now." "I've got a hunch about this," said Underwood slowly. "I don't know a thing about the procedures used in deciphering an unknown lingo, but I'll bet you find that this is an instruction primer to their language, just as the inscriptions outside gave the key to their math before detailing the wave equations." "You might be right!" Terry's eyes glowed with enthusiasm as he looked about the polished walls with the faintly glowing characters inlaid in them. "If that's the case, Papa Phyfe and I ought to be able to do the job without Dreyer." They returned to the ship for photographic equipment and to report their finding to Phyfe. It was a little difficult for him to adjust to the view that something had been gained in the transformation of the gem. The sight of that boiling, amorphous mass in space had been to him like helplessly standing on the bank of a stream and watching a loved one drown. But with Terry's report on the characters in Stroid III which lined the walls of the antechamber which they had penetrated, he was ready to admit that their position had improved. Underwood was merely a by-stander as they returned to the gem. Two photographers, Carson and Enright, accompanied them along with Nichols, assistant semanticist. Underwood stood by, in the depths of speculation, as the photographers set up their equipment and Phyfe bent down to examine the characters at close range. Terry continued to be dogged by the feeling that they were being led by the nose into something that would end unpleasantly. He didn't know why, except that the fact of immense and meticulous preparation was evidenced on all sides. It was the reason for that preparation which made him wonder. Phyfe said to Underwood, "Doctor Bernard tells me your opinion is that this room is a key to Stroid III. You may be right, but I fail to find any indication of it at present. What gives you that idea?" "The whole setup," said Underwood. "First, there was the impenetrable shell. Nothing like it exists in Solarian culture today. Then there was the means by which we were able to read the inscriptions on the outside. Obviously, if heat and fission reactions as well as chemical reactions could not touch the stuff, the only remaining means of analysis was radiative. And the only peoples who could discover the inscriptions were those capable of building a
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