_The body here preserved was found December 12, 2001, by an
exploring party from the spaceship NEVADA, in the Martian
city which we designate E-3. It rested in a case much like
this, in a building that had evidently been the municipal
museum. Around it, in other cases likewise undisturbed since a
period estimated at fifty thousand years ago, were a number of
Earthly artifacts. These finds prove beyond doubt that a
Martian scientific expedition visited Earth before the dawn of
our history._
On the label someone had painstakingly copied the Martian glyphs found
on the mummy's original case. Dalton's eyes traced the looping
ornamental script--he was one of the very few men who had put in the
years of work necessary to read inscriptional Martian--and he smiled
appreciation of a jest that had taken fifty thousand years to
ripen--the writing said simply, _Man From Earth_.
The mummy lying on a sculptured catafalque beyond the glass was
amazingly well preserved--far more lifelike and immensely older than
anything Egypt had yielded. Long-dead Martian embalmers had done a
good job even on what to them was the corpse of an other-world
monster.
He had been a small wiry man. His skin was dark though its color might
have been affected by mummification. His features suggested those of
the Forest Indian. Beside him lay his flaked-stone ax, his
bone-pointed spear and spear thrower, likewise preserved by a
marvelous chemistry.
Looking down at that ancient nameless ancestor, Dalton was moved to
solemn thoughts. This creature had been first of all human-kind to
make the tremendous crossing to Mars--had seen its lost race in living
glory, had died there and became a museum exhibit for the multiple
eyes of wise grey spiderish aliens.
"Interested in Oswald, sir?"
Dalton glanced up and saw an attendant. "I was just thinking--if he
could only talk! He does have a name, then?"
The guard grinned. "Well, we call him Oswald. Sort of inconvenient,
not having a name. When I worked at the Metropolitan we used to call
all the Pharaohs and Assyrian kings by their first names."
Dalton mentally classified another example of the deep human need for
verbal handles to lift unwieldy chunks of environment. The
professional thought recalled him to business and he glanced at his
watch.
"I'm supposed to meet Dr. Oliver Thwaite here this morning. Has he
come in yet?"
"The archeologist? He's here early and late when he's on Earth. He'll
be up in the cataloguing department now. Want me to show you--"
"I know the way," said Dalton. "Thanks all the same." He left the
elevator at the fourth floor and impatiently pushed open the main
cataloguing room's glazed door.
Inside cabinets and broad tables bore a wilderness of strange
artifacts, many still crusted with red Martian sand. Alone in the room
a trim-mustached man in a rough open-throated shirt looked up from an
object he had been cleaning with a soft brush.
"Dr. Thwaite? I'm Jim Dalton."
"Glad to meet you, Professor." Thwaite carefully laid down his work,
then rose to grip the visitor's hand. "You didn't lose any time."
"After you called last night I managed to get a seat on the
dawn-rocket out of Chicago. I hope I'm not interrupting?"
"Not at all. I've got some assistants coming in around nine. I was
just going over some stuff I don't like to trust to their
thumb-fingered mercies."
Dalton looked down at the thing the archeologist had been brushing. It
was a reed syrinx, the Pan's pipes of antiquity. "That's not a very
Martian-looking specimen," he commented.
"The Martians, not having any lips, could hardly have had much use for
it," said Thwaite. "This is of Earthly manufacture--one of the
Martians' specimens from Earth, kept intact over all this time by a
preservative I wish we knew how to make. It's a nice find, man's
earliest known musical instrument--hardly as interesting as the record
though."