"Let's don't go too fast," Lattimer said, for once not derisively. "I'll
admit that _darfhulva_ is the Martian word for history as a subject of
study; I'll admit that _hulva_ is the general word and _darf_ modifies
it and tells us which subject is meant. But as for assigning specific
meanings, we can't do that because we don't know just how the Martians
thought, scientifically or otherwise."
He stopped short, startled by the blue-white light that blazed as Sid
Chamberlain's Kliegettes went on. When the whirring of the camera
stopped, it was Chamberlain who was speaking:
"This is the biggest thing yet; the whole history of Mars, stone age to
the end, all on four walls. I'm taking this with the fast shutter, but
we'll telecast it in slow motion, from the beginning to the end. Tony, I
want you to do the voice for it--running commentary, interpretation of
each scene as it's shown. Would you do that?"
Would he do that! Martha thought. If he had a tail, he'd be wagging it
at the very thought.
"Well, there ought to be more murals on the other floors," she said.
"Who wants to come downstairs with us?"
Sachiko did; immediately. Ivan Fitzgerald volunteered. Sid decided to go
upstairs with Tony Lattimer, and Gloria Standish decided to go upstairs,
too. Most of the party would remain on the seventh floor, to help Selim
von Ohlmhorst get it finished. After poking tentatively at the escalator
with the spike of her ice axe, Martha led the way downward.
* * * * *
The sixth floor was _Darfhulva_, too; military and technological
history, from the character of the murals. They looked around the
central hall, 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?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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