about Mars. I won't."

His reputation as the dean of Hittitologists was solid and secure, too,
she added mentally. Then she felt ashamed of the thought. He wasn't to
be classed with Tony Lattimer.

"All I came for was to get the work started," he was continuing. "The
Federation Government felt that an old hand should do that. Well, it's
started, now; you and Tony and whoever come out on the _Schiaparelli_
must carry it on. You said it, yourself; you have a whole new world.
This is only one city, of the last Martian civilization. Behind this,
you have the Late Upland Culture, and the Canal Builders, and all the
civilizations and races and empires before them, clear back to the
Martian Stone Age." He hesitated for a moment. "You have no idea what
all you have to learn, Martha. This isn't the time to start specializing
too narrowly."

* * * * *

They all got out of the truck and stretched their legs and looked up the
road to the tall building with the queer conical cap askew on its top.
The four little figures that had been busy against its wall climbed into
the jeep and started back slowly, the smallest of them, Sachiko
Koremitsu, paying out an electric cable behind. When it pulled up beside
the truck, they climbed out; Sachiko attached the free end of the cable
to a nuclear-electric battery. At once, dirty gray smoke and orange dust
puffed out from the wall of the building, and, a second later, the
multiple explosion banged.

She and Tony Lattimer and Major Lindemann climbed onto the truck,
leaving the jeep stand by the road. When they reached the building, a
satisfyingly wide breach had been blown in the wall. Lattimer had placed
his shots between two of the windows; they were both blown out along
with the wall between, and lay unbroken on the ground. Martha remembered
the first building they had entered. A Space Force officer had picked up
a stone and thrown it at one of the windows, thinking that would be all
they'd need to do. It had bounced back. He had drawn his pistol--they'd
all carried guns, then, on the principle that what they didn't know
about Mars might easily hurt them--and fired four shots. The bullets had
ricocheted, screaming thinly; there were four coppery smears of
jacket-metal on the window, and a little surface spalling. Somebody
tried a rifle; the 4000-f.s. bullet had cracked the glasslike pane
without penetrating. An oxyacetylene torch had taken an hour to cut th