I walked over to it, crossing the oblique panels of shadow withdrawing to their sources, curious as to what fabulous catalogue of names I should find.
The fifth megalith was blank.
My eyes raced across its huge unbroken surface, marked only by the quarter-inch-deep grooves of the dividing rules some thoughtful master mason from the stars had chiselled to tabulate the entries from Earth that had never come.
I returned to the other megaliths and for half an hour read at random, arms outstretched involuntarily across the great inscription panels, fingertips tracing the convolutions of the hieroglyphs, seeking among the thousands of signatures some clue to the identity and purpose of the four stellar races.
| COPT*C LEAGUE MILV | BETA TRIANGULI | *D 1723 |
| ISARI* LEAGUE *VII | BETA *RIANGULI | AD 1724 |
| MAR-5-GO | GAMMA GRUS | AD 1959 |
| VEN-7-GO | GAMMA GRUS | AD 1960 |
| TETRARK XII | ALPHA LEPORIS | AD 2095 |
Dynasties recurred again and again, Cyrark’s, Minys-’s, -Go’s, separated by twenty-or thirty-year intervals that appeared to be generations. Before AD 1200 all entries were illegible. This represented something over half the total. The surfaces of the megaliths were almost completely covered, and initially I assumed that the first entries had been made roughly 2200 years earlier, shortly after the birth of Christ. However, the frequency of the entries increased algebraically: in the 15th century there were one or two a year, by the 20th century there were five or six, and by the present year the number varied from twenty entries from Delta Argus to over thirty-five from Alpha Leporis.
The last of these, at the extreme right corner of the megalith, was:
| CYRARK CCCXXIV | ALPHA LEPORIS | AD 2218 |
The letters were freshly incised, perhaps no more than a day old, even a few hours. Below, a free space of two feet reached to the floor.
Breaking off my scrutiny, I jumped down from the base stone and carefully searched the surrounding basin, sweeping the light dust carpet for vehicle or foot marks, the remains of implements or scaffolding.
But the basin was empty, the dust untouched except for the single file of prints leading down from the half-track.
I was sweating uncomfortably, and the thermo-alarm strapped to my wrist rang, warning me that the air temperature was 85°, ninety minutes to noon. I re-set it to 100°, took a last look round the five megaliths, and then made my way back to the half-track.
Heat waves raced and glimmered round the rim of the basin, and the sky was a dark inflamed red, mottled by the thermal pressure fields massing overhead like storm clouds. I jogged along at a half run, in a hurry to contact Mayer. Without his confirmation the authorities on Ceres would treat my report as the fantasy of a sand-happy lunatic. In addition, I wanted him to bring his camera; we could develop the reels within half an hour and radio a dozen stills as indisputable proof.
More important, I wanted someone to share the discovery, provide me with at least some cover in numbers. The frequency of entries on the megaliths, and the virtual absence of any further space – unless the reverse sides were used, which seemed unlikely – suggested a climax was soon to be reached, probably the climax for which Tallis had been waiting. Hundreds of entries had been made during his fifteen years on Murak; watching all day from the observatory he must have seen every landing.
As I swung into the half-track the emergency light on the transceiver above the windscreen was pulsing insistently. I switched to audio and Mayer’s voice snapped into my ear.
‘Quaine? Is that you? Where the hell are you, man? I nearly put out a mayday for you!’
He was at the camp site. Calling in from the observatory when I failed to arrive, he assumed I had broken down and abandoned the half-track, and had come out searching for me.
I picked him up at the camp site half an hour later, retroversed the tracks in a squealing circle of dust and kicked off again at full throttle. Mayer pressed me all the way back but I told him nothing, driving the Chrysler hard across the lake, paralleling the two previous sets of tracks and throwing up a huge cloud of dust 150 feet into the air. It was now over 95°, and the ash hills in the valley at the end of the lake were beginning to look angry and boiled.
Eager to get Mayer down into the basin, and with my mind spinning like a disintegrating flywheel, it was only as the half-track roared up the table slope that I felt a first chilling pang of fear. Through the windscreen I hesitantly scanned the tilting sky. Soon after reaching the basin we would have to shut down for an hour, two of us crammed together in the fume-filled cabin, deafened by the engine, sitting targets with the periscope blinded by the glare.
The centre of the plateau was a pulsing blur, as the air trapped in the basin throbbed upward into the sun. I drove straight towards it, Mayer stiffening in his seat. A hundred yards from the basin’s edge the air suddenly cleared and we could see the tops of the megaliths. Mayer leapt up and swung out of the door onto the running board as I cut the engine and slammed the half-track to a halt by the rim. We jumped down, grabbing flare pistols and shouting to each other, slid into the basin and sprinted through the boiling air to the megaliths looming up in the centre.
I half-expected to find a reception party waiting for us, but the megaliths were deserted. I reached the pentagon fifty yards ahead of Mayer, climbed up and waited for him, gulping in the molten sunlight.
I helped him up and led him over to one of the megaliths, picked a column and began to read out the entries. Then I took him round the others, recapitulating everything I had discovered, pointing out the blank tablet reserved for Earth.
Mayer listened, broke away and wandered off, staring up dully at the megaliths.
‘Quaine, you’ve really found something,’ he muttered softly. ‘Crazy, must be some sort of temple.’
I followed him round, wiping the sweat off my face and shielding my eyes from the glare reflected off the great slabs.
‘Look at them, Mayer! They’ve been coming here for ten thousand years! Do you know what this means?’
Mayer tentatively reached out and touched one of the megaliths. ‘“Argive League XXV … Beta Tri-”’ he read out. ‘There are others, then. God Almighty. What do you think they look like?’
‘What does it matter? Listen. They must have levelled this plateau themselves, scooped out the basin and cut these tablets from the living rock. Can you even imagine the tools they used?’
We crouched in the narrow rectangle of shadow in the lee of the sunward megalith. The temperature climbed, forty-five minutes to noon,105°
‘What is all this, though?’ Mayer asked. ‘Their burial ground?’
‘Unlikely. Why leave a tablet for Earth? If they’ve been able to learn our language they’d know the gesture was pointless. Anyway, elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence, and there’s something here that suggests the exact opposite. I’m convinced they expect that some time in the future we’ll take an active part in whatever is celebrated here.’
‘Maybe, but what? Think in new categories, remember?’ Mayer squinted