PAGE 9
Omnilingual
by
“I can’t wait so long,” von Ohlmhorst said. “The rest of my life will only be a few years, and when the Schiaparelli orbits in, I’ll be going back to Terra on the Cyrano.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. This is a whole new world of archaeology. Literally.”
“Yes.” He finished the cocktail and looked at his pipe as though wondering whether to re-light it so soon before dinner, then put it in his pocket. “A whole new world–but I’ve grown old, and it isn’t for me. I’ve spent my life studying the Hittites. I can speak the Hittite language, though maybe King Muwatallis wouldn’t be able to understand my modern Turkish accent. But the things I’d have to learn here–chemistry, physics, engineering, how to run analytic tests on steel girders and beryllo-silver alloys and plastics and silicones. I’m more at home with a civilization that rode in chariots and fought with swords and was just learning how to work iron. Mars is for young people. This expedition is a cadre of leadership–not only the Space Force people, who’ll be the commanders of the main expedition, but us scientists, too. And I’m just an old cavalry general who can’t learn to command tanks and aircraft. You’ll have time to learn about Mars. I won’t.”
His reputation as the dean of Hittitologists was solid and secure, too, she added mentally. Then she felt ashamed of the thought. He wasn’t to be classed with Tony Lattimer.
“All I came for was to get the work started,” he was continuing. “The Federation Government felt that an old hand should do that. Well, it’s started, now; you and Tony and whoever come out on the Schiaparelli must carry it on. You said it, yourself; you have a whole new world. This is only one city, of the last Martian civilization. Behind this, you have the Late Upland Culture, and the Canal Builders, and all the civilizations and races and empires before them, clear back to the Martian Stone Age.” He hesitated for a moment. “You have no idea what all you have to learn, Martha. This isn’t the time to start specializing too narrowly.”
* * * * *
They all got out of the truck and stretched their legs and looked up the road to the tall building with the queer conical cap askew on its top. The four little figures that had been busy against its wall climbed into the jeep and started back slowly, the smallest of them, Sachiko Koremitsu, paying out an electric cable behind. When it pulled up beside the truck, they climbed out; Sachiko attached the free end of the cable to a nuclear-electric battery. At once, dirty gray smoke and orange dust puffed out from the wall of the building, and, a second later, the multiple explosion banged.
She and Tony Lattimer and Major Lindemann climbed onto the truck, leaving the jeep stand by the road. When they reached the building, a satisfyingly wide breach had been blown in the wall. Lattimer had placed his shots between two of the windows; they were both blown out along with the wall between, and lay unbroken on the ground. Martha remembered the first building they had entered. A Space Force officer had picked up a stone and thrown it at one of the windows, thinking that would be all they’d need to do. It had bounced back. He had drawn his pistol–they’d all carried guns, then, on the principle that what they didn’t know about Mars might easily hurt them–and fired four shots. The bullets had ricocheted, screaming thinly; there were four coppery smears of jacket-metal on the window, and a little surface spalling. Somebody tried a rifle; the 4000-f.s. bullet had cracked the glasslike pane without penetrating. An oxyacetylene torch had taken an hour to cut the window out; the lab crew, aboard the ship, were still trying to find out just what the stuff was.