joke?” he asked.

[p84]“The Government doesn’t pay us to play jokes,” Cartwell informed him cryptically. “Do you know the language?”

[p84]

[p

]

Professor Nichols shook his head. “I know every spoken language in the world, and I know many of the dead languages at least by sight. I don’t know this one.”

“You’re serious?”

The old man nodded. “This must be some sort of jest on me. There is no language on Earth, dead or alive, that matches this.”

“We aren’t joking, Professor,” Nolan said seriously.

“Then, my friend, someone must be playing a joke on you. No linguist can identify this language. I’ll stake my reputation on that. Where did you get this?”

Cartwell smiled. “I’m sorry, professor, but we cannot disclose that information. We’ll also have to ask you to forget about it. Government business, you know.”

“Yes, of course. Is there anything else? I have a class in three minutes...”

“No, that’s all. Thank you, Professor Nichols.”

“You’re welcome. Good day, gentlemen.”

As the door closed behind him, a thick silence fell over the three men. Cartwell looked out the window and pulled at his lower lip with a blunt thumb and forefinger; Nolan sat on the edge of a desk, looking at the strange writing as an ethnologist might stare at the bones of the missing link.

“What now?” Sam asked, softly. “Call in a Martian to get his opinion?”

“It’s not funny, Sam.”

“Don’t I know it,” Sam shot back. “We’ve got [p85]  some kind of tiger by the tail in this case ... a tiger bigger than the Kremlin, and I’m wondering how this will all 

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