The commander sighed. What irony that the only truly peaceful race in the galaxy should be the only one to discover interstellar flight. For four thousand years the Kaar had had their ships and had colonized hundreds of planets until they had lost track of which one they started from. In all that time they had avoided planets with intelligent life, had never found any other ships in space. Now, thought the Commander, we have to go looking for trouble just to satisfy our curiosity as to where we started from.
Montresig introduced the newly-thawed anthropologist to him on the dredge room balcony and Commander Losure briefed him on the importance of his job.
"We don't believe this race has any connection with ours," said the Commander. "It's too savage. And yet, we haven't found another race as far advanced in science, nor one that appears to be so similar to ours. Our problem is to find out a little more about them, their physical size, whether it's safe to contact them, which I personally doubt."
"Is it your intention to bring back one of these intelligent beings with the dredge?" asked the anthropologist.
"You know better than that, or maybe you don't," said the Commander. "Anyway, you should know that it is against our code of ethics to cause harm to any intelligent being. That dredge is set to reject any living creature capable of a high order of thought and that control is sealed against our use. The idea is to bring back artifacts that might tell us something about the people of the planet... maybe they have a written language and have something that approximates our scrolls, maybe they have drawings. I'd especially like to snag one of the visual image receptors our communications engineers think they have."
"The dredge operator is ready," said Montresig. "The computer controls have been switched to this balcony and the stasis beam has been checked."
Commander Losure looked up at the dredge operator in his glassed-in booth high on the opposite wall of the hold. He gave a quick hand signal and transferred his attention to the floor of the vast hold below him. A shimmering mistiness began to form in the center of the floor. Commander Losure could feel the tension of his companions as they waited. It was a blind grab; the dredge operator had no way of knowing what would be scooped up at the end of his force beam. Slowly the mistiness grew more dense, darkening to an impenetrable cloud, and then vanished with an audible snap leaving a strange alien mechanism on the floor of the hold. It resembled a huge cylinder resting on tractor-like treads.
From the balcony the men scurrying across the floor seemed dwarfed by the object. Unheeding of any danger they swarmed over it, measuring, testing, amassing information to be fed to the computer.
"Holy Ghosts of My Departed Ancestors," gasped Montresig, "what is it?"