I heard Leopold chuckle before he said, "Well, I've found something. It's a little too heavy for me to manage by myself. I want both outfits to come out here and take a look at it." "What is it, sir?" Marshall and I asked simultaneously, in just about the same words. But Leopold was fond of playing the Man of Mystery. He said, "You'll see when you get here. Take down my coordinates and get a move on. I want to be back at the base by nightfall." * * * * * Shrugging, we changed course to head for Leopold's location. He was about seventeen miles southwest of us, it seemed. Marshall and Webster had an equally long trip to make; they were sharply southeast of Leopold's position. The sky was fairly dark when we arrived at what Leopold had computed as his coordinates. The headlamps of the halftrack lit up the desert for nearly a mile, and at first there was no sign of anyone or anything. Then I spotted Leopold's halftrack parked off to the east, and from the south Gerhardt saw the lights of the third truck rolling toward us. We reached Leopold at about the same time. He was not alone. There was an--object--with him. "Greetings, gentlemen." He had a smug grin on his whiskery face. "I seem to have made a find." He stepped back and, as if drawing an imaginary curtain, let us take a peek at his find. I frowned in surprise and puzzlement. Standing in the sand behind Leopold's halftrack was something that looked very much like a robot. It was tall, seven feet or more, and vaguely humanoid: that is, it had arms extending from its shoulders, a head on those shoulders, and legs. The head was furnished with receptor plates where eyes, ears, and mouth would be on humans. There were no other openings. The robot's body was massive and squarish, with sloping shoulders, and its dark metal skin was pitted and corroded as by the workings of the elements over uncountable centuries. It was buried up to its knees in sand. Leopold, still grinning smugly (and understandably proud of his find) said, "Say something to us, robot." From the mouth-receptors came a clanking sound, the gnashing of--what? gears?--and a voice came forth, oddly high-pitched but audible. The words were alien and were spoken in a slippery singsong kind of inflection. I felt a chill go quivering down my back. The Age of Space Exploration was three centuries old--and for the first time human ears were hearing the sounds of a language that had not been spawned on Earth. "It understands what you say?" Gerhardt questioned. "I don't think so," Leopold said. "Not yet, anyway. But when I address it directly, it starts spouting. I think it's a kind of--well, guide to the ruins, so to speak. Built by the ancients to provide information to passersby; only it seems to have survived the ancients and their monuments as well."