on his eagerness as a
student--figured it would cause him to accept their terms in order to
get his hands on the scroll because there was certainly nothing
dishonorable about buying it from them. They knew also that he would
keep his word, being that kind of a man."