“Did they both need an ignition key to get them started?” Richard asked with a smirk.
Michael took a swipe at his buddy with an open palm, but Richard evaded it with ease. Then he danced briefly on his toes like a professional boxer before taking a swing of his own.
“No fighting,” Donald snapped, insinuating himself between the two divers.
“Your Corvette might have been fine for you and Dorothy,” Suzanne said, “but I feel rather embarrassed the Interterrans feel that this symbolizes our culture.”
“It does suggest we’re rather superficial,” Perry agreed. “Besides being rusty and in sorry shape.”
“Superficial and materialistic,” Suzanne said, “which, I suppose, is probably the case when you think about it.”
“You’re reading too much into the symbolism,” Arak said. “The reason we have put it here at the front of the museum is much simpler. Since we are now relegated to observing you from afar to keep from being detected by your advancing technology, the automobile is what we notice most. From a great distance it almost appears that the cars are the dominant life form on the surface of the earth, with secondary humans acting like robots to take care of them.”
Suzanne had trouble suppressing a laugh at such an absurd suggestion, but when she thought about it, she could understand how it might seem from a distance.
“What is more symbolic is the design of the museum itself,” Arak said.
All eyes turned to the building. Up close, the structure possessed an overpowering sepulchral aura. Four and five stories tall, it was composed of rectilinear segments either stacked or at right angles to create a complicated, sharply geometric form. Most segments were covered with square fenestrations.
“The building symbolizes secondary human urban architecture,” Arak commented.
“It’s rather ugly in its boxiness,” Suzanne said.
“It isn’t pleasing to the eye,” Arak admitted. “Nor are most of your cities, which are essentially so many boxlike skyscrapers built on grids.”
“There are some exceptions,” Suzanne said.
“A few,” Arak agreed. “But unfortunately, most of the architectural lessons the Atlanteans bestowed on your ancient forebears have been lost or disregarded.”
“It’s an enormous building,” Perry commented. It covered the equivalent of a modern city block.
“It needs to be,” Arak said. “We have an extensive earth surface collection. Remember, we’re talking about a time span of millions upon millions of years.”
“So the museum is not just of secondary human culture?” Suzanne asked.
“Not at all,” Arak said. “It is also the whole panoply of current earth surface evolution. Of course, we have been mostly interested in the last ten thousand years or so for obvious reasons. Although that segment of time represents a mere eyeblink in comparison to the period as a whole, we have concentrated our collections on it.”
“What about dinosaurs?” Perry questioned.
“We have a small but representative exhibit of preserved specimens,” Arak said. Then he added as an aside:
“Such frightfully violent creatures!” He shook his head as if experiencing a passing wave of nausea.
“I want to see that exhibit,” Perry said eagerly. “I’ve been dying to know what color dinosaurs were.”
“For the most part they were a rather nondescript gray-green,” Arak said. “Rather ugly if you must know.”
“Let’s go inside,” Sufa suggested.
The group trooped into the entrance hall. It was an enormous room sheathed in the same black basalt as the exterior. Shafts of bright light came from apertures in the high ceiling. They crisscrossed in the general dimness like miniature searchlights to illuminate displayed objects in a dramatic fashion. Multiple corridors emanated from this central hub.
“Why are there no people?” Suzanne asked. In every direction she looked, all she saw was empty, marbled hallways. Her voice echoed repeatedly in the sepulchral silence.
“It’s always like this,” Arak explained. “As important as this museum is, it is not particularly popular. Most people would rather not be reminded of the threat your world poses for us.”
“You mean threat of detection,” Suzanne added.
“Precisely,” Sufa said.
“This looks like a place where it would be easy to get lost,” Perry said. He peered down some of the lengthy, dimly lit, and silent corridors.
“Not really,” Arak said. He pointed to the left. “Starting here, with blue-green algae, the evolutionary exhibits are chronological.” Then he pointed to the right. “And on this side we have secondary human culture starting with the earliest African hominids and extending up to the present. At any given location in the museum one could determine how to find the way back here to the entrance hall by following the direction of progressively older specimens.”
“I’d like to see the exhibits depicting our modern times,” Donald said.
“Certainly,” Arak said. “Follow me. We’ll take a shortcut through the first five or six million years.”
The group followed Arak and Sufa like schoolchildren on a day trip to the museum. Suzanne and Perry found it difficult not to stop and view every display, especially when they reached the halls devoted to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artifacts. Neither Suzanne or Perry had seen anything quite like them. It was as if someone had stepped back in time with free rein to pick the choicest objects. Suzanne was particularly enthralled with the period clothing tastefully displayed on life-sized mannequins.
“You’ll notice there is a marked quantity difference in our collections,” Arak explained. He had remained with Suzanne and Perry as the others wandered on. “We have comparatively little modern material. The farther back in your history, the more extensive the exhibits are. A very long time ago we used to make actual trips in isolation suits to collect for the museum. Of course, we eventually had to stop that practice for fear of exposure once your forebears developed writing.”
“Arak!” Sufa called from several galleries ahead. “Donald, Richard, and Michael are moving quickly, so I’ll go ahead with them!”
“That’s fine,” Arak called back. “We’ll all meet up in the entrance hall in about one hour.”
Sufa nodded and waved good-bye.
“Why were you worried about exposure to ancient peoples?” Suzanne asked. “They certainly did not have the technology to cause you any trouble.”
“Very true,” Arak admitted. “But we knew you second-generation humans would have it someday, and we didn’t want any record of our visits. It was enough to worry about the failed Atlantean experiment, although that was less of a concern since the primary humans involved had been posing as second-generation humans.”
Suzanne nodded, but her attention had drifted to an elaborate, ancient Minoan dress which would leave the breasts completely exposed.
“There is one period in your modern history that we have a lot of artifacts from,” Arak said. “Would you care to see?”
Suzanne looked at Perry, who shrugged. “Certainly,” Suzanne said.
Arak turned left and strode off through a side gallery filled with exquisite Greek pottery. With Suzanne and Perry at his heels he turned another corner and climbed a nondescript flight of stairs. On the floor above they emerged into a huge gallery filled with World War II materiel. The artifacts ranged from items as small as dog tags and uniform insignia to those as large as a Sherman tank, a B-24 Liberator aircraft, and an intact U-boat, with all sorts of objects in between. It was apparent that everything in the gallery was at one time submerged in the ocean.
“My word,” Perry commented as he strolled between the displays. “This is more like a junkyard than a museum exhibit.”
“It appears that our last world war contributed substantially to your museum’s collection,” Suzanne said. She and Arak remained at the head of the stairs. This was not an exhibit Suzanne was at all interested in.