down."

There was a discomfortable silence.

Intercom, space drive, life-scanner. Maybe other machinery by this time. Sabotage in such a clever way that no one of the highly skilled officers and technicians could discover how it was done, what was wrong. Space giants? Ah, come on, Pink!

Ynohp. Something wrong with him, some flaw in his looks? No, he was Martian in every oversize pore. Some anachronism?

Hey! Anachronism. Pink's mind fished up the dictionary definition. An error in chronology by which events are misplaced in regard to each other....

He had it.

He got to his feet, motioned Jerry and Wash Daley to go with him. They congregated outside the door, as further talk broke out inside his quarters. He said urgently, "Remember what Ynohp said about his cataleptic state? 'Moth and rust do not corrupt.' He said it as if it were a quotation."

"It is," said Daley. "More or less word for word it's from the King James version of the Bible."

"Dated, if I remember correctly, about 1611 A.D.?"

"Yes."

"At which date the Martians had been without space flight for about 3,600 years. At which date, further, Ynohp claims to have been sitting on an asteroid for about 4,000-plus years."

"Coincidence?" asked Jerry.

Pink asked, "Do you think so?"

"Hell," said Jerry, "no."

"Let's go look at his space suit," said Daley urgently. They ran down the corridor, shoving for the lead.

Ten minutes later they sat back on their heels and stared at the interior of the suit.

Rust had corrupted here, or at any rate decay; the Martian steel, ancient and harder than any known metal, was worn to a papery shell, and in many places tiny holes had eroded clear through the suit.

"No man or Martian or anything I know except the space-eating bacteria of Pallas could have lived in that suit, cataleptic state or not." Pink looked around at his 

 Prev. P 12/65 next