It had been a long dry stretch, even for an imaginative editor with a bill of goods to sell. Manufacturing news is one of the hardest things in the world after the process has gone on for month after month. Donatti was reaching the end of the string, and there were still months to go.
Donatti groaned, and then looked up to see a copy boy approaching, waving a reel of recording tape in one hand.
"Yes—?"
"Z-wave! Z-wave!" said the copy boy breathlessly.
"So what—?" grunted Donatti, taking the reel and slipping it into his playback.
It started: "Neosol Wire Service. Neovenus, Four August. Archeologists today discovered the traces of a crude civilization dating at least seven thous—"
Donatti groaned. That would make page eighteen, sandwiched between an ad and the local theatre column.
"—and years old. No trace of this civilization remains today. Crude pottery and some stone arrowheads—"
"Crude pottery and stone arrowheads," snapped Donatti. "So what? What's this Z-wave business?"
"—were found among buried sub-humanoid bones. It has been an elementary principle among archeologists that proper burial of the dead is an indication of intell—