trying to keep a
civilization running after the rest of the planet had gone back to
barbarism; I suppose they'd have to fight off raids by the barbarians
now and then."

"You're not going to insist on making this building into expedition
quarters, I hope, colonel?" von Ohlmhorst asked anxiously.

"Oh, no! This place is an archaeological treasure-house. More than that;
from what I saw, our technicians can learn a lot, here. But you'd better
get this floor cleaned up as soon as you can, though. I'll have the
subsurface part, from the sixth floor down, airsealed. Then we'll put
in oxygen generators and power units, and get a couple of elevators into
service. For the floors above, we can use temporary airsealing floor by
floor, and portable equipment; when we have things atmosphered and
lighted and heated, you and Martha and Tony Lattimer can go to work
systematically and in comfort, and I'll give you all the help I can
spare from the other work. This is one of the biggest things we've found
yet."

Tony Lattimer and his companions came down to the seventh floor a little
later.

"I don't get this, at all," he began, as soon as he joined them. "This
building wasn't stripped the way the others were. Always, the procedure
seems to have been to strip from the bottom up, but they seem to have
stripped the top floors first, here. All but the very top. I found out
what that conical thing is, by the way. It's a wind-rotor, and under it
there's an electric generator. This building generated its own power."

"What sort of condition are the generators in?" Penrose asked.

"Well, everything's full of dust that blew in under the rotor, of
course, but it looks to be in pretty good shape. Hey, I'll bet that's
it! They had power, so they used the elevators to haul stuff down.
That's just what they did. Some of the floors above here don't seem to
have been touched, though." He paused momentarily; back of his oxy-mask,
he seemed to be grinning. "I don't know that I ought to mention this in
front of Martha, but two floors above--we hit a room--it must have been
the reference library for one of the departments--that had close to five
hundred books in it."

The noise that interrupted him, like the squawking of a Brobdingnagian
parrot, was only Ivan Fitzgerald laughing through his helmet-speaker.

* * * * *

Lunch at the huts was a hasty meal, with a gabble of full-mouthed and
excited talking. Hubert Penr