hink. I heard him drilling for the blasting shots over that way."

"Well, I hope it turns out to be one that was occupied up to the end."

The last one hadn't. It had been stripped of its contents and fittings,
a piece of this and a bit of that, haphazardly, apparently over a long
period of time, until it had been almost gutted. For centuries, as it
had died, this city had been consuming itself by a process of
auto-cannibalism. She said something to that effect.

"Yes. We always find that--except, of course, at places like Pompeii.
Have you seen any of the other Roman cities in Italy?" he asked.
"Minturnae, for instance? First the inhabitants tore down this to repair
that, and then, after they had vacated the city, other people came along
and tore down what was left, and burned the stones for lime, or crushed
them to mend roads, till there was nothing left but the foundation
traces. That's where we are fortunate; this is one of the places where
the Martian race perished, and there were no barbarians to come later
and destroy what they had left." He puffed slowly at his pipe. "Some of
these days, Martha, we are going to break into one of these buildings
and find that it was one in which the last of these people died. Then we
will learn the story of the end of this civilization."

And if we learn to read their language, we'll learn the whole story, not
just the obituary. She hesitated, not putting the thought into words.
"We'll find that, sometime, Selim," she said, then looked at her watch.
"I'm going to get some more work done on my lists, before dinner."

For an instant, the old man's face stiffened in disapproval; he started
to say something, thought better of it, and put his pipe back into his
mouth. The brief wrinkling around his mouth and the twitch of his white
mustache had been enough, however; she knew what he was thinking. She
was wasting time and effort, he believed; time and effort belonging not
to herself but to the expedition. He could be right, too, she realized.
But he had to be wrong; there had to be a way to do it. She turned from
him silently and went to her own packing-case seat, at the middle of the
table.

* * * * *

Photographs, and photostats of restored pages of books, and transcripts
of inscriptions, were piled in front of her, and the notebooks in which
she was compiling her lists. She sat down, lighting a fresh cigarette,
and reached over to a stack of unex