Beatryx was perplexed. “Why shouldn’t they put them on display, if they want to?”
Groton came out of his daze. “No reason, dear. No reason at all. It’s just a very expensive exhibit, to leave open to strangers. Perhaps it is their way of informing us that wealth means nothing to them.”
She nodded, reassured.
“The rare earths, too!” Afra called. She was now on the opposite side of the room, working her way back. “Here’s promethium — pounds of it! And it doesn’t even occur in nature!”
“Does she know all the elements by heart?” Ivo muttered.
“Osmium! That little cube must weigh twenty pounds! And solid iridium — on Earth that would sell for a thousand dollars an ounce!”
“Better stay clear of the radioactives, Afra!” Groton cautioned her.
“They’re glassed in. Lead glass, or something; no radiation. I hope. At least they don’t have them by the pound! Uranium — neptunium — plutonium—”
“Saturnium — jupiterium — marsium,” Ivo muttered, facetiously carrying the planetary identifiers farther. It seemed to him that too much was being made of this exhibit. “Earthium — venusium — mercurochrome—”
“Mercury,” Groton said, overhearing him. “There is such an element.”
Oh.
Afra came back at last, subdued. “Their table goes to a hundred and twenty. Those latter shapes get pretty intricate…”
“You know better than that, Afra,” Groton said. “Some of those artificial elements have half-lives of hours, even minutes. They can’t sit on display.”
“Even seconds, half-life. They’re still here. Look for yourself.”
“Facsimiles, maybe. Not—”
“Bet?”
“No.” Groton looked for himself. “Must be some kind of stasis field,” he said dubiously. “If they can do what they can do with gravity—”
“Suddenly I feel very small,” she said.
But Ivo reminded himself that such tricks were nothing compared to the compression of an entire planet into its gravitational radius, and the protection of accompanying human flesh. This exhibit was impressive, but hardly alarming, viewed in perspective. He suspected that there was more to it than they had spotted so far.
The hall continued beyond the element display, slanting down again. Ivo wondered about such things as the temperature. Sharp changes in it should affect some of the element-exhibits, changing them from solid to liquid, or liquid to gas. Yet the exhibit had been geared to a comfortable temperature for human beings, and was obviously a permanent arrangement. The layout, too — convenient for human beings, even to the height of the alcove.
Had this been the destroyer station closest to Earth, there could have been suspicion of a carefully tailored show. But this one was almost fifty thousand light-years distant. It could not have been designed for men — unless there were men in the galaxy not of Earth. Or very similar creatures.
The implications disturbed him, but no more than anything else about this strange museum. He knew it had been said that a planetary creature had to be somewhat like man in order to rise to civilization and technology, and that long chains of reasoning had been used to “prove” this thesis — but man’s reasoning in such respects was necessarily biased, and he had discounted it. Yet if it were true — if it were true — did it also hold for man’s personality? The greed, the stupidity, the bloodthirst — ?
Was that Schön laughing again?
The passage opened into a second room. This one was much larger than the first, and the alcoves began at floor-level.
“Machinery!” Groton exclaimed with the same kind of excitement Afra had expressed before. He went to the first exhibit: a giant slab of metal, shaped like a wedge of cheese. As he approached, a ball fell on it and rolled off. Nothing else happened.
“Machine?” Ivo inquired.
“Inclined plane — the elementary machine, yes.”
Well, if Groton were satisfied…
The second item was a simple lever. Fulcrum and rod, the point of the latter wedged under a large block. As they came up to it, the rod moved, and the block slid over a small amount. Groton nodded, pleased, and Ivo followed him to the next. The two women walked ahead, giving only cursory attention to this display.
The third resembled a vise. A long handle turned a heavy screw, so that the force applied was geared down twice. “Plane and lever,” Groton remarked. “We’re jumping ahead about fifty thousand years each time, as human technology goes.”
“So far.”
The fourth one had a furnace and a boiler, and resembled a primitive steam engine — which it was. The fifth was an electric turbine.
After that they became complicated. To Ivo’s untrained eye, they resembled complex motors, heaters and radio equipment. Some he recognized as variants of devices he had blue printed via the macroscope; others were beyond his comprehension. Not all were intricate in detail; some were deceptively smooth. He suspected that an old automobile mechanic would find a printed-circuit board with embedded micro-transistors to be similarly smooth. One thing he was sure of: none of it was fakery.
Groton stopped at the tenth machine. “I thought I’d seen real technology when we terraformed Triton,” he said. “Now — I am a believer. I’ve digested about as much as I care to try in one outing. Let’s go on.”
The girls had already done so, and were in the next chamber. This contained what appeared to be objects of art. The display commenced with simple two- and three-dimensional representations of concretes and abstracts, and went on to astonishing permutations. This time it was Beatryx who was fascinated.
“Oh, yes, I see it,” she said, moving languidly from item to item. She was lovely in her absorption, as though the grandeur and artistry of what she perceived transfigured her own flesh. Now she outshone Afra. Ivo had not realized how fervent her interest in matters artistic was, though it followed naturally from her appreciation of music. He had assumed that what she did not talk about was of no concern to her, and now he chided himself for comprehending shallowly — yet again.
The display did not appeal to him as a whole, but individual selections did. He could appreciate the mathematical symbolism in some; it was of a sophisticated nature, and allied to the galactic language codes.
A number were portraits of creatures. They were of planets remote from Earth, but were intelligent and civilized, though he could not tell how he could be sure of either fact. Probably the subtle clues manifested themselves to him subliminally, as when Brad had first shown him alien scapes on the macroscope. Description? Pointless; the creatures were manlike in certain respects and quite alien in certain others. What mattered more was their intangible symmetry of form and dignity of countenance. These were Greek idealizations; the perfect physique with the well-tutored mind and disciplined emotion. These were handsome male, females and neuters. They were represented here as art, and they were art, in the same sense that a rendition of a finely contoured athlete or nude woman was art by human terms.
The rooms continued, each one at a lower level than the one preceding, until it seemed that the party had to be at the second lap of a spiral. One chamber contained books; printed scrolls, coiled tapes, metallic memory disks. Probably all the information the builders of the station might have broadcast to space was here, the reply to anyone who might suspect that the destroyer was merely sour grapes delivered by an ignorant culture. It was, in retrospect, obvious that that had never been the case.
One room contained food. Many hours and many miles had passed in fascination; they were hungry. Macroscopic chemical identifiers labeled the entrees, which were in stasis ovens. The party made selections as though they were dining at an automat, “defrosting” items, and the menu was strange but good.