knowledge. When the disaster struck at her people, the chief scientists encased her in a block of crystal and hid her somewhere on Flormaseron. She's still there—and still alive.

"Think of it, Clark! A woman with the knowledge of such a race. Before they enclosed her, they thought-fed her brain with knowledge, and so arranged the crystal that during all the years of her interment, she would learn! A brain like that—why it would revolutionize our own culture. The Earth'd go millions of years ahead in science, if we could only find her—and bring her back to life!"

Travis had said, "If she's entombed on a hellhole like Flormaseron, how'd you ever hear of her?"

Martin Kent took Travis by the arm, led him out the door of his office and into the museum corridor. Here in Solar Museum, Mars Division, Kent was absolute ruler. Behind him he had the billions of credits that Earth and Mars and Venus poured into their cultural endeavors. From all over the solar system Solar brought stuffed animals, crumbling bricks from ancient cities, rusted weapons that experts studied and reconstructed in glittering stil.

They walked past a panoramic window of a Venusian sea-bottom and into a narrow room that held a safe inset in its east wall. Kent put the flat of his hand on the lock, and waited. A deep humming throbbed from behind the glistening metal wall. The huge door swung open.

Kent reached in and brought out a tiny vial of green metal. He unscrewed the lid, withdrew a folded scroll. "It's all here, Clark. Stylogrammed on flexible metal. It's ages old. One of our field parties came across it in a dried sea-bed on Clex. It puzzled us a long time, until Fielding came across a key to the writing, and translated it."

Travis turned the metallic paper over, looked at the queerly graceful writing. He looked at Kent inquiringly.

Kent smiled, "Well, what do you say? I'd go myself if I were younger. And, if it didn't cost so much, I'd send a field party. But it's a gamble, and the Board probably wouldn't agree to spending credits on it. But one man could go. One man—like you."

Travis grinned. He was tall and saturnine, brown with the heat of many suns. His body had been hardened on the deserts of Proxima Centauri, and under the seas of Venus.

Kent went on, "You're the best archaeologist I know. You've been in tight spots before. You can fight, if you have 

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