where the Martians fixed their zero
meridian. But it was near the equator and, the text indicates, in a
tropical forest--probably in Africa or South America.

"Then there's the sentence Henderson couldn't make out. It's obscure and
rather badly defaced, but it's evidently a comment--unfavorable--on
the subject-matter of the recording. In it appears twice a sort of
interjection-adverb that in other contexts implies revulsion--something
like _ugh_!"

"Funny. Looks like the Martians saw something on Earth they didn't
like. Too bad we can't reproduce the visual record yet."

Dalton said soberly, "The Martian's vocabulary indicates that for all
their physical difference from us they had emotions very much like
human beings'. Whatever they saw must have been something we wouldn't
have liked either."

The reproducer hummed softly. Thwaite closed the motor switch and the
ancient film slid smoothly from its casing. Out of the speaker burst a
strange medley of whirrings, clicks, chirps, trills and modulated
drones and buzzings--a sound like the voice of grasshoppers in a
drought-stricken field of summer.

Dalton listened raptly, as if by sheer concentration he might even now
be able to guess at connections between the sounds of spoken
Martian--heard now for the first time--and the written symbols that he
had been working over for years. But he couldn't, of course--that
would require a painstaking correlation analysis.

"Evidently it's an introduction or commentary," said the archeologist.
"Our photocell examination showed the wave-patterns of the initial and
final portions of the film were typically Martian--but the middle part
isn't. The middle part is whatever they recorded here on Earth."

"If only that last part is a translation...." said Dalton hopefully.
Then the alien susurration ceased coming from the reproducer and he
closed his mouth abruptly and leaned forward.

For the space of a caught breath there was silence. Then another voice
came in, the voice of Earth hundreds of centuries dead.

It was not human. No more than the first had been--but the Martian
sounds had been merely alien and these were horrible.

It was like nothing so much as the croaking of some gigantic frog,
risen bellowing from a bottomless primeval swamp. It bayed of stinking
sunless pools and gurgled of black ooze. And its booming notes
descended to subsonic throbbings that gripped and wrung the nerves to
anguish.

Dalton was involuntari