“But Carol says…”
“I know what Carol says. But she can’t be sure. She only thinks she saw that eye staring out at her. And it seems improbable.”
“That’s right,” said Carol. “I can’t be absolutely sure. And what Pete says does make a crooked sort of sense. If he’s right, it would have to be a very important record-and a rather massive one. Perhaps a whole new world of knowledge. Maybe something the crystal planet left here on Earth, believing that no one would ever think of looking for it here. A sort of hidden record.”
“Even if that should be the case,” said Oop, “what good will it do us. The museum is locked and Harlow Sharp is not about to open it for us.”
“I could get us in,” said Carol. “I could phone the guard and say I had to get in and do some work. Or that I had left something there and wanted to pick it up. I have clearance for that sort of thing.”
“And lose your job,” suggested Oop.
She shrugged. “There are other jobs. And if we worked it right…”
“But there’s so little point to it,” protested Maxwell. “It’s no better than a million-to-one shot. Maybe less than that. I don’t deny I’d like to have a try at it, but-”
“What if you found that it was really something important?” asked Carol. “Then we could get hold of Sharp and explain it to him and maybe…”
“I don’t know,” said Maxwell. “I would doubt that we could find anything so important that Harlow would renege upon the deal.”
“Well,” said Oop, “let’s not waste time sitting here and talking about it. Let us be about it.”
Maxwell looked at Carol. “I think so, Pete,” she said. “I think it’s worth the chance.”
Oop reached out and took the jar of moonshine from in front of her and screwed on the cap.
The past surrounded them, the cabineted and cased and pedestaled past, the lost and forgotten and unknown snatched out of time by the far-ranging field expeditions that had probed into the hidden corners of mankind’s history. Art and folklore objects that had been undreamed of until men went back and found them; still new pottery that had heretofore been known only as scattered shards, if even that; bottles out of ancient Egypt with the salves and ointments still imprisoned, fresh, within them; ancient iron weapons new-taken from the forge; the scrolls from the Alexandrian library which should have burned, but didn’t, because men had been sent back in time to snatch them from the flames at the moment before they would have been destroyed; the famed tapestry of Ely that had disappeared from the ken of man in a long-gone age-all these and many more, a treasure trove of articles, many of them no treasures in themselves, snatched from the bowels of time.
The place was misnamed, Maxwell thought. Not Time Museum, but rather the Museum of No Time, a place where all ages came together, where there was no time distinction, a building where all the accomplishments and dreams of mankind might eventually be gathered, not aged things, but all fresh and new and shiny, fashioned only yesterday. And here one would not have to guess from old and scattered evidence what it had been like back there, but could pick up and hold and manipulate the tools and instruments and gadgets that had been made and used through all the days of his development.
Standing beside the pedestal which held the Artifact he listened to the footsteps of the guard as he tramped away again on his regular rounds.
Carol had managed it, and there had been a time he had doubted she would be able to. But everything had gone OK. She’d phoned the guard and told him she and a couple of friends had wanted one last look at the Artifact before it was carted off and he had been waiting to let them in at the little entryway set into one of the large doors that were opened when the museum was open to the public.
“Don’t take too long,” he grumbled. “I’m not sure I should let you do this.”
“It’s all right,” she’d told him. “There is no need for you to worry.”
He had shuffled off, mumbling to himself.
A bank of overhead spotlights shone down on the black block that was the Artifact.
Maxwell ducked beneath the velvet rope that guarded the pedestal and clambered up beside the Artifact, crouching down beside it, fumbling in his pocket for the interpreting apparatus.
It was a crazy hunch, he told himself. It was no hunch at all. It simply was an idea born of desperation and he was wasting his time, more than likely making himself somewhat ridiculous. And even if this wild venture should prove to have some point, there was nothing that he could do, at this late hour, about it. Tomorrow the Wheeler would take possession of the Artifact and of the knowledge stored on the crystal planet and so far as the human race might be concerned that would be the end of fifty billion years of knowledge dredged most laboriously and devotedly from two universes-knowledge that should have belonged to the University of Earth, that could have belonged to the university, but that now would be lost forever to an enigmatic cultural bloc which might, in turn, prove to be that potential cosmic enemy Earth had always feared would be found in space.
His start had been too late, he knew. Given a bit more time and he could have turned the deal, could have found the people who would have listened to him, could have gained some backing. But everything had worked against him and now it was too late.
He slid the interpreter onto his head and fumbled with it, for somehow it didn’t want to fit.
“Let me help,” said Carol. He felt her fingers manipulating it deftly, straightening out the straps, sliding them into place.
Glancing down, he saw Sylvester, seated on the floor beside the pedestal, sneering up at Oop.
Oop caught Maxwell’s look. “That cat doesn’t like me,” said the Neanderthaler. “He senses that I’m his natural enemy. Some day he’ll work up his nerve to have a go at me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” snapped Carol. “He’s just a little putty cat.”
“Not the way I see it,” said Oop.
Maxwell reached up and pulled the assemblage of the interpreter down across his eyes.
And looked down at the Artifact.
There was something there, something in that block of black. Lines, forms, a strangeness. No longer just a block of unimaginable blackness, rejecting all influence from outside, tolerating nothing and giving up nothing, as if it might be a thing that stood apart, sufficient to itself within the universe.
He twisted his head to try to catch the angle from which it might be possible to untangle what he saw. No lines of writing, surely-it was something else. He reached up to the headpiece and pushed over the wheel that increased the power, fiddled for a moment with the adjustment for the sensor.
“What is it?” Carol asked.
“I don’t…” Then, suddenly, he did know. Then he saw. Imprisoned in one corner of the block was a talon, with iridescent flesh or hide or scale and gleaming claws that looked as if they had been carved from diamonds. A talon that moved and struggled to be free so it could reach out for him.
He flinched away, moving back to get out of reach, and he lost his balance. He felt himself falling and tried to twist to one side so he wouldn’t land flat upon his back. One shoulder struck the velvet rope and the standards that held the rope in place went over with a clatter. The floor came up and smacked him hard. Striking the rope had served to twist him to one side and he came down heavily on one shoulder, but his head was protected from the floor. He struck at his forehead with an open hand, knocking the interpreter off to one side to free his eyes.
And there, above him, the Artifact was changing. Out of it something was rising-rearing up out of the oblong of blackness, jerking itself free. Something that was alive, a-throb with vitality and glittering in its beauty.
A slender, dainty head, with an elongated snout, and a sharp serrated crest that ran from the forepart of the head along the length of neck. A barrel-like chest and body, with a pair of wings half-folded, and shapely forelegs, armed with the diamond claws. It glittered blindingly in the spotlights that pointed at the Artifact, or, rather, where the Artifact had been, each gleaming scale a point of hard white light striking off the bronze and gold, the yellow and the blue.