turn out to be a grammatical horror. Well, they had
published magazines, and one of them had been called _Mastharnorvod
Tadavas Sornhulva_. She wondered if it had been something like the
_Quarterly Archaeological Review_, or something more on the order of
_Sexy Stories_.

A smaller line, under the title, was plainly the issue number and date;
enough things had been found numbered in series to enable her to
identify the numerals and determine that a decimal system of numeration
had been used. This was the one thousand and seven hundred and
fifty-fourth issue, for Doma, 14837; then Doma must be the name of one
of the Martian months. The word had turned up several times before. She
found herself puffing furiously on her cigarette as she leafed through
notebooks and piles of already examined material.

* * * * *

Sachiko was speaking to somebody, and a chair scraped at the end of the
table. She raised her head, to see a big man with red hair and a red
face, in Space Force green, with the single star of a major on his
shoulder, sitting down. Ivan Fitzgerald, the medic. He was lifting
weights from a book similar to the one the girl ordnance officer was
restoring.

"Haven't had time, lately," he was saying, in reply to Sachiko's
question. "The Finchley girl's still down with whatever it is she has,
and it's something I haven't been able to diagnose yet. And I've been
checking on bacteria cultures, and in what spare time I have, I've been
dissecting specimens for Bill Chandler. Bill's finally found a mammal.
Looks like a lizard, and it's only four inches long, but it's a real
warm-blooded, gamogenetic, placental, viviparous mammal. Burrows, and
seems to live on what pass for insects here."

"Is there enough oxygen for anything like that?" Sachiko was asking.

"Seems to be, close to the ground." Fitzgerald got the headband of his
loup adjusted, and pulled it down over his eyes. "He found this thing in
a ravine down on the sea bottom--Ha, this page seems to be intact; now,
if I can get it out all in one piece--"

He went on talking inaudibly to himself, lifting the page a little at a
time and sliding one of the transparent plastic sheets under it, working
with minute delicacy. Not the delicacy of the Japanese girl's small
hands, moving like the paws of a cat washing her face, but like a
steam-hammer cracking a peanut. Field archaeology requires a certain
delicacy of touch, too, but Martha wa