The Stainless Steell Rat Sings the Blues

It was even longer than that, what with the longer days here. Tremearne took off and we settled down to sleep. We slept, and woke up and it was still dark. Slept some more. At least the others snored on: I had too much on my mind to drift off as easily as they did. We had a clue now to the whereabouts of the alien artifact. A clue that was useless until we started looking. And we couldn't look in the darkness. And I had how many days left before the thirty-day poison zonked me? I counted on my fingers. Just about eighteen gone, which left twelve to go. Wonderful. Or had I counted wrong? I started again with the fingers, then grew angry with myself. Enough with the fingers already. I clicked on my computer and wrote a quick program. Then touched D for deadline-or death, whatever-and a glowing eighteen appeared before me accompanied by a flickering twelve. Not that I enjoyed looking at them, mind you, but this way I could stop worrying about the changing count. Some part of me must have been satisfied with this because I fell deeply asleep.

Finally, with great reluctance and sloth, the sky lightened and another day began. Before it was completely light the Captain drifted the launch in low and slow behind the hills, boarded us, then let us out behind the final ridge.

"Good luck," he said, with a certain grimness. The port ground shut and the launch moved away and vanished in the growing light. Scarcely aware of what I was doing I punched D into the computer. The numbers snapped into existence, vanished just as quickly. But I remembered. Day nineteen.

Chapter 12

Dawn crept on interminably as we walked, the sun dragging itself up over the horizon only with great reluctance. It was still not quite full daylight when we came to what had to be the beginning of the wall. Just a single row of bricks almost hidden in the grass.

"What do you think?" I asked of no one in particular. Steengo bent and rapped one with his knuckles.

"Brick," he said.

"Red brick," Madonette said brightly.

"Thanks, thanks," I mumbled with complete lack of appreciation.

There was a barely visible path next to the right-hand side of the row of bricks; for want of a better idea we began walking along it.

"It's higher, see," Floyd said, pointing. "A second course has been added."

"And more still ahead," Madonette said. "Three bricks high now."

"What's this?" Steengo said, bending and pushing the grass aside to look more closely, touching the brick with his fingertip. "There's some kind of symbol stamped into each of the bricks." We all looked now.

"Sort of a circle with an arrow sticking out of it."

"Arrow… circle," I muttered. A sudden intuition bounced about inside my skull. "I've seen that symbol before -yes indeed! Would someone kindly step over the wall and see if there is a circle with a cross sticking out of it on the other side."

Madonette lifted lovely eyebrows with curiosity, stepped daintily over the low wall, bent and looked. Eyebrows even higher now.

"How did you do that? On this side there is a circle-cross sign stamped into each brick."

"Biology," I said. "I remembered from school."

"Yes, of course," she said, stepping back. "The symbols for male and female."

Floyd had strolled on ahead; he called out. "Right as rain. Here is VIROJ stamped into a brick. And," he leaned over and looked, "VIRINOJ on the other side."

Very gradually the wall became higher as we walked beside it. In addition to the symbols we came to LJUDI then MTUWA, HERRER, SIGNORI.

"Enough," I said, stopping. "Packs off. We shall now take our break while we see what we have here. The message seems to be clear enough. Look at the path we have been following. Is there another path on the other side as well?"

The brick wall was as high as our waists now; Floyd put one hand on it and vaulted over, bent and looked.

"Maybe, but not too clear. Could have been here once but it is so overgrown with grass that it is hard to tell. Can I come back now?"

"Yes-because it's about time for a decision." I pointed ahead to the slowly heightening wall. "The Fundamentaloids said they came to the city to trade. So they must have come this way, possibly made this track that we are following."

Madonette nodded agreement-and didn't like it. "And they were all men, I remember that all too clearly. Unclean indeed! No women allowed. Or if the women did come this way they would have to have walked over on the other side of the wall. What do you want us to do, Jim?"

"What do we want to do? As I said — it's time for a decision. Do we all stick together and ignore the obvious instructions? That's the first question that we have to answer."

"Do that and I'll bet that eventually we get into some kind of trouble," she said. "A lot of serious work went into this wall. So if we don't read the message something not too nice is guaranteed to happen. It always does on this world. The choice is mine. I'll cross over and trot down the other side — "