"I'll just put him to sleep. An anaesthetic pellet of the kind I use for trapping ought to do the trick." But one pellet turned out to be not enough. It required the bursting of three pellets before the animal finally trembled, came to a halt, and with eyes glazed, fell over on the ground. When they approached closer, Sam caught sight of half a dozen stones, roughly piled together. He said, "Better get back, Mark. This may not be pleasant." "You think--you think somebody's buried here?" "Very likely. I'm going to see." * * * * * Using a flat rock with a sharp edge as an improvised spade, he began to dig. The ground was hard, and the rock was not the best of tools. It took him half an hour to reach the first bone, and another half-hour to uncover the rest. Mark had come up behind him and was watching with no sign of revulsion. He said, "I--I was afraid there might be a body, Pop." "So was I. It looks as if the man died so long ago that everything else has rotted away, except for a few metal clasps. No other sign of shoes or clothes. And no indication of how this happened." "You think he was the dog's master?" "Evidently." They both stared at the sleeping animal. Then Sam shrugged, and began to fill the shallow grave again. Mark helped him push in the dirt and stamp it down into place. Finally they moved the stones back. They were about to leave when Mark cried out, "Look at that rock!" Staring where his son pointed, Sam saw a gray column about four feet high, with four smooth lateral sides. Rectangular prisms of this size were rare in nature. This was obviously the work of human hands, and of a blasting rod as well, to judge by the sides, which showed evidence of having been fused before weathering had cut into them. At first he had thought the column was a gravestone. But there was no inscription upon it. There was nothing but a thin deep groove that ran horizontally around the four sides, several inches from the top. "What does it mean, Pop?" "Let's find out. It's obviously been put here as some sort of memorial. As for this groove--" He put his hands on the top of the stone and lifted. As he had half expected, it separated at the horizontal groove. The top of the stone was the lid of a box. Inside lay a plastic container. "Some kind of plastic we don't make any more," muttered Sam. "Aren't you going to open it?" asked Mark eagerly. "Maybe it tells about the grave and the dog's name." The plastic came open at a slight tug. Inside were several strong sheets of paper. Sam stared at them and said, "It's writing, sure enough. But in some language I don't understand." "We can put it in our mechanical translator," said Mark. "That can tell us what it means." "That's what we'll do." "Aren't we going to take the dog with us, Pop?" "No, we'll leave him here. He'll come to in a little while." * * * * *