all, and went down to the fifth; it was like the floors above
except that the big quadrangle was stacked with dusty furniture and
boxes. Ivan Fitzgerald, who was carrying the floodlight, swung it slowly
around. Here the murals were of heroic-sized Martians, so human in
appearance as to seem members of her own race, each holding some
object--a book, or a test tube, or some bit of scientific apparatus, and
behind them were scenes of laboratories and factories, flame and smoke,
lightning-flashes. The word at the top of each of the four walls was one
with which she was already familiar--_Sornhulva_.

"Hey, Martha; there's that word," Ivan Fitzgerald exclaimed. "The one in
the title of your magazine." He looked at the paintings. "Chemistry, or
physics."

"Both." Hubert Penrose considered. "I don't think the Martians made any
sharp distinction between them. See, the old fellow with the scraggly
whiskers must be the inventor of the spectroscope; he has one in his
hands, and he has a rainbow behind him. And the woman in the blue smock,
beside him, worked in organic chemistry; see the diagrams of long-chain
molecules behind her. What word would convey the idea of chemistry and
physics taken as one subject?"

"_Sornhulva_," Sachiko suggested. "If _hulva's_ something like science,
"_sorn_" must mean matter, or substance, or physical object. You were
right, all along, Martha. A civilization like this would certainly leave
something like this, that would be self-explanatory."

"This'll wipe a little more of that superior grin off Tony Lattimer's
face," Fitzgerald was saying, as they went down the motionless escalator
to the floor below. "Tony wants to be a big shot. When you want to be a
big shot, you can't bear the possibility of anybody else being a bigger
big shot, and whoever makes a start on reading this language will be the
biggest big shot archaeology ever saw."

That was true. She hadn't thought of it, in that way, before, and now
she tried not to think about it. She didn't want to be a big shot. She
wanted to be able to read the Martian language, and find things out
about the Martians.

Two escalators down, they came out on a mezzanine around a wide central
hall on the street level, the floor forty feet below them and the
ceiling thirty feet above. Their lights picked out object after object
below--a huge group of sculptured figures in the middle; some kind of a
motor vehicle jacked up on trestles for repairs; things