[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great
trick--the Universe is full of them. Finding
one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of
a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood
counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any
significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to
scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all
built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways,
maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered
stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's
not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it
much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great
age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old--_too_ old.
He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone
ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed
that the buildings had no airlocks.