Looking down at that ancient nameless ancestor, Dalton was moved to solemn thoughts. This creature had been first of all human-kind to make the tremendous crossing to Mars--had seen its lost race in living glory, had died there and became a museum exhibit for the multiple eyes of wise grey spiderish aliens. "Interested in Oswald, sir?" Dalton glanced up and saw an attendant. "I was just thinking--if he could only talk! He does have a name, then?" The guard grinned. "Well, we call him Oswald. Sort of inconvenient, not having a name. When I worked at the Metropolitan we used to call all the Pharaohs and Assyrian kings by their first names." Dalton mentally classified another example of the deep human need for verbal handles to lift unwieldy chunks of environment. The professional thought recalled him to business and he glanced at his watch. "I'm supposed to meet Dr. Oliver Thwaite here this morning. Has he come in yet?" "The archeologist? He's here early and late when he's on Earth. He'll be up in the cataloguing department now. Want me to show you--" "I know the way," said Dalton. "Thanks all the same." He left the elevator at the fourth floor and impatiently pushed open the main cataloguing room's glazed door. Inside cabinets and broad tables bore a wilderness of strange artifacts, many still crusted with red Martian sand. Alone in the room a trim-mustached man in a rough open-throated shirt looked up from an object he had been cleaning with a soft brush. "Dr. Thwaite? I'm Jim Dalton." "Glad to meet you, Professor." Thwaite carefully laid down his work, then rose to grip the visitor's hand. "You didn't lose any time." "After you called last night I managed to get a seat on the dawn-rocket out of Chicago. I hope I'm not interrupting?" "Not at all. I've got some assistants coming in around nine. I was just going over some stuff I don't like to trust to their thumb-fingered mercies." Dalton looked down at the thing the archeologist had been brushing. It was a reed syrinx, the Pan's pipes of antiquity. "That's not a very Martian-looking specimen," he commented. "The Martians, not having any lips, could hardly have had much use for it," said Thwaite. "This is of Earthly manufacture--one of the Martians' specimens from Earth, kept intact over all this time by a preservative I wish we knew how to make. It's a nice find, man's earliest known musical instrument--hardly as interesting as the record though." Dalton's eyes brightened. "Have you listened to the record yet?" "No. We got the machine working last night and ran off some of the Martian stuff. Clear as a bell. But I saved the main attraction for when you got here." Thwaite turned to a side door, fishing a key from his pocket. "The playback machine's in here."