understand most easily. I don't know; the books are outside there in the
rocket.

"Then he held that dim torch of his toward the walls, and they were
pictured. Lord, what pictures! They stretched up and up into the
blackness of the roof, mysterious and gigantic. I couldn't make much of
the first wall; it seemed to be a portrayal of a great assembly of
Tweel's people. Perhaps it was meant to symbolize Society or Government.
But the next wall was more obvious; it showed creatures at work on a
colossal machine of some sort, and that would be Industry or Science.
The back wall had corroded away in part, from what we could see, I
suspected the scene was meant to portray Art, but it was on the fourth
wall that we got a shock that nearly dazed us.

"I think the symbol was Exploration or Discovery. This wall was a little
plainer, because the moving beam of daylight from that crack lit up the
higher surface and Tweel's torch illuminated the lower. We made out a
giant seated figure, one of the beaked Martians like Tweel, but with
every limb suggesting heaviness, weariness. The arms dropped inertly on
the chair, the thin neck bent and the beak rested on the body, as if the
creature could scarcely bear its own weight. And before it was a queer
kneeling figure, and at sight of it, Leroy and I almost reeled against
each other. It was, apparently, a man!"

"A man!" bellowed Harrison. "A man you say?"

"I said apparently," retorted Jarvis. "The artist had exaggerated the
nose almost to the length of Tweel's beak, but the figure had black
shoulder-length hair, and instead of the Martian four, there were _five_
fingers on its outstretched hand! It was kneeling as if in worship of
the Martian, and on the ground was what looked like a pottery bowl full
of some food as an offering. Well! Leroy and I thought we'd gone
screwy!"

"And Putz and I think so, too!" roared the captain.

"Maybe we all have," replied Jarvis, with a faint grin at the pale face
of the little Frenchman, who returned it in silence. "Anyway," he
continued, "Tweel was squeaking and pointing at the figure, and saying
'Tick! Tick!' so he recognized the resemblance--and never mind any
cracks about my nose!" he warned the captain. "It was Leroy who made the
important comment; he looked at the Martian and said 'Thoth! The god
Thoth!'"

"_Oui!_" confirmed the biologist. "_Comme l'Egypte!_"

"Yeah," said Jarvis. "Like the Egyptian ibis-headed god--the one with
the bea